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When Hybrids Do (And Don't) Make Sense
prostoalex writes "Recently NPR, CNN Money and Wall Street Journal Online have all dedicated some time and space to discussing hybrid vehicle pros and cons. It seems that hybrids do not make much financial sense if (a) you're buying after getting yourself into a debt with not really good interest on a car loan, (b) your battery requires replacement after being out of warranty, (c) your daily commute is not too long, so the price markup you pay for a hybrid does not translate into long-term gas savings." From the CNN article: "They may make a social statement you're interested in, but if you want to save money because of rising gas prices, you're heading down the wrong road, at least for now."
The main advantages of owning a hybrid now are that early adopters will drive the market to create a demand for innovation in the marketplace. The NPR discussion did point this out, but failed to hilight (at least some of) the reasons I have noted above, though I must admit I was too busy pay attention to the road on my *really long* commute to be sure that I didn't miss some of the speakers' points.
-*The above statement is printed entirely on recycled electrons*-
Several people have been charging their hybrid's batteries overnight from the AC mains, and for a situation where the commuting distance is short, this makes plenty of sense. You may never even have to start the engine, which will still of course be available for longer trips.
Buy a diesel. And if it's hard or impossible in your region, petition your idiot politicians to loosen up the emissions regulations (diesel emissions, even on older diesels, are generally speaking a lot better than gas emissions, yet diesel's more highly regulated).
Better efficiency (often) than hybrids overall, it's good on highways too, and it's far more cost-effective, too.
Fuck it
I think you'd be hard pressed to prove that on a whole buying a used car which gets decent mileage is going to have a greater enviromental impact than is put forth just in energy production to manufacture a new vehicle (of any power train type) let alone the impact of getting the raw materials from which the vehicle is to be composed from. The sweet spot right now is buying a compact car built in the past 10 years which has had good regular maintainence. This will provide nearly all the creature comforts as are found in newer cars (with a few extravagant exceptions I.E. GPS, DVD, back up radar, and the like) along with the lion's share of modern emissions equipment and reasonably low fuel economy with known (basis for estimate of) future maintainence costs and reliability.
-*The above statement is printed entirely on recycled electrons*-
a Kung Fu Monkey blog entry from a month ago said this:
Information: "I want to be anthropomorphized"
This is a great way to cut your fuel costs, assuming you use the AC mains on your neighbor's property.
so then you calculate the real cost. say the civic gets 30mpg, and the prius 60mpg (this is really giving the prius to much credit, but just for the sake of discussion). say you spend $40/week in gas on the civic, you'd then spend $20/week on the prius. you save $20/week on gas with the prius. but, you paid $12,000 more for the prius. divide 10,000 by 20, and you get 500, which is the number of weeks you'd need to drive the prius to break even. 500 weeks ~ 9.61 years. now factor in the possible battery replacement.
i understand that at least part of this conclusion is based on the fact that the prius is in high demand, and therefore overpriced right now.
My first car was a 1993 Honda Civic CX (Hatchback). Driving it modestly netted me ~60mpg.
I paid $12,000 (Canadian).
Today to find a car that get that kind of mileage will cost me $25k-$30k.
WTF is going on? Are economy cars the "next-big-price-gouge"?
Why are not all Standard cars getting 40+mpg?
We have more platics in our cars then we did 12 years ago. We have smarter computers that manage fuel consumption better.
If my company didn't require a car for my job, I would cycle to work everyday.
To recline is devine.
I love my recumbent!
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
Hybrids would make sense for couriers and letter carriers most of all. All day driving, usually stop and go.
-nB
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You can help the enviroment far more with the same money. For example, for around $75 a year, several companies will buy pollution credits on your behalf, negating the emissions by your regular vehicle. In most states, the same amount of money can also be used to have your electricity come from "green" sources. Therefore, if you had two cars and a home, you could negate ALL of your primary emissions for about $225/year, which is far less than the cost of owning a hybrid.
Hybrids, at this point in time, are nothing but a wasteful political statement. There is almost no circumstance where they are socially beneficial, nor beneficial to the owner in any other respect than his or her ability to feel righteous.
Yup. I wish someone would make a hybrid diesel that focused tightly on aerodynamics and other efficiency factors. I drive about 50 miles per day, averaging 70mph. I'm running biodiesel in a New Beetle TDI, getting > 40 miles per gallon. Lately the biodiesel is cheaper than regular diesel (since its cost has stayed about the same over the last couple years), and it's better for the environment than regular diesel.
e lingsites/
To find biodiesel locations near you:
http://www.biodiesel.org/buyingbiodiesel/retailfu
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Not at all. The current generation of hybrids are all running Nickel Metal Hydride "D" batteries, which are pretty safe overall. See Panasonic's disclosure. The worst chemical in them is the Potassium Hydroxide... which you should avoid contact with but which is not generally considered toxic. (Like the lead used in convential starter batteries)
You can simple toss NiMH batteries in the standard municipal waste stream, although recycling them is always a good idea.
The batteries carry an extended warrenty, 7-8 years IIRC. Accelerated testing has shown that they will probably last considerably longer and the price for replacements has already fallen to about $1500.
Buying a hybrid might be hard to justify financially (since the gas savings are unlikely to offset the price premium for a long while) but its still a good thing environmentally.
Honda's hybrids all get better gas mileage on the highway than in the city:
I've been very happy with the Honda Insight that I bought in 2001.
It is a myth that switching to electricity would cause more pollution due to the nature of how the electricity is generated. Even taking into account that the energy comes from coal and the losses due to transmission, electric cars are still more fuel efficient (and thus cheaper and cleaner) than gasoline powered cars.
An interesting trend is that fuel economies tend to be set by the price of the fuel. In other words, car manufacturers only put the effort into improving efficiency when they need to, and that's when people won't take any more. US readers might not believe me on this one, but their fuel is cheap, at least when compared to European prices. And thus, lumbering goliaths (aka SUVs) are still a reasonable proposition. It astounds me when I look at the performance/economy figures for American cars. An example is the new Ford Mustang (a tasty looking car, BTW). The 4L model gets around 200bhp, and about 19/28mpg. My Fiat Coupe is comparible, but gets 260bhp from a 2L engine, and more than 50mpg outside town (I don't live in a city). Hybrids are only there to keep the PR good. Whats needed is a fundamental modernisation of US cars.
Give a man a fire, and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life. (Terry Pratchett)
This is a very common misconception. Diesel fuel is denser than gasoline. When you correct for mileage per fuel mass or (even better) per carbon output, much of their advantage on paper fades.
Diesel engines are still slightly more efficient than typical gasoline engines, owing to the higher compression ratios used by the Diesel ignition process. The higher combustion temperatures, however, produce nitrogen oxides, which are a local pollutant. And of course a poorly tuned Diesel (or, often, just a cold one) generates a ton of particulate ("soot") emissions -- another local pollutant.
And remember that Diesels idle very inefficiently (they have bigger and heavier pistons, and a finicky ignition mechanism that can't be run as lean as gasoline), whereas a hybird will shut down the engine and idle with no emissions whatsoever (well, minus battery drain due to the air conditioner, etc...).
The best general advice that I've read is that a Diesel makes the best environmental choice for a long-haul vehicle that rarely idles, or for rural areas with little sensitivity to local pollution. They make rather poorer choices in the urban commute environment.
Disclaimer: I love my Prius, and it just smells better than the Diesels cars I've known.
I've gone through four Canadian winters with my Honda Insight, and it has fared just fine, even with temperatures below -30 degrees Celsius. The fuel economy is noticeably worse in cold weather, but the same is true of any car.
The Honda Insight in brutally cold weather is still better for fuel economy than almost any non-hybrid in ideal driving weather.
What I can't figure out is: why not make a straight diesel-electric hybrid? No transmission, just diesel-->generator-->motors + batteries. The diesel wouldn't have to be nearly as powerful as, say, a TDI, because the batteries could handle short peak loads, then recharge during cruising/coasting/braking. The diesel could run continuosly at it's peak efficiency, as long as power was demanded. The cars would cost far less to produce, without the need for a transmission. It seems to me that such a car would be cheaper, faster, more fuel efficient, and more reliable.
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
Obviously running the engine a lot in stop and go traffic affects the gas mileage a bit in that car, but the lowest my weekly average has ever been is 45mpg (combined city/highway, my drive to work is about 50% of each). That's still better than the best my old Contour ever got under the best circumstances (37mpg).
The worst I got in my Prius was 28MPG. That tank included a 12 hour shift being used as an emergency generator for the house during an Ice storm. It ran lights, a fridge, a freezer, the fireplace fan, and the TV.
If I just drove places, I would have gotten better mileage. The best mod for a Prius is an inverter.
To get that mileage, I turned off the heater because there was no need to defrost the windows or heat the car. Why burn the gas? In that generator mode, it would start up every 20 minutes for so and run for 3 or 4 minutes and shut down again.
The truth shall set you free!
Which raises the question... why did you bother running your freezer during an ice storm?
"Unless the heater in the Prius is somehow different from about every other vehicle's on the road, it cannot run on electricity. A car heater is run by blowing air over basically a small radiator (heater core) that the 190F engine coolant cycles through. If the Prius's engine shuts off, the water pump will probably stop and so will the heater. "
Err ... no.. The Prius's Heater is quite different.. (IMHO ... Far
Superior). .
Machine Design 2004 Toyota Prius
"After 1,500 miles of driving in some of the coldest January temperatures on record, I'd summarize the 2004 Toyota Prius as a quiet, roomy car that happens to have a hybrid drivetrain and an excellent heater. Quick heat is no fluke. The Prius stores some coolant in an insulated reservoir when it shuts down. Later, when restarted, the stillhot coolant circulates into the engine primarily to reduce emissions, but an additional benefit is near-instant heat. This is one of several unusual features on this car.";
All freight locomotives and many passenger locomotives are diesel-electrics. A diesel engine spins a generator that generates power for electric motors, and those motors alone drive the vehicle. So there's already a huge diesel-electric market in the U.S.
The actual reason there are few diesels in the U.S. is due to our strict environmental controls; they are lax for trucks but strict for cars, so there were no diesel cars here for a long time until VW's new TDi.
The reason there are no diesel-electric hybrids is because all the hybrids are being created by Japanese manufacturers, and they create gasoline cars. German manufacturers like diesel, and indeed they are creating many diesel cars, and there are even plans for some of them to create diesel-electric hybrids, though they're still largely reluctant to embrace hybrids. They seem to view hybrids as Japanese and diesel as European, which is stupid -- both are good technologies.
~CGameProgrammer( );
One point people miss is that the designers of the Prius, at least, were pursuing low emissions with fuel economy being a nice side effect.
When the exhaust system is cold, there's a tradeoff between fuel economy and emission control. The car's software chooses emission control. Drive a Prius for 15 minutes and look at the central display's bar graph of fuel economy over time. It looks like a staicase, where each 5-minute average is much higher than the one before. Until you get the catalytic converter fully warmed up(*) you won't see the advertised mileage. In a five or ten minute commute you can even get a Prius to average less than 40 mpg.
(*) The car's software is so determined to keep the catalytic converter at its most effective temperature that it will start the gas engine even if the car is stopped and the battery is charged, just to keep the catalytic converter warm.
If all your trips are under 10-15 minutes then buy a Prius for the reliability, comfort, or low pollution -- you won't get the gas mileage.
I thought those were hybrids? ;)
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?