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Can you provide citations for batteries needing replacing? I've never heard of a Toyota hybrid needing a battery replaced:

http://www.hybridcars.com/faq.html#battery

How often do hybrid batteries need replacing? Is replacement expensive and disposal an environmental problem?

The hybrid battery packs are designed to last for the lifetime of the vehicle, somewhere between 150,000 and 200,000 miles, probably a whole lot longer. The warranty covers the batteries for between eight and ten years, depending on the carmaker.

Battery toxicity is a concern, although today's hybrids use NiMH batteries, not the environmentally problematic rechargeable nickel cadmium. "Nickel metal hydride batteries are benign. They can be fully recycled," says Ron Cogan, editor of the Green Car Journal. Toyota and Honda say that they will recycle dead batteries and that disposal will pose no toxic hazards. Toyota puts a phone number on each battery, and they pay a $200 "bounty" for each battery to help ensure that it will be properly recycled.

There's no definitive word on replacement costs because they are almost never replaced. According to Toyota, since the Prius first went on sale in 2000, they have not replaced a single battery for wear and tear.

Uhm, yes, indeed, terminal...
normallty, that's what I'd do, but is I look at teh picture in this article, that's not something I'd do myself.
With any luck, battery monitoring comes automatically when they switch to Li-Ion batteries.
From what I recall, those cannot be sold without battery management (risk of fire, stuff like that)

You mean this?

"My 2001 Toyota Prius lasted five years and 113,000 miles. And then the batteries seemed to die. My dealer estimated the replacement cost at $7,000. They recommended scrapping the car for parts."

From what I can see, a lot of those problems are caused by corrosion on a battery termina, which can be fixed by swapping out that one cell ($1,345, all in).
However, repair shops seem to prefer selling a full set of batteries for $3000 over replacing a simgle battery for $1300.

If you read the comments after the article, you can see that there's quite a few people that have had this happen.

Well I hate to rain on your parade, but I just got a quote on a battery replacement for a 2003 Honda Insight with 150,000 miles.
Try $6312.70 !!!!!!!
The battery (refurbished) replaced and 2 control modules plus labor.

We have a 2003 Civic Hybrid we bought for what we thought was a great price. Now the IMA light comes on and the dealer says it it the battery pack.

The battery problem is real. My 01 Prius with 158,000 miles has just been diagnosed with failing batteries; all at once with no warning; $3600 plus tax. As salvage the car has almost no value.

The battery in my 2001 Prius has failed after 109K miles, repairs estimated at $4000+. Warranty is 100k miles. Toyota Corp does not offer any help at all. My dealer has offered to replace with parts at cost and no labor charge, but that only amounts to a few hundred dollars.

Have you seen the cost of high-power batteries?
Especially the ones that can survive the strain of driving electric-only (charge-drain-charge-drain)? try $3000,--
Unless you own a Hybrid, according to Car & Driver

"battery replacement will cost $5,300 for the Toyota and Lexus hybrids, and the Ford Escape replacements run a whopping $7,200."

Also, someone needt to make room for those batteries somewhere in the car.
The required equipment (for modifying the car itself) and man-hours also cost money.

Toyota claims that

"Nickel metal hydride batteries are benign. They can be fully recycled," says Ron Cogan, editor of the Green Car Journal. Toyota and Honda say that they will recycle dead batteries and that disposal will pose no toxic hazards. Toyota puts a phone number on each battery, and they pay a $200 "bounty" for each battery to help ensure that it will be properly recycled.

Ford Escape is a Hybrid

or just wait for next year and get this:

http://www.hybridcars.com/trucks/gm-hybrid-pickup-trucks.html

I know, it's a Chevy!

The hidden gotcha with the hybrid is that their batteries are expensive and typically have to be replaced not long after the manufacturer's warranty gives out.

From: hybridCARS: FAQ

Q: How often do hybrid batteries need replacing? Is replacement expensive and disposal an environmental problem?

The hybrid battery packs are designed to last for the lifetime of the vehicle, somewhere between 150,000 and 200,000 miles, probably a whole lot longer. The warranty covers the batteries for between eight and ten years, depending on the carmaker.

There's no definitive word on replacement costs because they are almost never replaced. According to Toyota, since the Prius first went on sale in 2000, they have not replaced a single battery for wear and tear.

Battery toxicity is a concern, although today's hybrids use NiMH batteries, not the environmentally problematic rechargeable nickel cadmium. "Nickel metal hydride batteries are benign. They can be fully recycled," says Ron Cogan, editor of the Green Car Journal. Toyota and Honda say that they will recycle dead batteries and that disposal will pose no toxic hazards. Toyota puts a phone number on each battery, and they pay a $200 "bounty" for each battery to help ensure that it will be properly recycled.

http://www.hybridcars.com/faq.html#battery

How often do hybrid batteries need replacing? Is replacement expensive and disposal an environmental problem?

The hybrid battery packs are designed to last for the lifetime of the vehicle, somewhere between 150,000 and 200,000 miles, probably a whole lot longer. The warranty covers the batteries for between eight and ten years, depending on the carmaker.

Battery toxicity is a concern, although today's hybrids use NiMH batteries, not the environmentally problematic rechargeable nickel cadmium. "Nickel metal hydride batteries are benign. They can be fully recycled," says Ron Cogan, editor of the Green Car Journal. Toyota and Honda say that they will recycle dead batteries and that disposal will pose no toxic hazards. Toyota puts a phone number on each battery, and they pay a $200 "bounty" for each battery to help ensure that it will be properly recycled.

There's no definitive word on replacement costs because they are almost never replaced. According to Toyota, since the Prius first went on sale in 2000, they have not replaced a single battery for wear and tear.

http://www.hybridcars.com/faq.html#battery

How often do hybrid batteries need replacing? Is replacement expensive and disposal an environmental problem?

The hybrid battery packs are designed to last for the lifetime of the vehicle, somewhere between 150,000 and 200,000 miles, probably a whole lot longer. The warranty covers the batteries for between eight and ten years, depending on the carmaker.

Battery toxicity is a concern, although today's hybrids use NiMH batteries, not the environmentally problematic rechargeable nickel cadmium. "Nickel metal hydride batteries are benign. They can be fully recycled," says Ron Cogan, editor of the Green Car Journal. Toyota and Honda say that they will recycle dead batteries and that disposal will pose no toxic hazards. Toyota puts a phone number on each battery, and they pay a $200 "bounty" for each battery to help ensure that it will be properly recycled.

There's no definitive word on replacement costs because they are almost never replaced. According to Toyota, since the Prius first went on sale in 2000, they have not replaced a single battery for wear and tear.

http://www.hybridcars.com/compacts-sedans/honda-insight-overview.html

"The real problems with hydrogen are as follows: It has to come from somewhere, and you have to distribute it to people somehow. Every other problem (even embrittlement!) can be solved with existing technology. We still have no cost-effective way to produce and distribute hydrogen."

2008 called, 85% efficient electrolysis with the promise of 97% 'by the time hydrogen cars roll out' is here now, i'll forgive you for missing it, as it was a roland p /. article, so i'm linking directly to the article, not slashdot.

http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=206801669

now, you were saying? 85% energy efficiency makes hydrogen combustion look tasty, because of a number of things. 1. hydrogen, like gasoline can quickly refuel a vehicle, with a LOT of power 2. there are very few fueling stations, so making grids that can handle high voltages to make hydrogen is easy, doing this to each house is HARD. that's why we have 110 or 220 at home, not 6000 volts.

http://www.hybridcars.com/electric-cars/power-of-pump.html
a really nice summary of why electric cars that plug in at home never panned out.

using the numbers in that article filling up a hydrogen car at 85% efficiency 4660 kilowatt hours. for the equivalency of 120 gallons of gas. or $466 for the equivalent energy of 120 gallons of gas, this assumes that hydrogen combustion/fuel cells is at the same efficiency of petroleum, sorry i'm bad at math so someone else will have to post a correction if they know the efficiencies of fuel cells/hydrogen combustion. BTW that's $3.88 a gallon. at 97% efficiency that's $3.20 a gallon.

battery based hybrids get better mileage, "In general terms... 1 kilowatt-hour--will move an electric car about four miles down the road." so $.10 for 4 miles, if 1 gallon gets you 33 miles, then $0.82 per gallon for an electric vehicle

but that doesn't compare the real story either, and this guy is comparing a household battery charger, compared to a plug in electrics hybrid charger. in his article, so i don't know how fast 19 amps at 110 V can charge (plug in will use charging arrays duh) or 39 amps at 220 v if you wire a special plug, then we have to consider if you have 2 plug-ins or not, and if you ran separate lines for them or not... well i won't do the math...

the point being, electric cars get great economy, hydrogen i don't know where it falls, but it doesn't make sense to promote hydrogen if battery tech has evolved to the point where electric cars are better for the pocket book, and don't take forever to store that power..

Autobloggreen has garnered a number of comments on this concept, most of them negative. To sum up:

* The thermodynamic efficiency of air cars is worse than gasoline engines, often far worse, meaning that you *hurt* the environment by driving it.
* The overwhelming majority of the performance of this vehicle comes from gasoline, not air
* The company has a very bad reputation of making ludicrous claims and misrepresenting stats
* It's made by Indian manufacturer Tata motors, not known for quality

In short, don't bother. If you want an affordable (100 mile range without burning any gasoline, that will be on the road in a year or two, there are really three good options I can think of off the top of my head right now: the Aptera, the VentureOne, and the MiEV. The Aptera is for if you want the absolute limit in energy efficiency modern tech can currently provide and want to look like you're driving a spaceship, the VentureOne is for if you want to feel like you're driving a motorcycle, and the MiEV is for if you have more than two people. I've probably missed a couple other good options, I'm sure.

To potential EV buyers: keep an eye out for scammers. Two big ones are LionEV and Spark EV.
To potential hydrogen car buyers: hydrogen cars are worse for the environment than gasoline cars, so don't bother.

More advanced or newer technology != more complicated or more expensive or use or maintain. Also most of the components in a hybrid are not new technology. Electric motors and IC engines are very old hat, and the battery technology has been around some time as well.

The fact is that there is simply a lot less moving pieces and less stress and less use on the pieces that do move. This guy was the first hybrid taxicab driver (in Canada anyway) and gives his reasons for why he thinks his maintenance costs were less with a hybrid.

Personally I think that the big one is that the IC engine in a hybrid simply doesn't run as much as a conventional IC does. It's off a lot of the time, and when it is on it is usually running at a rate that is optimal for that engine, not at a rate required to push your car at the speed you want to go. Everything else being equal, if you run your engine half as much (or whatever) and you ran it at a rpm that the engine was optimally geared for, it should last a lot longer and need less maintenance.

That's fascinating; I can see how small flywheels could fit into that application very well. They use them for some small machines to even out performance, essentially storing energy across inputs, as in a car transmission.

I think the Mr. Hates Ultracaps guy was talking about something like this; as near as I can tell, that's state of the art for flywheel ideas with regard to cars. Of course it can't store nearly enough energy to be useful to actually run the car for any length of time so its not really germane to the general discussion; but it is clever enough as far as it goes. That page imagines 36% as the efficiency for an electric vehicle's regen system (as a comparison) but of course it would be (using their numbers) 80% of 80%, or 64% for an ultracap assisted or based electric car - no chemical conversions. Which is better than the number quoted for the flywheel. The assumption of 80% is pretty harsh, too - most motors and generators can do much better, and while you might not have great control of the braking (generator) conversion in the worst case, you certainly have direct control over the acceleration phase, so I think the 80% back conversion is too conservative, which would bring it up past 64% quite handily. Numbers like 85% for a DC motor are pretty conservative, and using them, it is 85% of 85%, or 72%. Kind of obviates the whole flywheel idea; it's that CVT that kills it, of course - how to get a continuously variable wheel rotation into a flywheel's accelerating spin without wasting energy with some form of a clutch is troublesome for the whole "keep the energy kinetic" idea. It's a wonder they can hit 60%.

Maybe because your "valid concern" isn't actually all that valid. This issue gets raised repeatedly by a certain vocal minority who hate hybrids / electric vehicles. People who stick their fingers in their ears and say "La la la!" loudly every time the obvious rebuttal is brought up: recycling. Toyota and Honda have good battery recycling programs in place for their hybrid vehicles, and my understanding is that the batteries are specifically engineered to be completely recycled in order to reduce environmental impact.

Compare the toxicity of NiMH to conventional lead-acid batteries, and you'll see that the worst offenders are lead, cadmium, and mercury. Nickel is not nearly as toxic (though recycling is obviously still recommended). The next generation Prius will use Lithium-based batteries, which is also what the Chevy Volt is supposed to use. Lithium is one of the least toxic elements you can make batteries with.

When you compare the measures Toyota is taking to keep hybrid batteries out of landfills with the very real problem that over 40,000 metric tons of lead are lost to landfills every year (because it's impossible to recapture and recycle every single lead-acid car battery), you can see the field of "green" battery choices is heavily in favor of the kinds of technology that hybrid manufacturers are already embracing. Even if Toyota didn't bend over backwards to keep NiMH batteries out of landfills, the nickel would still be far less of an environmental problem than lead already is.

Maybe because your "valid concern" isn't actually all that valid. This issue gets raised repeatedly by a certain vocal minority who hate hybrids / electric vehicles. People who stick their fingers in their ears and say "La la la!" loudly every time the obvious rebuttal is brought up: recycling. Toyota and Honda have good battery recycling programs in place for their hybrid vehicles, and my understanding is that the batteries are specifically engineered to be completely recycled in order to reduce environmental impact.

Compare the toxicity of NiMH to conventional lead-acid batteries, and you'll see that the worst offenders are lead, cadmium, and mercury. Nickel is not nearly as toxic (though recycling is obviously still recommended). The next generation Prius will use Lithium-based batteries, which is also what the Chevy Volt is supposed to use. Lithium is one of the least toxic elements you can make batteries with.

When you compare the measures Toyota is taking to keep hybrid batteries out of landfills with the very real problem that over 40,000 metric tons of lead are lost to landfills every year (because it's impossible to recapture and recycle every single lead-acid car battery), you can see the field of "green" battery choices is heavily in favor of the kinds of technology that hybrid manufacturers are already embracing. Even if Toyota didn't bend over backwards to keep NiMH batteries out of landfills, the nickel would still be far less of an environmental problem than lead already is.

Unlike gasoline engines, electric motors can be greater than 90 percent efficient at using electrical energy. So, if an electric motor uses 100 kW-hrs of energy from the battery, 90 kW-hrs worth of energy will be converted into useful work. Hybrids sometimes use continuously variable transmissions, which can be much more efficient than automatic transmissions and in some cases are competitive with manual transmission efficiency.

Correct. Also, in CA and a few northeastern states, the hybrid battery warranty is 10 year/150K miles on the Prius and Civic Hybrid.

On related news, the 10 Ford Escape hybrids (they use a battery pack from Sanyo instead of Matsushita/Panasonic on Toyota hybrids) used as NYC taxis have all passed 175K miles in less than 2 years per http://www.autoblog.com/2007/04/04/ford-escape-hyb rid-taxis-demonstrate-durability-on-new-york-stre/ .

http://www.hybridcars.com/blogs/taxi logged 200K miles in 25 months on a previous gen Prius. http://john1701a.com/prius/owners/jesse3.htm is at 280K miles on his previous gen Prius.

http://www.hybridcars.com/component/option,com_joo mblog/Itemid,0/joomblog_task,blog_view/joomblog_co ntentid,12222/

This guy ran a prius as a taxi for 2 years and 300,000 kms with it before he sold it back to Toyota.
300,000 miles sounds do-able.

they don't even cover the issue of replacing those batteries.

Batteries certainly aren't replaced during the first 100K miles.

Risking getting modded down for redundancy, allow me to quote myself from another post in another sub-thread:

And now a word from the president of CNW himself about this study. From http://www.hybridcars.com/environment-stories/dust -to-dust-energy-costs.htmltest:

Perhaps the most critical one was the anticipated number of miles to be driven by each car. For example, CNW set the number of expected lifetime miles for a Prius at 100,000 miles, which, according to CNW President Art Spinella, was based on public statements from Toyota. In an interview with the podcast "The Watt," Spinella admitted that, "If you can drive the Prius 200,000 miles, and do the same levels of costs and repairs, the cost per mile obviously comes down dramatically."

As you might expect, the media had a field day with the study. CNW's press releases were picked up from New York to Hong Kong. The impression left by the media coverage was to cast doubts on the real benefits of hybrids. In all fairness, it was not Spinella's fault that journalists were not nearly as thorough in representing the report as CNW was in their research.

If reporters had dug a little deeper, they would have clearly seen what the podcast interview exposed: the Hummer H3 looks a whole lot better than the hybrids because it uses "crude old technology that has long ago been paid for," according to Spinella. On the other hand, the hybrids are new and complex, and the cost of the R&D energy required to make the necessary transformation of our cars from oversized, high-emissions gas guzzlers to something new and better has not yet been amortized over any significant period of time.

Priustoric

Podcaster Ben Kenney asked if the results from the study would be different if conducted again in 10 years. Spinella responded:

"It would be totally different in three years. The hybrids will look significantly better. The new hybrids they are developing now--the new ones that I've seen, Prius III and Prius IV--are so much more simplified. They'll do what the current versions do, but with far less complexity, lighter motors, more recyclable parts, and longer lasting components. The current Prius, for all intents and purposes, will be

I just took a little time to refamiliarize myself with it. What this comes down to is economies of scale. Since the H3 is little more than an existing GM chassis with a new body on top, the cost of developing the vehicle is spread over a shit load of cars/trucks on the road. Especially since has been no new technology developed for the hummer.

The Prius, on the other hand, has a lot of new technology. the cost of which is spread over relatively few cars on the road.

And now a word from the president of CNW himself about this study. From http://www.hybridcars.com/environment-stories/dust -to-dust-energy-costs.htmltest:

Perhaps the most critical one was the anticipated number of miles to be driven by each car. For example, CNW set the number of expected lifetime miles for a Prius at 100,000 miles, which, according to CNW President Art Spinella, was based on public statements from Toyota. In an interview with the podcast "The Watt," Spinella admitted that, "If you can drive the Prius 200,000 miles, and do the same levels of costs and repairs, the cost per mile obviously comes down dramatically."

As you might expect, the media had a field day with the study. CNW's press releases were picked up from New York to Hong Kong. The impression left by the media coverage was to cast doubts on the real benefits of hybrids. In all fairness, it was not Spinella's fault that journalists were not nearly as thorough in representing the report as CNW was in their research.

If reporters had dug a little deeper, they would have clearly seen what the podcast interview exposed: the Hummer H3 looks a whole lot better than the hybrids because it uses "crude old technology that has long ago been paid for," according to Spinella. On the other hand, the hybrids are new and complex, and the cost of the R&D energy required to make the necessary transformation of our cars from oversized, high-emissions gas guzzlers to something new and better has not yet been amortized over any significant period of time.

Priustoric

Podcaster Ben Kenney asked if the results from the study would be different if conducted again in 10 years. Spinella responded:

"It would be totally different in three years. The hybrids will look significantly better. The new hybrids they are developing now--the new ones that I've seen, Prius III and Prius IV--are so much more simplified. They'll do what the current versions do, but with far less complexity, lighter motors, more recyclable parts, and longer lasting components. The current Prius, for all intents and purposes, will be the Model T."

For example, Ford has a concept truck that can run on gasoline, ethanol, or hydrogen. (Other auto makers also have concepts, no doubt.) Also, considering the fact that most people's daily commute is about 24 minutes (24 miles assuming average speed of 60 mph, which is generous), commutes are well within the range of electric vehicles (if anyone would sell one) or plug-in hybrids. That would allow the energy source for your car to be whatever is on the grid. Which allows wind, solar, bio-mass, nuclear, hydro, etc. to enter the picture. Furthermore, bio-diesel has to be considered as well. So, the long-and-short of it is that while ethanol cannot completely replace gasoline as THE next wonder-fuel, it is entirely feasible for all of our vehicles to be run using renewable energy. Besides, ethanol is produced locally and it reduces our dependence on foreign oil (that's for all those Republicans out there).

by paying an extra 1.6 cent/kwhr ... I am almost completely green for $120 a year.

Wow, when did the Amish hit slashdot? Given a 200w power supply consumes 144kWh/mo assuming a 30-day month, that's $28/year for the PC alone. If you honestly think you're running a truck and a house on four and a quarter modest PCs' worth of power, then you need to replace your calculator. Apparently it's getting bad results on all the low voltage.

(Don't even try to tell me it's a margin issue. I'm measuring margin size. $120 margin / 144 * 12 * (365.25/360) is the margin size.)

For a sense of scale, at this margin, the average air conditioner will consume about $270 per year. A Toyota Prius gets about 10 kilowatt hours per gallon of gasoline (search for "500w of battery drain"), and the government says it gets 55 mpg, so even if your pickup was actually an efficient car, your 1.6 cent per kilowatt hour margin will consume (10/55)*1.6 = 0.18 kilowatt hours per mile. The government cites national gas price averages every Monday, which yesterday was $2.97. Therefore, you will burn $120 of margin in (12000 / 0.1818 / 297.3) = 221.99 miles. This means that if you have no power drain at all in your house - you don't even have anything plugged in and turned off - then you drive on average 0.6077 miles per day. Most people drive more than that just getting to the grocery store twice a month.

(I actually did the math as one big equation, to get around rounding error. If you do it yourself based on my averages above, you're gonna see 0.586. I didn't feel like writing out everything to 20 places.)

Yeah, dude, you're a bastion of cheap green energy. Time to check your numbers.

And the best part of the new hybrid drives is that you will grow to love the smell of your own farts...

http://www.hybridcars.com/south-park-hybrid-smug.h tml

> Li in any shape or form is toxic noxious substance

So is lead, but people don't have a problem with that in batteries. Nor do people have a problem successfully recycling it.

Basically, you're just spreading FUD:

"Our initial conclusion is that lead is the worst [environmentally], nickel is next, and lithium is the least harmful [for batteries]"

I don't think these special vehicles like TFA car will achieve any real commercial success. Most people want a safe, comfortable and practical car. And you most certainly don't want anybody to laugh at you while riding it...

No, I believe the future (until fuel cells are available) lays in hybrids, like the Toyota Prius, even though they're still not completely environmental friendly - fuel consumption is not better than most diesel powered cars. But battery powered only cars have their problems as well, darn expensive, well you have to plan your trips carefully, batteries have a limited life span and probably more important batteries are not environmental friendly.

Here is an interesting hybrid from Saab, running on 100% ethanol and batteries. It's a good looking convertible, and runs 0-100 km/h in just 6.9 seconds, not very bad from a fossil fuel-free car. Only problem is that 1) you can't buy the car yet 2) you can't buy 100% ethanol (and producing large amounts of ethanol is also a problem).

Nuclear is currently used primarily for non transport energy so would have near zero impact on our oil

You need to include all costs for an accurate comparision, this site includes all costs

Now that Chinese (no more willing to depend on foreign fuel suppliers, than us) are about to build dozens of new nuclear plants (Toshiba's main motivation for this purchase), the world is suddenly reconsidering...

Maybe it would cut our dependence on coal.

Also, having an abundance of cheap electricity would've made things like plugin hybrids more economically sensible and, possibly, retired the diesel railroad engines.

The convenience of electric home heating (and hot-water) could've been much cheaper, freeing more oil and natural gas for the plastics.

That figure of "0 battery packs replaced in prius ever" is misleading. Toyota is quick to make this claim...but it's based on some tricky definitioning. I have seen several accounts in different forums of people getting their battery packs replaced in the prius under warranty. Toyota claims that no batteries have been replaced for being "worn out". The way they get away with this is by labelling all the batteries they have to replace as "defective" instead of "worn out". I find it difficult to believe though that someone could have their car a year and put 70 - 100,000 miles on their car before deiscovering that their battery pack is "defective". Linakage: http://www.hybridcars.com/discussion/discussthread .php?thread_id=254&replies=9

Surely if the use is initial liftoff the important statistic is thrust to weight ratio. The question of efficiency -- which is what specific impulse measures -- seems rather secondary, unless I'm missing something. An ion engine, for example, would have a far greater specific impulse than either chemical engine, but since its thrust is so pathetic it couldn't get itself off the ground.

To put it in plebian terms, if you need to outrun the cops (i.e. achieve escape velocity), surely it's better to be driving this instead of this.

Serial-hybrids, as they are called, are basically fully electric cars, with a gasoline/electric generator, so that they can use gasoline whenever electricity is not easily available. This is nothing like current hybrids, because current hybrids have a uslessly tiny bank of batteries, do not allow direct electric charging, and do not use their electric motors at highway speeds.

The Silverado 1500 Hybrid, now with limited availability in all 50 states, is offered as an Extended Cab in two- and four-wheel drive...

That the GM site says it doesn't mean any of it's true, of course.

The Silverado sounds like it's strictly an idle-stop system, anyway. It doesn't use stored electricity for propulsion at all, ever. Stored electricity is only used to run the giant starter motor, which gets the big V-8 going in a hurry when the stoplight turns green. So "running on the batteries almost all the time while plowing" isn't happening, at least, not this model year.

In fact, if the idle-stop system doesn't get a chance to kick in during snowplowing (and it probably wouldn't), then this truck might actually have slightly worse fuel consumption, because it's likely to be heavier than the standard model.

it took a 10 second google search for "hybrid battery disposal" to find these three results on the first page:

toyota's recycling initiatives
hybridcars.com's FAQ
treehugger.com article with some good resource links

seriously, man, use your noodle.

I'm tired of people repeating things they know nothing about.

http://www.hybridcars.com/faq.html

Hybrids use NiMH batteries, not the environmentally problematic rechargeable nickel cadmium. "Nickel metal hydride batteries are benign. They can be fully recycled," says Ron Cogan, editor of the Green Car Journal. Toyota and Honda say that they will recycle dead batteries and that disposal will pose no toxic hazards. Toyota puts a phone number on each battery, and they pay a $200 "bounty" for each battery to help ensure that it will be properly
recycled.

See:
http://www.hybridcars.com/silverado-sierra.html

There should be one coming to the US market this year:

http://www.hybridcars.com/ram.html

I drive one of these, is that good enough?
http://www.hybridcars.com/insight.html

Now I'd love to sign the Kyoto protocol, but I don't have all that much CO2 credit to trade...

Well, the thing is you simply can't upgrade it enough. A typical energy density for gasoline is 8KWH/l [1], which translates to a good 400KWH in a tank. If we assume that an electrical car is twice as efficient in terms of getting energy out of batteries (which is probably optimistic), 200KWH of batteries would be needed. I found [2] a figure of 300V for a hybrid car battery, so that gives us a recharge rate of 666AH.

To recharge your car in 1 hour, you'd have to connect it to the ditribution transformer with solid copper plates.

Jw

[1] http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2003/ArthurGolnik.s html
[2] http://www.hybridcars.com/battery-comparison.html

Now instead of getting all our cars to drive environmentally friendlier and less expensive (keywords: electrical, hybrid, bio-fuel), we drop the effort and start producing a new kind of vehicle that flies.
And ofcourse it uses kerosine for that (ever seen an electrical plane, man-sized ?).
This gives us a whole new excuse to soup up more oil and pollute even more..

What's next ? Real personal rockets ?

The first american hybrid was built in or before 1910. I'm not sure which of the mentioned cars were built in the US. But hybrid cars are basically as old as combustion powered cars. Note that Ferdinand Porsches first car was all electric. His second one was a serial hybrid.

This site provides a nice overview.

[sound of crickets chirping]

1. If we raise fuel efficiency standards in American cars by one mile per gallon, in one year, we would save twice the amount of oil that could be obtained from the arctic national wildlife refuge
2. Raise it by 2.7 miles a gallon to eliminate all the oil imports from Iraq and Kuwait combined
3. Raise it by 7.6 mpg, we eliminate one-hundred percent of our gulf oil imports into this country

1. True and relevant. The USA's import situation is directly affected by the difference between production and consumption; reducing consumption cuts imports just as directly as increased production does.
2. Perhaps true, but irrelevant. Oil is fungible, and while Persian Gulf oil goes primarily to Europe and the Far East it would be simple to re-route the tankers so that all of US imports came from there... or none of them. This would have no effect on US import dependence, the political implications of e.g. Wahhabi financing of hate teaching, or anything else of importance.
3. Perhaps true, but equally irrelevant for the reasons stated above.

There's an interesting statistic on hybridcars.com about how making minimal improvements on gas milage can vastly affect our foreign oil dependency. The jist of it is that if we could improve the average gas milage of the US by one mile per gallon, we wouldn't have to drill in the arctic reserve. If we improced average gas milage by 8 miles per gallon, we wouldn't need to import oil from the middle east at all. So even though we may not be getting sticker values for milage on hybrids, they still kick ass compared to most sedans and such, and espically SUV's and the Hummer with its 8 miles per gallon. Bottom line, even though you aren't getting super phenomenal milage, you're still getting awesome milage, which is good in a variety of ways.

http://www.hybridcars.com/oil.html

Add to that a geothermic pump and an hybrid car and that's what I call a real feel-good lifestyle!