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And you'd certainly do more damage ecologically in a Prius.

You're full of shit. But hey, you sound like you know what you're talking about, so you must be right.

The Prius has about 90 pounds of NiMH batteries in it. Those batteries are largely benign, so you could toss them into the trash if you wanted to with the rest of your refuse if they failed, but Toyota will pay you to recycle them.

Now, I think the "toxic manufacturing process" largely comes from the nickel that goes into the battery back. Now, I'm not sure how much of each cell is nickel, but I do know that your standard steel is about 10% nickel. Given that most of your standard vehicle is steel (and I'm sure the Bugatti is made of a ton of exotic materials like carbon fiber whose manufacture is more toxic than steel and can't be recycled like steel), and that the Veyron weighs about 1,000 pounds more than the Prius - even if the Prius battery was 100% nickel the nickel content of both cars would be similar.

Plus when you factor in that the lead-acid battery in the Prius is about half the size of your typical lead-acid battery, you cut the possible leakage of lead into the environment (which is much worse than nickel) in half.

I suspect that most of your assumptions about the toxicity of the Prius (and all other NiMH batteries) come from the widely debunked CNW "Dust to Dust" marketing study which claimed that the Prius alone was responsible for the widespread destruction of the area around a mine in Canada and that a Hummer (and thus a Veyron, apparently) is more environmentally friendly than a Prius.

I'll simply point you to this link: http://www.terrapass.com/blog/posts/is-the-prius-battery-toxic where in the comments the claims are quite easily refuted (see especially comment #8).

The system I had in mind is similar to the picture below (see link) I'm sure it wouldn't be hard to mfg something lass than 6" wide. The motor wouldn't' need a clutch per say as it would always be engaged either generating electricity or providing power. You eliminate the battery, alternator, and starter. Then throw some batteries in recesses along the frame.

http://www.cleangreencar.co.nz/p/vibrantplanet.com/cleangreencar/1119228919_24429.jpg

At the moment a Prius is priced several thousand dollars more than a
comparable-size and power non-hybrid car but that's just because
hybrids are newer and more popular. The cost to manufacture a
hybrid should be less than a traditional car because the hybrid, with
the exception of its battery, is simpler
and with fewer moving parts. The Prius doesn't have a
'multi-speed' gear box, starter motor, alternator, serpentine belt, or
torque converter/clutch so all of those are left out along with the
collateral stuff associated with them such as wiring harness
components, starting battery, interlock controls, and various
mechanical linkages and mounting brackets making the assembly
line simpler and cheaper. Also, stuff like the engine and
radiator are relatively small and presumably less expensive. The
Prius does have a planetary
gear system as a power-splitting device but it's a relatively
simple component to manufacture. The manufacturing cost for the
battery is the biggest adder over a traditional car and that is
probably, at the moment, only about a $1,000 increase in manufacturing
cost over a traditional car while leaving out the other stuff probably
saves several thousand. The bottom line is that hybrids
should eventually be cheaper to buy than a conventional car and likely
cheaper to operate over their service life as well.

- Storage and Transport: Whats the volume equivalent in batteries of a full tank of Gasoline (eg: a 300 miles range)? Whats the weight equivalent ?

This I have no idea about.

Well, according to wikipedia, the volume of the Chevy Volt battery pack will be a 100L or about 26Gal. Thats for a range of 40miles.
Thats 1.5 Miles/Gallon, in terms of miles driven per storage capacity needed at the filling stations.

According to http://www.cleangreencar.co.nz/ the weight/volume ratio of the Prius battery pack is 2.4Kg/Liter.
(Compare to gasoline: 0.77Kg/Liter)
According to wikipedia, the Lithium batteries used by the Volt are about half the weight for the same power as the NiMH batteries used in the Prius. But about the same power / volume ratio. So we could says that a modern battery will be about 1.2Kg/Liter (more than water)

So lets extrapolate, and assume that the Volt battery would be about 120Kg (~260Lbs). How long do you think it would take you to move 120Kg of batteries out of your car, and 120Kg of batteries in your car ? How many "modules" do you tink there would be ? I would say maximum 10Lbs or 1 Gal per module so that anybody can do it themselves. That's 26 modules out and 26 modules back in. Go to the store, and fill up your trunk with 26 gallons of water, then unload them, and see how easy it is.

I currently spend maybe 10-15 minutes to pump 13 gals every 400 miles. Instead, I would need to "pump" 26 gallons out and 26 gallons in, every 40 miles.

Another way to highlight the difference (Numbers from wikipedia)
  Gasoline: 10000 Wh/Liter - 12000 Wh/Kg
  Li-Ion : 270 Wh/Liter - 160 Wh/kg

Some of my math may be off, but it should be close enough.

Clearly you didnt think it through for more than 2 minutes: Its not just a matter of "just" storing batteries at the gas station.

Hybrid replacement battery pack costs within a 5 year period: $3000.00 - $5000.00 US

Second, maintenance costs for a hybrid are much less. As the link to the hybrid taxi cab experiment shows, while standard maintenance costs were about the same, the unscheduled maintenance costs were dramatically lower, around 19 cents per 100km of driving, vs. around $2 per 100km for the other vehicles. That's with over 60 hybrids, not one vehicle, so it should not be a statistical anomaly. That's big-time savings, and since 'unscheduled maintenance' is going to be a euphemism for stuff breaking, they're more reliable as well.

So no battery pack replacement needed and almost a 50% reduction in total real maintenance and repair costs over the life of the vehicle and a lower failure rate = you're saving thousands of dollars and have less hassle.

Add in the savings for the better gas mileage ($10,000 to $20,000 in savings over the life of the vehicle) and that hybrids are almost free in terms of their cost vs. a regular new car even with the slightly higher premium you pay for them.

One other thing. Hybrids hold their value. You don't take a 30% reduction to the value of your car the moment you drive it off the lot, and used hybrids can go for almost as much as new ones.

I'm curious where you get that Toyota suggests changing the Prius batteries every 2 years. We've had ours going on three years now, still using the original batteries (Only 200km /day communting highway(2/3)/city(1/3)). As far as the service types can say at the dealership, they have never needed to change the batteries in any Prius (That's what 10 years now). For what little it's worth, this dealership owns 4 of the 5 Toyota showrooms/service centres in town. But I guess you do more then 90k miles a year. (Toyota have lab data showing the Prius battery can do 180,000 miles (290,000km) of normal driving with absolutely no degradation of the battery's performance. - http://www.cleangreencar.co.nz/page/prius-battery-pack )

ALL electric and hybrid vehicles are priced way out of the reach of the typical american. Fact is the typical american makes less than $32,000.00 a year. The payment on a $24,000.00 car is insane and therefore not afforadble by the masses only by the few rich people. Most people can afford USED cars under $8000.00 some stretch to the $14,000.00 mark but not many.

Sorry for the late post. I bought a Prius. I thought lots about the costs involved and did some research. From what I found is what I based my choice on. Here are the important stuff.

1 Do you dirve a lot? If you don't, forget a Hybrid.
2 Do you trade in often? If you do, get a Hybrid.
3 Do you need reliability? If you do, get a Hybrid.

Short summary, if you want to spend less for transportation, drive a lot, and need reliability, get a Hybrid.

You're going, yea-riiight..

My hybrid has averaged 46 MPG since I bought it. My old car got 24 MPG. At $3.00/gallon of gas, 100,000 miles would use 4167 gallons in the old car for a cost of $12,500 and the Hybrid would use 2174 gallons for a cost of $6,522. You complain about high (Insane) car payments. Care to guess what gas prices will be in 5 years? I'll stick with a known car payment instead. The gas savings pays the extra cost.

In repairs, I have had none on the Hybrid in 100,000 miles. I replaced the starter tires at 18,000 miles and changed tires again at 80,000 miles. I checked the brakes at that last tire change. With regenerative braking, the pads have 80% remaining.

The car doesn't have a starter motor, bendix gear, starter solonoid or other starting system high failure items. The brushless motor/generator starts the car.

The car doesn't have alternator belts and bearings exposed to dirt for alternator failures. The Cabin battery is powered by a HV to 12 volt converter.

The only belt on the engine is for the AC. The new model has eliminated that belt as the AC is now a sealed electric compressor just like the old reliable refrigerator at home. This eliminates AC belts, clutches, leaking shaft seals, and hoses since the compressor is no longer mounted on the engine requiring flexible hoses.

Power steering is a linear electric motor. Eliminate power steering pumps, belts, fluids, and there goes another failure item.

Check out how the Prius transmission works. I believe it has a total of 7 moving parts. None of them are a friction part like a band or clutch. None of them are hydraulic such as a torque converter. None of the parts shift. This is true for all driving, including going from forward to reverse. No gears shift, no clutches or bands operate. It's a simple, reliable low parts count transmission with little to break, wear, or go out of adjustment.
Here is information and pictures of the Prius transmission. Not a bad piece of fine engineering for a simple CV transmission with no shifting parts.
http://www.cleangreencar.co.nz/page/prius-transmission
Can a transmission get any simpler and relaible than this?

In 100,000 miles, the premium I paid has paid back itself and then some. Due to the increased reliability, I expect to keep the car for another couple hundred thousand miles. Elimination of a car purchase or two helps offset the cost of the higher priced car adding to the total lowered cost.

Care to add up repair cost and gas savings in 300,000 miles? Now which is the expensive car? People are catching on. My wife's 02 van and my 02 Prius blue book prices are no where close to each other. My Prius can be sold today for only 2,400 less than I bought it for. If I do trad-ins, this is a good deal.

I bought my Prius to save money and it paid off. I need reliable transportation for my commute. I got it. I've done the cheap car thing for years. Keeping the beaters running and passing DEQ was always a pain. Not anymore.

The poor kid making minimum wage will only be able to

Um, all of the current Hybrids already use NiMH batteries. I don't know why you think they use Lead-Acid. Recycling the batteries would be a problem, but they're designed not to wear out--and empirical evidence suggests that they do a pretty good job of not wearing out, the only people that I've found who replace Prius batteries are the guys who are converting them into plug-in Hybrids and want to get more miles out of them.

It isn't really an Atkinson cycle engine, just an ordinary crankshaft SI engine with asymmetric valve timing.

The European Mitsubishi Colt gets about the same real world MPG as the Prius. It has a 94BHP 3-cylinder advanced turbodiesel engine with no batteries to lug about, a Tiptronic gearbox, conventional steel construction and still gets 121g CO2 per mile. The dust to dust cost is far lower than a Prius because (a) steel needs less energy to make than aluminum and (b) it only needs a small lead acid starter battery. And it will cruise all day at 90+mph where legal.

"People are stupid... right now the best technology we can implement for the batteries only suggest a life of 3 years and the battery is the majority of the value of the car"

Yeah, people are pretty stupid:

http://www.cleangreencar.co.nz/page/faq-prius#Q12

"Toyota have lab data showing the Prius battery can do 180,000 miles (290,000km) of normal driving with absolutely no degradation of the battery's performance."

"[T]he price of a replacement battery is ... NZ$4000.00 for a Generation II Prius and NZ$2750 for a Generation III Prius."

The CVTs that you see in automobiles now are pretty much snowmobile transmissions on steroids.

The ones in hybrids, at least the Prius (and I'm pretty certain the Escape is similar), are much different and don't use belts, though I doubt they would work well in a locomotive either:

http://www.cleangreencar.co.nz/page/prius-transmis sion