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Hummer Greener Than Prius?
J adds:
The Prius's mediocre cost-per-mile is due mainly to CNW Research assigning the car a short expected lifetime: 109,000 miles. Nobody knows where this number comes from because CNW has not published details about its derivation. If a car will not last very long, then of course its energy cost per mile is high.
Back in July 2006, when CNW's study "Dust to Dust" had just been published (and which remains, unchanged, the original source for today's news), I emailed its president, Art Spinella:
Hello,
I'm with the tech news and discussion site Slashdot.org. One of our readers submitted a story about your Dust to Dust study.
According to Wikipedia, the Prius comes with a 150,000 mile warranty in California and a few other states; 100,000 elsewhere.
On p. 21 and p. 40 of your report I see that you estimate the average Prius will be "removed from the streets... and sent for disposal" at 109,000 miles. Can you explain how you arrived at this figure?
Thank you.
I did not receive a reply.
My question was about the cost-per-mile denominator; here's another critique questioning the numerator.
Since when does manufacturing cost/cost over life equal friendly to the environment?
Hummers may be more energy efficient, but how are they supposed to make you feel morally superior to others?
Think about it.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
They can't even spell joule...
Best of all: If you eat chocolate before you climb into the Hummer, it'll improve your thinking and you'll be a better driver. A glass or two of red wine (afterwards, please) to celebrate. It's all for your health, and the good of the planet.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
The question is what type of eneregy is used, and how much is producted from the energy source. Automobiles are a lot more energy effecient then say a human. But they give off polution that is less "green" or more difficult for the environment to handel.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
You don't get 300,000 miles of use out of a hummer.
Correct that down to a more realistic 120,000 and the rest of the article's conclusions crumble.
What woman wouldn't prefer a guy who already has a hummer, and thus doesn't need any from them?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
(Score:0, Funny)
This score is a combination of (+1, Funny) and (-1, Environment-Destroying-Hummer-Owner). However, no one cares about the complaints of hippie mods, so the +1 Funny takes precedence.From TFA: The Prius costs an average of $3.25 per mile driven over a lifetime of 100,000 miles - the expected lifespan of the Hybrid. The Hummer, on the other hand, costs a more fiscal $1.95 per mile to put on the road over an expected lifetime of 300,000 miles.
300,000 miles out of a Hummer? Give me a break! I'll bet the average life is about half that. This more reasonable assumption puts the Hummer's cost per mile at a whopping $3.90.
Your god may be dead, but mine aren't!
This article will be of great help in their noble quest to redefine reality to fit their cultural preferences!
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
OK, this has got to be a seriously flawed study, for any car! $3.25/mile over 100,000 miles means I will have spent $325,000 on car maintenance in the lifetime of my Prius. Does anyone find this number just a bit untenable? Even for a Hummer, this number is untenable.
So it costs $325,000 to drive a Prius 100,000 miles? This seems way to high.
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
B) I couldn't find any information about "CNW Marketing" other than *suggestions* that they are a oil-funded group (nothing concrete, though).
So who the fuck is CNW Marketing and why should their study be given any credence? Was it published in a peer-reviewed journal? (Not that BS doesn't ever make it into perr-reviewed journals....)
Must be breathing easier in his smoking tent that his Hummer is as green as green can be.
It's good to see some comment on the (carbon) manufacturing costs of new cars. I heard some advice the other day that said if you wanted to help the environment, you should buy a new car, because they're more fuel efficient and produce less nasty chemicals. Great advice, if it wasn't for the facts that:
1: Emissions are created during the manufacture of a car. And
2: What happens to your old car? You're likely to sell it to someone that keeps using it, i.e. that car keeps producing harmful emissions, just for somebody else.
If you wanted to help the environment, you wouldn't buy a new car, you'd keep an old one running as efficiently as you could and remember that there's more to carbon emissions than simply what you're doing right now. No man is an island, after all.
Here in Finland, average car age is about 7 years and normal mileage is closer to 250,000 miles when the car is closing the end of lifespan.
There are no atheists when recovering from tape backup.
As an aside, the plant produce 130,000 tonnes (is that metric or imperial) annually.
The 1,000 that goes towards Prius batteries is negligible
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
As any physics major can tell you, it takes more energy to get an object moving than to keep it moving
But I'm an engineering major, and I can tell you that that's only the case if you ignore air resistance.
When gasoline goes to $5.00 a gallon, it makes for a better garden shed than a Prius. Or a better place to sleep, if you bought your house with a interest-only loan.
* * *
So, is the Prius like a power plant in Sim City 2000? The second it hits 100,000 miles it falls apart?
Who made this crap up, the Club For Growth, the American Enterprise Institute, or the Hummer Fans of America?
setting down your tar brush, and instead, put on your thinking cap and explain to us why the study fails on it's own merits?
While the part about the manufacture of the batteries is interesting, to say that a Hummer uses less energy than a Prius is misleading at best and propaganda at worst. The mistake that is makes is to assume that all energy usage is the same when of course it isn't. When the issue is the environment, there are types of energy that are better for the environment than others. The article is acting as if burning old tires and solar energy were exactly the same when they aren't. Without more details on the environmental impact of the manufacturing processes used in each vehicle, this article is only useful for raising questions and making people who own Hummers feel good about themselves.
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
let me be the first to say . ..
Ha-Ha!
Browse at -1 to keep an eye out for abuses.
But the article doesn't analyze the manufacturing lines of the Hummer nor the rest of the materials of the Prius. If you want to establish facts, do comprehensive research before you publish an article. The author sounds less concerned with establishing facts and holding people accountable than just firing off quotes that cause people to raise their eyebrows. I read this article and he raises some interesting points but doesn't back them up with hard facts & numbers other than what he read in the CNW report.
My work here is dung.
Cost is a big factor in people adopting something, but has nothing to do with how kind to the environment it is.
What percentage of total environmental impact is the manufacturing process? I'm betting it's next to nothing when you put it on an individual car basis. That is to say, how much energy was used to make this specific car here. That car probably generates/uses as much energy in the first week or two of driving it.
Nothing is greener, man!
My personal favourite:
a lifetime of 100,000 miles - the expected lifespan of the Hybrid.
And the Hummer has an expected life of 300,000 miles? Oh, please. Look, my extended family has plenty of experience owning Toyotas and Nissans over the past two decades, and we have come to expect 200,000 miles or more. Come on, people, that's a big part of why so many Americans have abandoned Detroit for Japanese quality. Now, they weren't hybrids -- maybe the battery's lifespan is different. But if that's the case, I suspect Prius owners are laboring under the assumption that they will hold on to their cars for hundreds of thousands of miles.
Oh, yeah, it's not easy to pad these out to 120 characters.
I submitted this months ago and it was rejected. Oh well, I suppose it's better than if mine was accepted, making this a dupe!
Gas at $3.25 - Hummer owners has less cash in the pocket after a fill up (twice a week)
Now, I wouldn't expect you to understand this subtlety, seeing as you're a fan of humvees, but I'll try and point it out to you.
The funny mod is death incarnate to your karma. A 'controversially funny' joke like the one nimrod put together up there, well, that joke can get modded funny and overrated all day. Meaning your karma takes a hit for each 'overrated' while staying visible due to the 'funny.'
Read the help, it says that they only want extremely funny jokes posted. Like the first response, which should have gotten quite a few funny points IMHO.
Oh man, How many times do we need to go over the flawed assumptions and conclusions from the CNW Marketing analysis.
First, it incorrectly assumes that hybrid batteries are not recycled. In reality, Toyota has very successful recycling program, including a $200 bounty on Prius batteries.
Second, it is interesting that TFA mentions the Scion xB. Yet it fails to note that the CNW report data on the xA and xB don't make any sense. They are built on the same assembly line, have the same powertrains, only differ in weight by 50 lbs or so, and have similar efficiency (~35mpg), yet the CNW study shows the lifetime energy use of these vehicles to differ by 50 percent. How's that work?
Third, the CNW report makes really bad assumptions about where the bulk of lifecycle energy use occurs (eg manufacturing vs operation).
In short, it's misinformed at best and is more likely an intentional greenwash to assuage SUV owner dissonance in a post 9/11 world.
Disclaimer: I drive a biodiesel powered Jetta TDI, not a hybrid.
I'll highlight all you need to know about this article:
"The article gets its data from a study by CNW Marketing"
burrocrisy
and that would be what? Ruling by jackasses? Never has a slashdot misspelling been more apropos
women prefer guys like me (hummer owner)
It must be painful to admit you're not attractive to women without the truck. Sorry to hear that, shorty.
You must have missed my previous comment.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Blasphemy!! Eco-sacrilege!! Thou would dare defame the most Holy Prius!! Cardinal Fang, get the comfy futon!
http://www.autobloggreen.com/2006/07/21/is-a-humme r-greener-than-a-prius/
http://www.autobloggreen.com/2006/10/05/oh-so-a-hu mmer-is-not-greener-a-prius/
Have you ever actually ridden in a Prius? They're surprisingly roomy.
Remember the days when Republicans were the party of fiscal responsibility?
There is no distinction made based on fuel types or even engines. A TDI is going to have a drastically different cost per mile than a W8 and both are available on the same cars. The same with so many of these models. To lump a V-8 mustang in with it's detuned v6 econo-box version is hardly going to present any type of accurate data.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Lets see. Cost of the car = $30,000
Gas for 100,000 miles at 33.33mpg figuring $5/gallon = $15,000
That is only $285,000 more to go. Any clue where that money is supposed to go?
That is $28,500 a year over 10 years.
Give me a break.
-Charles B. Naumann
Overcompensate much?
And not some crappy press release.
Link to the company that wrote the report: CNW Marketing
The report is behind the 'Dust zip folder.zip' link. The ZIP contains a 15 MB Word file [1]. There's also an Excel spreadsheet containing only the final numbers (cost/mile).
Looking at their website, and their decision to publish the report as a bloody Word file, does not fill me with confidence that they know what they're talking about. Maclink Plus is currently choking on the Word doc, so can't say anything about the content of that file yet.
While some of the numbers might be arguable, the whole article misses the point of any new technology argument.
-- First movers on new technology almost always are paying more and using more energy than their stick in the mud Hummer counterparts; the *hope* of the new technology is that with increased production efficiency it'll eventually become a good move. This is the argument of ethanol, bio-diesel, solar panels, hybrid cars, etc. The fact that they do more near term environmental damage than their conservative counterparts doesn't mean they shouldn't be explored on a low volume basis.
I do agree with the article though that a truly economical car is better for the pocket book and the environment without having to bet on the environmental returns of a new technology. But what Prius owners are doing is spending all this money and subsidizing en masse Toyota's research of building hybrid cars. I applaud them for doing so. That's something the article misses entirely. In this sense, the Hummer is certainly not more environmentally friendly than a Prius (because the Prius is a search for a better solution).
What the article doesn't mention is that mass transit and bicycles are way further down on the cost / mile and environmental damage than any of these cars. But that would be thinking outside the box.
It's an editorial, consisting of no listed sources whatsoever. While I have no doubts that the the prius is less environmentally friendly than we are led to believe[1], this "story"[2] is pretty biased. Consider that foreign cars tend to stay on the road significantly longer than their domestic counter parts[3], I think that if domestic companies realized how unrealistic their life expectations of their vehicles were[4], we see some real comparisons.
[1] - See how easy it is? It's almost like a fact.
[2] - Don't forget the scare quotes
[3] - Hey! Have some anecdotal evidence!
[4] - Do you see where I am getting at.
From an unexpected horizon, far aheade view-koenigsegg-creates-an-ethanol-powered-superca r/
http://www.autobloggreen.com/2007/03/03/geneva-pr
"So, why would we be covering the Koenigsegg CCXR here on AutoblogGreen? Well, I'm glad you asked! This vehicle is just like their standard CCX, except that it has had its standard 800 HP V8 engine converted to run on E85. In the conversion process, the machine picked up a substantial amount of power. How much? How about 1018 hp at 7200 rpm and the torque to 1060 nm at 6100 rpm?"
---
Let's go vrooom
If a Prius costs $3.25 per mile and runs 100,000 miles, that's a cost of $325,000. I'm pretty sure even with green tax breaks, a Prius doesn't cost that much. And while I've never shopped for a hummer, I'm pretty sure they don't cost $585,000.
Who knew??
No one in their right mind wants to ride in a Hummer...the ride is for crap. And no one in the US can fit in a Prius. THey are made for skinny people, and we Americans are fat.
Speak for yourself, lardass. My skinny American ass drives a Prius.
I bet that's probably about right. If you exclude the number of them that are destroyed in accidents/fires/floods, etc., most modern cars last a lot longer than many people realize.
You don't see cars at the end of their lifespan in the U.S., generally, because we export them. IIRC, used cars are one of our biggest exports to Mexico and Latin America.
It would be interesting if someone wanted to trace the lifespan of an 'average vehicle' that didn't get offed by a bad driver before its time and was well maintained throughout. I suspect it's something like this:
0 - 100 miles: Test drive at factory, sitting on dealer lot.
100 - 30,000 miles: first owner, maybe on a 2 or 3 year lease.
30,000 - 150,000 miles: Second owner, or maybe multiple owners. Eventually traded in, sold to wholesaler. If still in good condition, exported.
150,000 - 300,000 miles: Mexican taxi. Parts get replaced as they wear out and break.
300,000+ miles: When body finally rusts through, strip for parts. Scrap remainder.
You don't see a ton of quarter-million-mile cars in Suburbia, USA, but in some places they're pretty desirable.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
The Total Cost of Ownership argument - now where have I heard that before ...
[Insert pithy quote here]
While in High School back in 85 when the big "clean up the air" push started, our automotive teacher wanted to point out how dirty old cars were compared to the new ones with catalytic converters and EGR valves and the like... so up first was a brand new Fiero, came out pretty clean, above the standard at the time even... then it was the 65 Chevy Chevelle, 350 CID, roller rockers, 4 Barrel Holley carb, a real hot rod... ran cleaner than the Fiero
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
Cost is not the point. Greenhouse gasses is the point. Prius makes far less greenhouse gasses than a Hummer.
And you know what? Its going to cost us more to be Green, it always hurts to do the right thing.
Raydude
TFA calls an electric motor an "engine".
"Hummer that is on the road for three times longer than a Prius" Really? A Toyota beat out in longevity by a pile if shit American product? HA! If by "longer" they mean "sits in the garage many days of the year because the owner is driving his Porsche around or the Lexus he takes to work" then sure.
Insert a bunch of stuff of them bashing the nickel mine here. (Unsupported by facts or references and with no comparison of the mining locations used by the Hummer manufacturer.)
Not to mention the expected lifetime of 100,000 miles for the Toyota and 300,000 for the Hummer. Reaaaally? Looks to me like they got the numbers mixed up.
Oh, and "CNW Marketing Research" has the first item on their FAQ biatching about how they don't pick up the phone if you block caller ID. That sounds like a bunch of pros to me. hehe.
CNW also appears to specialize in helping car dealers figure out how to sell cars to consumers coming up with "preowned certified" and other BS. I am not sure if I really believe their engineering expertise on the actual manufacturing processes of various cars especially when it is their financial self-interest to steer (or help others steer) consumers into the high profit vehicles for American car makers.
Why don't you ask Bill Fucking Gates about Windows Vista while you are at it.
Tell ya what, give me a bunch of charts and shit and I can spin an article full of as much FUD as this one. I won't even charge ya for it, but I get to drink beer while I do it.
That web site has nothing to do with conservation! Nothing on low flow toilets, CF bulbs, recycling, nothing. I call shenanigans!
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
Just like the rise in global warming, isn't the greeness of the Hummer directly proportional to the shrinking numbers of pirates since the 1800s?
I certainly agree with his conclusion. It's a very important issue across the board (not just cars) that is far too often ignored.
The one thing I'd question, is the lifetime of the vehicles. The Hummer is rated at a 3X longer life than the Prius. If those number happen to be wrong, or otherwise mismatched, the outcome of the comparison between the Hummer and Prius will be different, and the Prius could come out slightly ahead.
Of course, even in that case, fuel-efficient conventional (non-hybrid) cars still come out way ahead of an over-priced, terribly complex hybrid, by a big margin.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
From a first glance it looks like they may be double counting. They go into all the things that they considered in the cost of the car, but apart from gas and maintanance, all of them should already be included purchace price of the vehicle (plus subsidies). So I don't see why they would even need to look at those other factors, at least as far as price goes - they would be relevant in the total energy calculations.
:)
Furthermore, the fact that this study was done by a student marketing group at the university, rather than say an engineering department sends up big flags to me. It is possible that they actually found and listened to people who knew what they were talking about, rather than just cherry picking whatever facts are convienient for the conclusion they are trying to sell, but it would be a first for marketing
I certainly don't doubt that hybrids are more expensive and use more energy overall than a regular economy car would. And given that this energy probably came from a coal plant, they may not even be better when it comes to overall emmisions. But to say that they are worse than a Hummer (even the new plastic power-wheel Hummers), is a fairly big claim, and there are many areas of their study that I would like look at with a close eye before comming to any conclusion.
Remember, light trucks get a pass on pollution from the Auto-Industry-Friendly US government. Their emissions standards are much more lax than a passaenger car.
What year is your truck?
Blar.
... that Hummer owners by comparison are always so modest and unpretentious.
TFA claims that the prius costs $3.25 per mile over the course of 100,000 miles. The car must therefore cost $325,000 to own over the lifetime of the car. That sounds pretty impossible to me. I think somebody miscounted a zero when they were doing the math.
-- Knowledge shared is power lost. -- Aleister Crowley
They should have computed the overall energy consumed for both manufacturing and driving.
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
Automotive longevity (how long its kept on the road) has nothing to do with reliability. Domestics kept on a road longer simply because they make better beater cars - depreciate very quickly relative to imports and a lot cheaper to repair due to overabundance of spare parts from junkyards.
I'm more impressed if someone owns a real hummer rather than those pathetic SUVs you get from a "Hummer" dealership.
Also, what do they mean by "expected lifespan of 100,000 miles"?! A Prius only does around 100k miles?! How is that even reasonably affordable?!
I have a hard time finding comprehensible details from the big report. So much for blaming engineers and scientists for using so many "jargons" in discussions of total cost of anything, the report is just not clear on ANYTHING.
Look at the recycling cost. How do they calculate it? Besides a more sophisticated car would cost exponentially more to recycle, I found nothing that can explain clearly about it. Recycled 5 times in average? Shouldn't a better designed car last longer and less likely to be recycled?
A sig is redundant.
or any general motors product for that matter.
the article might have been interesting if the author wasn't pounding a drum and actually did an apples to apples comparison, i.e. prius to corolla or camry hybrid to camry regular...
The difference between Theory and Practice is greater in Practice than in Theory.
Ok, I can see a savings in an urban setting - but I drive 50 miles each way, 99% of that on a highway.
In a hybrid, I'd just be a gas engine hauling a bank of batteries. The fact that I "skip" first gear wouldnt make a difference.
As luck would have it, a co-worker lives just an exit up from me (closer to work), and bought a prius. We compared numbers over about a 2 month span.
My 2005 v6 mustang got 26.3 mpg over the whole 2 month period, he got 25.something.
Too close to say I "won", but I don't see his fuel economy. Add to that, he paid significantly more - his care is pricier to maintain, and I got a sweet little 'vert, while he looks like a complete fag in his car.
YAY GREEN
It's all marketing, unless you spent a lot of time at red lights.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
What I derive from that 'statistic' is that hybrids are overpriced. This number should go down as they become more the mainstream and less the oddity. And yet... ...Maybe denying the petroleum companies and your local government (since you're not buying gasoline as often, thus not paying as much in gas taxes as the average citizen) so much funding might account for the markup. I wonder, does the tax credit one gets for driving an earthfriendly car meet the bonus taxation some places want to institute on hybrids for not paying into the gas taxes?
Hydrogen engines: Just add water.
Laughter is the Spackle of the Soul.
that Prius' produces far more SMUG than any other vehicle.
It is what leads small children in San Francisco to do hits of acid.
At least that's what South Park told me. "THEEEEEEEEAANKS!"
And then I'm off to smell my farts...
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
Consider yourself lucky you're not dead. At $3.25/mile, the average Prius owner would have to give up food entirely.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/2/12/115426/ 732
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
And I'm a supporter of hybrids of that reason. I don't own one (my old car works fine) but I do think they are a technology that will be good for efficiency increases eventually. I mean we have to consider that this is essentially generation one technology. It will take time to get better. Look at the internal combustion engine to see the massive amount of progress there's been. While hybrids might not see as much, I think they will see large increases as the tech is refined.
Also there's other factors that may end up being useful. Electric motors produce nearly 100% torque from the word go, whereas ICEs need to operate at a higher speed for maximum torque. So if we changed up the way a car worked and had electric motors directly drive the wheels and the engine drive a generator, you'd have a car (or truck) with tons of low end torque. Also that allows for the use of a smaller, single speed engine. You can make a much more optimised engine if it only need to run at a single RPM rather than being variable. Of course there's losses from the mechanical-electrical-mechanical conversion, so that's something that has to be overcome.
That's actually how modern diesel trains work. Their power-plant doesn't drive the wheels, it drives a generator that powers electric motors. Hybrid locomotives seem to be quite a winner since there's already the conversion cycle, and adding 2000 pounds of batteries isn't really significant in the scope of a train weighing 5 million pounds or more.
So I'm happy that this technology is being developed, but you are right that people need to have a big glass of perspective and soda. They are NOT more efficient over all. They aren't even cheaper to you. Get a Toyota Corolla 5-speed manual if you want efficiency. Even if gas were $4/gallon, it'd still be cheaper over the life of the car than a Prius. Or hell, if you can swing the smaller size, get a Smart Fortwo.
If you want a hybrid that's great, I'm glad you are helping to support the research, but do be realistic about it.
I think you missed the point. He was not defending the wankers in the Hybrids.
"Who is the authority on what an "environmentalist" ought to believe?"
Real envirnmentalists do things that make sense. They aren't in it for the image factor.
Example: A "Real" environmentalist won't call a 100% electric car "emmission free". They know that someone had to burn some coal, or uranium to make that electric. A "Real" environmentalist realizes that just because they don't see the smoke behind their car that it doesn't exist. It's not about image,
Oh, I see, your one of those posers who tries to get laid by hippie chicks with Birkenstoks and a Hybrid
"Green" doesn't refer to the "amount of energy" required to do something, it refers to HOW that energy is produced. The energy used in production facilities is mainly electrical, which is provided, largely, by coal powerplants. Coal is far less polluting, much more abundant, and is created in a far shorter span of time. Aside from that, any mass production facility has the possibility of gradualing switching to solar, geothermal, hydroelectric, or wind based power, where-as vehicles rely on souly non-renuable resources. Even nuclear will soon become near-100% non-polluting, as scientists are discovering ways of "recycling" nuclear waste into the earth's core, to be broken down in lava pockets. Fossil fuels, one way or another, are a dead-end investment. All other sources of power are far more renuable, cleaner, and more abundant. Hybrids, Hydrogen-Fuel cells, biodesel... these are just intermediate steps in the chain of moving toward far more ecconomical forms of power.
So this is simply a bunch of BS. Hummers may require less "energy", but they still consume far more limited resources.
Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.
Oh come on. There was no material analysis of each vehicle.
This article is flame bait, and does not go into any detail of how these Short Buses are made, where all the materials come from and how unsustainable the manufacturing and fuel consumption are.
Trying to convince people that your Short Bus helps the environment is scary and sad.
-Don
Mod parent up, informative
Dozens of environmentalist blogs have picked apart this "study" and have found it to be lacking. Two responses. The gist of it is that they underestimated the Prius' lifespan and overestimated the amount of energy it takes.
And a big red flag for every Slashdot reader is that CNW is a "market research" institute. Do you trust marketdroids to make engineering assessments?
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
Yeah, what a horrible thing that would be if that happened...
You are acting like he was recommending environmental types buy Hummers. In fact, he recommended people buy a Scion or an Aveo in place of a Prius.
I don't think they really need any help in that department...
In other words, you might be able to shame most of the people all of the time, but you can't shame all of the people, all of the time.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
I was figuring this out a while back. If you keep your Prius for 100,000 miles at about 50mpg that is 2,000 gallons of gas. At $3.00/gal that's $6,000 in fuel. If a none Hybrid gets even 25 mpg (mine gets 30+) that's 4,000 gallons of gas or $12,000. So the Prius saves you $6,000 in gas and costs about $10,000 more than a comparable non-hybrid. I think I'll pass.
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
"I drive a Mini...what are you compensating for?"
Thirty years ago it was rare to expect any car, let alone a US built one, to last much more than 150k. Manufacturing has greatly improved. Even manufacturers that build ``below average'' vehicles are putting out product that lasts far longer than the bad old days. There is no prima facie reason that a Hummer wouldn't last for 300k miles given that, unlike the Prius, Hummers don't have uber-expensive batteries that will almost certainly need to be replaced at 100k miles. There are no scheduled maintenance activities for the first 300k miles on a Hummer that exceed the value of the vehicle as is the case with a battery replacement at 100k miles for the Prius.
That said, this is a comparison radically skewed towards the Hummer. A Hummer with 200k on the engine might still have a value of USD 30k so it takes a far larger repair before the cost of the repair is higher than the residual value of the vehicle.
Also, if you don't believe a Hummer will last that long, visit: High Mileage Hummers Keep in mind that the original Hummer has a turbo diesel engine that, if properly maintained, will probably last far longer than most GM gasoline engines.
Not that I'm on the Hummer band-wagon, mind you. I drive a Yaris. My biggest disappointment with the Yaris is that the turbo diesel Toyota offers with the Yaris in Europe isn't available in the states. A diesel Yaris gets about 50mpg in real world driving which is even better than the Prius. That's the interesting part of the article to me. They put the Hummer in there for shock value, but they also mention how small non-hybrid cars like the Aveo has about 1/8 the lifetime economic cost of the Hummer. Put a TD engine in that small car and that gross disparity will become even grosser.
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
And only the military Hummers last 300K miles the commercial version doesn't even come close
I've got a good friend who's a Hummer dealer. Most people who own H1's aren't going to drive them like that, regardless. But the H2's are numerous and get a lot of use to study, and he regularly sees trades now, with vehicles in great shape and sporting way over 150,000 miles on them. The H3's, which are much smaller, lighter, and easier to maintain, will probably behave like most other GM light trucks, and last a conscientuous owner well into the 200,000+ neighborhood before they're in the mood for a different vehicle (which usually happens long before the vehicle actually wears out). And if you're going to talk about non-conscientuous owners, then you have to apply that same logic to Prius owners that hop curbs, do tons of stop-and-go driving, and other things that will lower the life cycle averages there. What if both numbers are half-way-or-so wrong? What if you lower the Prius numbers to $2.00 and raise the Hummer number to $2.00? Doesn't that still make for a fascinatingly different take on this than the religiously-held perspective that most people seem to have?
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
The Prius may not be all that great, but this FA doesnt prove anything.
You know how I know? You have no sense of humor. Therefore, I must explain that this, too, is a joke.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Nothing beats the feeling on driving my military H1 on the road, nicely equipped with 18 wheeler air horns. Wakes up the yakking soccer moms on the phone sleeping at the green light and not moving, the drifting Suburban Chinese woman ready to slam on the side of the H1 or the black youth Honda Civic souped up with crap mufflers.
They all scatter like rats in front of the H1. So fuck you. The H1 evolved to deal with the problem the drivers that should rather ride the bus or stay home represent. Drive your overpriced horrid looking Prius with dead batteries off a cliff. It is a marketing ploy for morons.
Have a good day.
Fuck you, asshole.
I make it a point to make the appropriate inappropriate gesture to every jackass like yourself I see on the road.
Just buy a used car. It's been known for a while that a Prius is a lot worse cost-wise and environment-wise at the manufacturing stage. If it's worse over it's whole lifetime than a different new car depends on the assumptions made. Those in this article seem pretty poor, but better assumptions don't always make the Prius come out ahead. Buying a used car avoids all that, and is by far the best choice for the environment. Which is better: spending $25k to bring yet another Prius into the world, or $5k on a 10-year old Civic that gets 70% the mpg. $20k buys a lot of carbon offsets.
"guys who are trying to compensate for a tiny penis?"
Get real. Some of us *need* a Hummer just so we can haul our huge penis around.
Just curious,
what kind of women are attracted to you because of your Short Bus?
Or are they attracted to you and your square because of the MiniVan aspect of the vehicle.
CNW is clearly a marketing company that works for auto manufacturers. They even say as much on their crappy web site. Company Background Founded in 1984, CNW Marketing/Research began as Coastal NW Publishing Company. Through the years, clients and subscribers have spread from the Great Northwest to include every state of the union (except Alabama), Australia, Europe, Asia and Canada. Clients include major automobile manufacturers, banks and lending institutions, Wall Street brokerage firms and consultants. Besides publishing LTR/8+ (America's most quoted source of leasing information), CNW publishes new and used vehicle industry reference guides and study summaries, a monthly Retail Automotive Summary of sales and trends, as well as our online research distribution center, CNW by WEB. CNW holds an annual conference in Los Angeles in connection with Time Inc. Mr. Spinella is available for Executive Sessions for a limited number of clients. I know this is /. but a 'news' story from an editorial of a no name school about a bogus marketing study?
How many vehicles have you seen with nearly 400,000 miles on the odometer?
===== Murphy's Law is recursive. =====
Any damage caused by test drivers is unlikely to have recurring/chronic problems associated with it. On top of that, as long as the car is within the new car warranty, the manufacturer is legally bound to honor that warranty and make sure the car is repaired and made road-worthy. If they determine that the car's damage is from abuse then they must prove that it was you. This is why testers are gone over with a fine-tooth comb before leaving the lot. If you don't want the chance of having problems and having to deal with the hassle of repairs than that is a much more reasonable reason for avoiding testers. Basing a decision on mere mileage alone is no grounds for determing the intelligence level of those who would buy a vehicle with 11 or more miles on it.
Calling the previous poster an idiot because you seem to have an inability to apply common sense to a rather simple problem is not really a good way to win friends and influence people nor does it lend credibility to your status as a legitimate, constructive poster. You should curb your paranoid pete attitude and take a look at things for what they are, not what you want them to be. Many posters here on Slashdot could benefit from that approach.
Maybe even then, all the Prius lovers out there (who could benefit from the same attitude adjustment) would stop getting so defensive when common sense is applied to the "ultimate solution" of the venerable Prius and see it for what it is, a technology showcase and an exercise in engineering. It's not the eco-friendly mode of transportation it is being made out to be. If anything, it's biggest redeeming quality is that it is a big step in weening not only the U.S. but the world off of oil as a source of energy.
Were these new cars? or did you get 75K out of a used honda after the prior owner abused it? And did you replace the timing belt at 60K like you're supposed to?
.. like needing a rebuilt engine or transmission?
Did all of these cars suddenly die, or just had problems that weren't cost effective to fix
Everyone that I know who has owned Hondas have been able to make them last over 150k miles without much by way of repairs at all.
Do you or other drivers in your family ride the clutch much, or were they automatics by chance? I definitely agree that smaller cars with Automatic trans definitely have more problems.
My last Honda was a 1988 CRX Si, first car I ever bought brand new. It lasted me 13 years. I drove it hard but did all the scheduled maintenance, and it was still running strong when I sold it at 253000 miles. With the original clutch still in it, and not slipping.
repairs over that time were 2 A/C compressors and an ignition switch.
I ran through 5 sets of tires (Yokohamas are soft!) 3 sets of belts and 2 timing belts.
Oil was changed between every 3k and 4k miles.
I had to re-upholster the seat fronts from wear, and replace the windshield once.
Mostly wear, and cheaply fixed. all while getting 28mpg on regular unleaded.
I have a Prius with 46,000 miles it. I average 52MPG. Gas costs $3.13 today. Here are my total costs:
Purchase: $26,000 or so. That's 56.5 per mile.
Gas: 6 per mile.
Oil: 0.5 per mile.
Tires: 1 per mile.
TOTAL: 64 per mile, so far.
If I threw the thing away today, and bought a new one (which I'm not likely to do, so don't check my dumpster), that would still be 64 per mile. Assuming it will last 250,000 miles, like the rest of my Toyotas, the cost will be WAY lower.
That's an excellent question. You have to be a retarded version of the middle-aged widow stereotype(*) to kill a Toyota in 100k miles.
(*) in other words, never change the oil AND chew on the battery cables
energy cost? I have never heard of energy having a unit of dollars - not least because it is possibly the worst measure of energy I could ever think of. It is, then, absolutely zero to do with environmental concerns at all.
A coal power station produces energy far far cheaper than a wind turbine (over their "dust to dust" lifetimes) - which one is most environmentally friendly? Honestly - if the right wing US oil lobby want to win the global warming war then they should quit producing shit like this - it just makes them look like a laughing stock.
I don't know, but the woman who wouldn't is invited to drop me an email...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
How about removing a step, and working on releasing less carbon into the environment in the first place? You're over-complicating the issue in order to preserve your lifestyle.
Blar.
An elephant is walking through the jungle and hears terrorized squeaks. Curious, he goes to investigate and finds a mouse stuck in quicksand.
"Here," says the elephant, "I'll pull you out. Grab my dick." The elephant pulls the mouse out and goes on his way.
A week later the same mouse hears trumpeting and all sorts of noise. Investigating, he finds the elephant caught in the same quicksand hole. "I'll help you!" he says. "Just hang on!"
The elephant thinks he's a goner - what can a mouse do?
The mouse comes back with a humvee and a chain, and pulls the elephant out.
The moral of the story is, if you drive a hummer it's OK to have a little dick.
A Hummer with 100k on it still costs more than a Prius does when still in the dealer's lot. Consequently, the Hummer can absorb more repairs than the Prius when the metric being used is useful life. Replacing the battery after 100k on a Prius may very well exceed the value of the Prius at that point while an equally expensive repair on the Hummer will not exceed the value of the Hummer.
Toyota isn't losing $29X,000 per vehicle, so where is that money coming from?
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
They may be the first to have crossed 200K miles with a Prius. Taxi service is one of the hardest uses for a car. When Toyota bought it back for a teardown to study extended wear, it still had the factory battery and other drivetrain components.
As more normal service pushes others over 200K, the results have been mostly the same.
The Prius was also designed for (_relatively_) green manufacturing techniques, including a less nasty painting process.
The Prius is also an SULEV, news to me if the Hummer is as well.
You guys are dorks! Women aren't attracted to any of you who think you have to have a big dick!! Guess what?! Its not about that, obviously you haven't figured that out yet! HA!
cutie
For about $1200, I got the extended warranty with my Prius. Bumper to bumper, 8 years or 100,000 miles. I don't think they would offer those if they expected the thing to fall apart at 100k.
Even though the article is heavily skewed, it's still interesting. It's a point I didn't consider before I bought my car.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
I can't talk about the rest of Latin America, but this is not true for Mexico. While the import rules are slowly being loosened, Mexico is extremely protective of its new car market (of course made up of American and Japanese cars) and importing a used car into the country is a nightmare, unless you are in one of their "free trade" zones right on the border. Even those have to be ~5 years old or so. Moving them further in is right damn near impossible unless you're willing to pay enough taxes to rival what you paid for the thing to begin with.
The reason for this is of course to keep the "straight" auto importers and dealers happy by allowing them to set artificially high prices on new cars without any competition whatsoever.
Your theory might be correct for other countries, maybe even outside of the Americas, but it's not for Mexico. The amount of cars in the free trade zones would not make a dent on the volume of vehicles that land on the "used" circuit here in the US every year. If you ever travel down to Mexico City or one of the larger cities in the interior of the country, keep your eyes open for a used Pontiac or Mercury. You won't find any.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
My wife has a theory that guys compensate with a bigger truck or bigger spoiler on their cars when they are lacking in other areas... but I'm sure you look good in it with your matching sunglasses and a bottle of Viagra. The hummer is turning into a joke. The H1 was an interesting vehicle because it cost an incredible amount of money and was pretty good off road. The H2 and H3 are nothing but jokes. Same thing as their respective GM vehicles (IE Suburbans), except you pay more for a badge. No thanks, if I'm going to pay for a decal on my car, it's going to be German or Italian, and I'll stick to higher class girls.
Forget the obvious little dick/compensation jokes. I have always gotten women because I have a great personality and I am good looking.
So this leads me to believe you are an ugly, dim-witted, little man (with a small dick).
Oh and for the record let's not "throw out the baby with the bathwater", Hybrids have made a lot of progress and I hope they continue to.
I bike to work *and* I own a Prius. What does that make me?
...never invited to parties?
(ba-dum-chi!)
I actually wouldn't recomment you chew on the battery cables even if not changing the oil. But thats just me.
It's free for me to dump my dead CRT monitor in San Francisco Bay, costs me $10 to disspose of it properly. Which is better for the enviroment.
More right-wing anti-hybrid FUD shit for brains AM-radio-whore bull crap.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
Why does the article use EPA as a synonym for fuel economy?
"This has dropped the Prius's EPA down by 25 percent to an average of 45mpg."
And how does it cost to get the oil to run the Hummer at ~10 mpg versus the Prius' 30+ mpg?
One used two new all driven in the Phoenix heat. Never over heated always serviced on time and no I don't hammer then cause my wife didn't let me drive them much and she is a very conservative driver. I have a GTO to beat up :-)
Si vis pacem, para bellum! For evil to succeed good men need only do nothing!
it's always a interesting question, With a completely interconnected energy grid, is the energy I use in Arizona more friendly than the energy used in PA for example. IE I live closest to one of the largest Solar PV Generation in the world (grid connected), so can I claim my energy came from their, when in fact had I not used that energy it would have displaced energy used in NM, that displaced CO energy... all the way back to Dover Delaware where they had to fire-up a CNG generator because their instantaneous use exceeded the nuclear plant capacity. Personally I think had that Prius not been built, less coal would have been burned, since they should shutdown the highest impact plants, if we would start conserving more. So even if 95% of electricity were from renewable sources, until that number reaches 100% all wasted electricity = worst possible source of energy burned to produce electricity.
Any real 4x4 like a Jeep Wrangler or the Hummer H1 are greener than everything else on the road for one very obvious reason: neither vehicle requires the world be covered in asphalt. A Prius or any other eco-friendly, high MPG vehicle on the other hand isn't going to get very far without chopping down forests, blasting through mountain ranges and otherwise laying waste to the environment for a "road".
http://www.omninerd.com/
When you understand your disbelief in other gods, then you will understand my disbelief in yours.
Even if you buy one with essentially no miles on it, it might still suck. I rented a car once that had 4 miles on it. At first I thought, "Cool!" But by the time it had 500 miles on it, I had to return it for another because so many things were going wrong with it.
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
Hmm let me see, I've had my Prius for 5 years and have driven 95000 miles, at a total cost of $308,750 or $61,750 per year. Either I'm a lot more wealthy than I thought, or Chris Demorro is a Cuckoo clock. I'm also not sure why I should feel guilty about Ontario not being able to regulate its mines. After all plenty of other suphide mines (for copper, lead, silver, zinc etc) seem to operate without causing this level of environmental damage.
Ok, the article is crap, but would someone at least acknowledge that they linked to the printer-friendly version of the article! I wish every reference on /. would be so kind to us low-bandwidth users.
That's funny, I only ever see chicks driving hummers. It's kind of a chick car.
Angleyne: You can't bend that girder - it's unbendable! Bender: Well I don't know anything about lifting, so that ju
Well probably because he could afford a hummer. Her hummer is a different matter now
http://saveie6.com/
How do you reconcile your Christianity with helping people make more money? Didn't Jesus get pissed off at the money lenders? Isn't advertising yourself as a Christian financial planner sort of like lending money in the temple? Is focusing on material wealth really something Jesus would do? I'm honestly curious because I see more and more Christians who don't seem to care about the core message of Christianity and instead focus on material things, and I don't think that's being true to the faith. Maybe there are parts of the Bible I've misinterpreted?
Perhaps, but, and this is definately the first time I've ever had the chance to say this, Suzuki Swift pwns them all.
My last Civic made it past one light-second. I'm expecting my current one to make about 220 Mm (I don't drive much) before the body finally rusts out and I have enough saved up to buy the next one outright.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
No. It's "just add hydrogen". That's a bigger problem.
Mixing up running costs with green-ness is such an obvious misdirection that its making me think this report must have been funded by the oil industry.
So what if a Hummer costs less per mile to run than a Prius that has nothing to do with the environment.
Lets now consider the extra damage to the environment through emissions by selfish dumbasses who feel they need a stupidly innefieicent military vehicle just to go to the mall. Thats the real issue.
This reminds me of one of the funniest Family Guy sketches ever:
[A guy is driving a Hummer down a highway]
Driver: This new car kicks ass! And I can watch Madagascar while I'm driving.
Lion in movie: What kind of music do you like Laureate?
Laureate: Hippo-hop! [starts dancing]
Driver: Ha! Ha! Ha! Dude, those animals are so f***ing funny! They make me want to merge without looking! [he changes lanes and a car behind him crashes and explodes in the background] Yeah Rumsfeld!!!
"Oh c'mon, I wumbo, you wumbo, he/she/me...wumbo, wumboed, womboing...wombology? The study of wumbo? It's first grade,
I am disappointed by the comments about this report - if you take time and read the original report "dust to dust" I believe it raises some very pertinent points. It does not say "Hummer good Prius bad", to quote Animal Farm, but rather it points out that the simple MPG figures are not the only environmental costs that we should consider. There is an environmental impact in manufacturing, maintaining and scrapping any vehicle that is also real and needs to be accounted for. The figures in the report may be wrong, but the logic is correct - it is feasible that a simple and easily repaired long life vehicle could have a lower environmental impact than a very high technology vehicle with a much shorter life span. On the subject of vehicles like the Prius, if I recall the document correctly, it highlights that it is an early example of hybrid technology which is still being developed. As a result currently they are not as environmentally friendly as the headlines would have us believe, but in future this will most certainly change. The report indicates that by their measurements the most environmentally friendly vehicles available today is a small Toyota car.
If bullshit were music, you'd be a brass band.
As the AC said, INCO has done a heck of a clean-up job in the past 3 decades. The comment about moon rovers was true - in 1969. NASA hasn't built a moon rover in decades anyway, which shows just how old this info is.
.. well, stupid.
I last drove through Sudbury in the mid 90s. The trees do get noticably shorter the closer you get to the smelter, but the 'dead zone' is history.
I actually took this story half-seriously until reading your comment. With disinformation like that, I think we can all dismiss this as
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Most of the folks I know who drive hummers (and most big, fuel-inefficient vehicles for that matter) use them for "business use", and though the government is no longer subsidizing 45%+/- of the initial costs of the vehicle through section 179 tax breaks, they still get to deduct the gas and maintenance from their corporate profits (i.e. tax deductible to the point that the vehicle is used for business purposes).
Who cares if you're getting 14mpg on the highway...after taxes it's more like 25mpg - and that's not too bad for a big vehicle, right?
tax tidbit: in a small corporation, often the owner takes a small salary, usu. about 1/3 of the total profit of the business, with the remaining as "owner's draws" which are not salary. For every dollar that gets deducted, the owner doesn't pay about 25-30c of federal tax, 7c state tax (avg), and 15c of FICA - soc. security and medicare. So that $1 that got deducted might actually reduce the tax burden by close to 45% in the final analysis. As the owner of a small business, a $35,000 truck (a real one, not an SUV) at 13mpg would actually cost less out of pocket to buy and operate than a $22,000 prius over the 5 year IRS "life" of the vehicle, even with the limited section 179, after taxes. Odd but true.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
You're mistaken with Landrovers, I believe.
I did notice that many women drive that kind of big vehicle. They are often wives, though.
-The_Abortionist (daily post limit has been reached)
The fuel efficiency is only about 10% better than a decent modern injection diesel. Clever electronics and better batteries would enhance the efficiency of the prius hugely. Some claim you can double the efficiency with Lithium-iron batteries (yes, they're expensive, but 100mpg isn't to be sneezed at).
Energy does not equal CO2 or Fossil fuels.
Fact is there are plenty of environmentally sound sources of energy not the least of which is solar. Hydro energy is also pretty friendly depending on which areas are flooded, and which fish runs disrupted.
The problems of non-fossil fuel energy sources are those of cost, and convenience.
So a Prius factory and a Hummer factory both have options when it comes to the source to run them.
But a Hummer does not have any options when it comes to what to put in them. (unless you redesign it then it wouldnt be a Hummer would it?)
So, one of the world's most inefficient manufacturers in a country whose culture cherishes waste can produce a 5,000 lb vehicle with less energy than one of the world's most efficient manufacturers in a country diabolically obsessed with energy conservation can produce a 2500 lb vehicle. Gosh... I guess the joke's on Toyota. Who knew?
Assuming we recycle more, but the tree-planting remains constant, I believe we would cause the carbon in the atmosphere to drop. There is no single thing to be done to adjust this complex system.
Blar.
Are you suggesting that he might be MORE attractive with the truck? Is that some kind of logic trap or is it simple maths like -5 x -5 = +25.
No doubt the hybrid cars have lasted 200K or more, but a key question may be do the batteries have to be replaced at some point? The article focuses mostly on the environmental impact of the globalized battery manufacturing process. If a new set of batteries are required at some point, it would seem that the Prius goes into negative environmental friendliness territory again...
As indicated here, Toyota offers a 100K warranty for the batteries. So perhaps that is the "expected" life of the batteries, and why the article compares 100K miles on a Prius to 300K miles on Hummer. Of course, the batteries may last longer, so this cannot be an absolute rule.
Yup...you are correct. It is all about money.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I can knock a few holes in this specious argument without even breaking a sweat...
9 .shtml), and it's still bad analysis after being regurgitated on the op-ed page of a college newspaper.
1. The editorial does not specify which Hummer model of the five currently listed on the Hummer website (The H1 Alpha? The H2? The H2 SUT? The H3? The H3^X?) is the basis for the comparison to the Prius (one model only). So how is it possible to validate its claims for the idealized "Hummer" that's mentioned if the specific model is not stated?
2. The analysis also assumes gas prices will remain static for five years to recoup the higher cost of the hybrid for lower fuel expenses. Gas prices do not remain static. The folks with hybrids were doing quite well after Katrina while all the SUV drivers were complaining about $80 tanks of gas. Are you willing to bet we won't have another Katrina or yet another war in the Middle East in the next five years?
3. The authors of the study assumed the Hummer would last 300k miles and the Prius only 100k. Uh, how about we do an apples to apples comparison here? On what basis was this number chosen, apart from the fact that the fudge factor of 3 allows the Hummer to win this straw man argument? And does the typical Hummer driver even drive his Hummer for 300k miles? How about you pick one set of criteria and apply it for both cars.
4. None of the many arguments offered in this editorial addresses the issue that, despite the premium one must pay for a Prius over a non-hybrid car, they still cost less to purchase than a Hummer (whichever model you pick).
This was bad analysis when it was published on July 19, 2006 (NINE MONTHS AGO!) by the auto industry shills at the Reason Foundation (see http://www.reason.org/commentaries/dalmia_2006071
from pulling that big a number out of it. There are no hybrids that cost $10,000 more than non-hybrid equivalents. They are generally around 3 to 4 thousand different. As someone points out, you can do a very direct comparison with the prices of the Honda Civics and Accords, which have hybrid and non-hybrid versions. There is also now those versions of the Toyota Camry.
We may experience some slight turbulence and then...explode. -Capt. Mal Reynolds
"0-100 miles" is real mileage, not the number you see in odometer. Almost every car has their odometer 20-100 miles below zero when manufactured. They are moved around in factory, in ship, in terminals, in dealers yard, everywhere between assembly line and the buyer.
(150-300k) 230k miles on mine (old luxury car, btw, BMW 750il) and at least 6th battery.
Batteries are a major component in Prius and 100k is a very long time for those. "Recycling" doesn't take away the cost of manufacturing, it just sits top of it.
(mexican imports) Many countries are very restrictive to importing used cars, not to ruin the lucrative business of selling those with inflated rates internally. On the other hand, expensive used cars mean more new cars sold (less gap) and those pay a lot of taxes.
Here in EU Denmark and Finland are the worst, most of the others don't care and the price difference is 2-5 fold.
God no, they tend not to shave their underarms or legs. Ack.
Don't forget the fact that larger engines consume more gas. They are designed to produce a larger peak power and as such, require stronger, heavier parts. Moving heavier parts requires more energy thereby increasing fuel usage.
Another point to note is that one rarely drives on a level road. If there is an incline, the heavier vehicle with require more fuel to maintain it's speed up the hills.
And finally one must look at the tires. Heavier vehicles will lose more energy from the rubber in the tires compressing and decompressing. There is a reason why heavy trucks frequently have their tires fall apart while driving - they get too hot. You can see chunks of rubber littered alone the sides of any major highway.
Long story made short - larger vehicles will always consume more energy then smaller vehicles. Sorry Hummer owners, but it's true.
More info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum_electric_hy brid_vehicle#CNW_Marketing_Reports
He either comes off as a real interesting guy with encyclopedic knowledge,or a pathological liar with an ax to grind
I'd still rather drive a Prius than a Hummer. I like a quiet, smooth ride and it's just plain fun with all of the high-tech goodies.
Heheh, great post! I see the Christian Taliban have plenty of mod points today.
Smear your shit on the beard of Jesus
Trolling is a art,
100k my ass... I'm still going after passing that without any trouble.
The Hummer can blow me...
Granted, if you can run the factory on clean energy, you might have a net win, although you have to balance that against the environmental cost of batteries. Also, a hybrid can be easily modified to new technologies besides ICE. But at the present time, no, your stock Prius runs only on gasoline, too. It might be better at burning that gasoline, but it still gets all its energy ultimately from gasoline. (Unless you keep driving downhill.
Looks like someone needs to quit drinking the moron juice before posting... Take $3.25, multiply it by the 100,000 mile Prius lifetime given in the study, and you'll get $325,000. Now, look at the parent's post, and what number do you see? I'm not sure why you're bringing in the 300,000 estimated lifetime for the Hummer, or why you think that costs spreading out differently over that period has anything to do with this, but it looks like the one who can't do math is YOU! Now, can anyone with multiple brain cells to rub together actually give an insightful answer to the GP's question? I find the $325,000 figure extremely suspicious myself, since who's paying it? Toyota's not going to eat a massive per-unit loss like that without upping the sticker price, there's no way the owner is spending anywhere near that on gas, repairs, and the like over 100k miles, and the government tax breaks, etc. are nowhere near enough to make up the difference. I think it's pretty clear that something is very, very flawed in their methodology.
This is actually an incredibly old study from a CNW market research which is shady for-hire "market research" group that promotes the views of the client (Think about all those Microsoft-funded studies depicted Linux being incredibly expensive).
http://www.cnwmr.com/
http://www.cnwmarketingresearch.com/
I saw that the half-wits had modded you down for a very innocuous joke, so I thought it only appropriate to show them what a REAL anti-Christian troll looked like. ;-)
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
We must keep the value of trees high, because of their contributions to our environment. Use less tree products but plant more trees.
Blar.
I emailed this to the editor of The Recorder:
, you will find that in 1994 1.6 Trillion miles were driven in the U.S. According to the "dust to dust" study, this would equal $ 3.12 Trillion USD if everyone were driving the Hummer. This works out to be nearly 40% of US GDP in 1994. If you look at the study, most U.S. vehicles fall in the ~$2.00/mile price range like the Hummer. I find it hard to believe that 40% of our GDP is going towards driving costs, which makes me suspect that the "dust to dust" study is in some way flawed.
Mr. Rowan,
The article written by your staff writer Chris Demorro discussing the environmental aspects of manufacturing the Prius has recently been mentioned on Slashdot.
After reading the article, I must thank you for pointing out the horrible environmental record of the NiMH battery manufacturing process. It is certainly something that should be addressed, since most people buy the Prius to make a positive environmental contribution.
However, I am compelled to write you after reading the rest of the article and noticing what I feel are serious shortcomings in reasoning and logic.
First of all, the article makes it sound like only the Prius is built from international parts. In reality, any modern automobile is assembled from parts shipped "around-the-world", including the Hummer. Secondly, how was the 300,000 mile lifespan of the Hummer calculated? This seems like a very generous estimate. By the same token, I believe the Prius' 100,000 mile figure is based on expected battery life. Batteries which can be replaced and recycled. Appallingly, battery recycling is not mentioned in the article at all.
In addition, if you reference the cumulative miles driven provided by the department of energy (http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/rtecs/chapter3.html)
As if these oversights were not enough, I feel particularly annoyed as a reader with Mr. Demorro's unsupported assumption that a higher dollar cost per mile correlates directly to "Environmental Damage," which is what this article is all about. It may be the case, but there is no data provided to support this conclusion.
In summary, while I may not agree with some of the points the article makes, I am writing you because I feel it was poorly researched and many points were glossed over or entirely left out to support the viewpoint of the author.
Thank you for your time.
Best I can tell, ton is imperial, tonne is metric. However, it is about a 10% difference between the two, so it doesn't make a huge difference when you're working with large ballpark figures.
Some people have no sense of humour. Make fun of their late-Iron Age fairy tales and they get pissed off.
Good time to change my sig. How's this one look?
Trolling is a art,
Wow, it really says something about Slashdot that this was modded -1.
Clearly enough mods were put down just like in high school when those mean alpha males took their women that they couldn't build up the courage to ask out. Staying a virgin until you're 21 doesn't keep you from being accountable for having no sense of humor. The joke was funny, but slashdot's clientele is too insecure about being nerds that they have to mod it down as a passive-aggressive resistance against the almighty count jockula.
Get a pair of fucking nuts and act like men once in a while. Jesus fucking Christ.
+5, Truth
NiMH batteries are almost entirely recycleable. The high-nickel product from currently primitive recycling processes can be used as an input to stainless steel manufacturing, but is only marginally economical for making new batteries. When used in making stainless steel, the recycled product displaces nickel that would be produced by new extraction, and IMHO, should be considered as a 100% offset to the environmental cost of the nickel used in the original construction of the battery.
Nickel is already expensive enough that if nickel-based battery production ramps up, the economic value of the nickel will make battery remanufacturing fully cost-effective. Additional research on the manufacturing and recycling processes are also likely to provide substantial cost improvements from where we stand today. I wouldn't be suprised to find in 5-10 years that nickel-based batteries enjoy the same "near-100%" closed-loop recycling ability that lead-acid batteries currently enjoy.
Regards,
Ross
just 28 mpg? I thought the CRX (those shoe looking things from the 80s) got upwards of 50 mpg. They are a two seater, small, light car. Timing chains were better then the belts, they actually didn't need repair if you changed the oil like your were supposed. I have had three cars all with over 200k when they were sold.(mustang, Chevy caviler, sunfire (same as acav i guess), grand marquee. A four banger mustang 200 when I sold it, 150k from the next guy and 230k from the next guy. Then the car got rear ended. The mustang was sold top people that I worked with so I still saw the car a lot. Until the car got hit the only things replaced were tires, spark plugs (every 75k), belts, hoses (150k intervals), breaks, and a few sets of seat covers. Change the oil every ~2000 miles. It is early according to most people but I have yet to have an oil related problem with any car/truck. The grand marquee is still going it has over 900k on it. Original engine, original trans. The trans fluid has been changed every ~50k miles. Again this car I still see all the time. And the thing still get 25 mpg. The shocks/struts were changed ~100-130k, don't know of many that last forever. Then again when shops give you lifetime warrantees, use them.
Granted, though, Hummers do provide a service for the inadequate by compensating for smaller regions of the body; brain or otherwise...
Yeah, I wouldn't want to use it as a justification for driving a Hummer. I still feel bad about my car which gets and minimise electricity waste. I'm in the NE US, so I think most of the electricity comes from coal, and means we all have high mercury levels...
Here's how you know that most hybrids are bought for ego, rather than environmental, reasons.
Compare Prius sales to Civic hybrid sales.
There's a reason you see far more Priuses (Prii?) on that road than Civic hybrids, and that is because the Prius looks like a rolling freakshow, and the Civic hybrid looks like a normal car. For all intents and purposes, both cars do the same thing in a similar sized body with similar fuel economy results at a similar price point.
Prius drivers just REALLY REALLY want you to know that they're saving the environment.
Hybrid drivers who turn up their noses at diesels are also similarly guilty of being fashionistas.
For the record, I've driven a current-gen Prius, and it's a neat little car.
I just enjoy driving too much to drive any economy car, let alone a hybrid. But if I were to get a commuter car of some sort, I'd look long and hard at the Jetta TDI Wagon.
I got one word for you. Noo-kyoo-lar. It's pronounced noo-kyoo-lar.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Sorry for deviating from the primary discussion topic of female-penis-attraction, and correlations between small genitals and large means of transportation, but this is actually a very good point.
...) and am quite exposed to some of the more bizzarre green movements, some of which, I daresay, are just a bunch of tree-hugging idiots.
For the sake of perspective, I'm a 4-wheel-driving aussie, I drive a truck (... to places no Prius has gone before
Now mind you, I like nature, spend time in nature and am all for preserving it. However, some tree-hugging truck-bashers are too resistant to common sense.
For starters, most proper trucks run on Diesel engines, and do twice the mileage per volume of fuel compared to their similar-engine-sized petrol (aka 'gas' in American) brethren.
Now I'd rather refer to human affordable practical vehicles such as Toyota Landcruisers and Nissan Patrols, not utterly-impractical overpriced-by-a-fucking-order-of-magnitude gimmicks for LA rappers ala Hummer H2/H3 or military-grade vehicles ala H1.
This where both the parent comment and TFA touched on. An average 4WD has a lifespan of 2-3 times that of a small private car. Moreso even for a Prius that needs a 7000A$ - circa 5K US$ - at least that's what it costs here in Oz - battery change every so often.
If you factor in the resource costs of making and recycling 2-3 times more cars to service the same amount of need, this sheds some unwelcome light on economic vehicles that last little.
One argument that floats
One point that comes
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Gas turbines, as well as vapour turbines used for energy generation, are MUCH more efficient than your average piston engine. I believe it's something like 50-60% vs 20-25%.
Rangerovers. No women drive Landrovers, or indeed classic Rangerovers (except horsey women). Only those damn ugly new ones.
That's because they've been totaled, dumbass. I've got 160K miles on mine and the only things that's needed to be replaced other then damage from getting hit has been a a steering wheel cover and a clutch pack in the transmission. That's not bad for a truck that's been beat on since I got it. And yes, even without insurance, it's a lot cheaper to drive it then to make payments on a new japanese truck.
... and yes, I should use preview so as not to have silly half-sentences stuck to the bottom of what I post.
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So, if I'm a mechanical engineer who earned his phd in the field of energy conversion, my entire life being the study and development of methods of converting energy in most efficient ways possible and, just as an example, has personally designed a Stirling engine (the far and away most efficient heat engine cycle in existence -- only one that can theoretically match Carnot efficiency -- 4 times as efficient as gasoline engine in sizes I was working with) for use in conjunction with electricity generation, yet thinks hybrids are a stupid method of automotive propulsion, am I undoubtedly a right-wing political zealot?
Maybe you actually use your truck for real off-road purposes, but the vast majority of truck/suv owners don't do so. I grew up in Vermont (about 80% unimproved dirt roads), and one of the most common sights was some idiot yuppie from connecticut slid off the road in his 4WD SUV as the natives drove happily past in beat-up 1987 Saabs, Subarus, and Hondas. Even in California, I see this all the time: big fancy trucks and SUVs struggling to stay on the road in conditions better than anything I've ever seen in the winter. You'd be surprised where you can get a Prius to go if you have some idea of what you're doing.
I'm also not sure where "An average 4WD has a lifespan of 2-3 times that of a small private car" comes from; My father and I drove an Accord to 427,000 miles with only oil changes and new belts. It would still be on the road and pushing 600k if he hadn't rolled it over, haha.
I have nothing against people who genuinely use trucks / 4x4s where smaller cars wouldn't suffice. But I have big objections to idiots who live in the suburbs and "need a big SUV" because they go skiing once a year / need to carry stuff back from Home Depot / whatever.
So the energy cost of a Prius is $325,000? Ha. Mine cost under $21k before taxes, and 100,000 miles worth of gasoline will cost much less than $10k. Even with terrible estimates for maintenance and repairs, the whole out-of-pocket cost will be less than $50k, even if I were to scrap it after 100,000 miles. Even if every penny spent went for energy cost, which is utter nonsense, these guys are off by a factor is six. More likely a factor of ten, unless you think that labor is an energy cost. Most of the energy cost was actually paid by the manufacturer or gas transporter before retail sale, and was passed on to the consumer. So they have to be operating under the hallucination that the energy cost of a manufactured item is an order of magnitude more than the actual cost. Recycling and clean-up is expensive, yes, but there isn't a 10x adder behind the scenes for every vehicle, that the government or someone is paying. These guys have dropped a few decimal points....
Can I ask when has a Prius had to EVER replace its battery in its normal 200K mi+ lifetime? (Toyota recycles batteries btw and a 150K mi warranty). Remember, the vehicle model has been around 10 years (1997) so plenty of history to look up.
Also, it's hard to imagine how a Prius contributed to Sudbury's problems considering it was built in 1972 and rehabilitated in 1992. Did it build some sort of time machine too? Or maybe it came from all of the rest of the vehicles and batteries sold up until the hybrids became a reality in 1997?
And where is the evidence that an American vehicle actually lasts 300K miles vs a Japanese vehicle? We all know TFA is FUD.
and also meant K miles
:-/
Is that engineers or salesmans K?
I'm wondering because I'd like to know if one K miles is 1024 miles or 1000 miles.
Thank you
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
I have a friend who's a real car nut. He's also a big environmentalist. When it came time for me to buy a new car, he specifically told me not to get a hybrid. His rational was that the chemicals it took to make the batteries on the thing, and what happened to them after the cells lifespan was of a larger environmental impact than a run of the mill compact car. Which makes sense to me.
You're thinking of the earlier HF 1.3 liter: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda_CRX "The original 1.3 liter car and the later American-market CRX HF model could reliably achieve better than 50 mpg, more than a decade before gas-electric hybrids appeared on the market, and at no price premium over the base model; the 1.3 liter was rated at 52 mpg for CITY and 57mpg highway.[1] " Gee, and it wasn't even a hybrid. Anemic as hell, though, with less than 70hp. the 1988 SI was about 108 hp. Shit, this makes me want to go find an original HF and restore it, since I drive about 400 miles per week for work.
I donated my '84 Fiero with 378K miles on it. I had to replace the timing gears and cam at 210K but that was the majority of the work done (I don't want to talk about the headlight motors). I saw it driving down the road rattling like usual a few months later in a nearby town. I currently have an 87' Fiero with 295K miles and all it really needs right now is a transmission rebuild and another clutch. I also had a Nissan truck/SUV thing (Pathfinder, I think) for a few months that had 310K on it and ran great when I gave it to my brother.
It isn't abnormal for a car to run for 250-350K miles nowadays, or older days. Those Fieros were made 20 years ago and weren't exactly the height of technology. I'm looking forward to registering the 87 GT as a classic next year.
>> but the vast majority of truck/suv owners don't do so
True, and I absolutely agree. Many of which, especially the crossovers/softroaders/whatever-you-call-them, are not diesel and offer no such option. Nevertheless this has no impact on the argument at hand.
>> I'm also not sure where "An average 4WD has a lifespan of 2-3 times that of a small private car" comes from
From the sheer numbers of older 4WD's on our roads as compared to the number of smaller cars of the same age. This is actually an official Aussie statistic I've seen quoted in a newspaper, I couldn't be bothered to dig it up. The gut feel I get by looking at the cars I see around me does confirm this though.
This does not, by the way, necessarily have to be the same in the states or anywhere else. A different mentality can easily dictate different consumer behavior.
>> But I have big objections to idiots who live in the suburbs and "need a big SUV" because they go skiing once a year / need to carry stuff back from Home Depot / whatever.
I understand where you're coming from, even agree, but I think your way of going about it is altogether wrong.
Telling people they are idiots and dictating their needs will not make them do what you want (even if they are idiots). Even if it's for a once-a-year ski or family trip.
The constructive way of going about it is offering alternatives, not acting derogatory towards people who do not share your view.
A Prius is NOT an alternative, unless you're an idealist fanatic who is either shitting bricks of money or can't do math.
A car that runs on LPG (Liquid Petroleum Gas) is. Not a silver bullet, but it is (LPG is a byproduct of making petrol. As long as they'll be making petrol, running a car on it helps dispose of it cleanly, and runs your car cleaner than it would on petrol).
A 4WD, even if you never use it outside the suburbs, that runs Diesel, is an alternative. It offers a big family vehicle, and quite often runs on less fuel than a standard petrol sedan.
A European sedan that runs diesel is an excelent alternative. VERY little fuel consumption, very long mechanical life. As long as you can stomach paying the bigger import costs, more frequent servicing and more expensive parts.
Other alternatives like the Aussie bladerunner initiative (a gutted Toyota Starlet or Daihatsu Charade that runs on battery, charged off the mains, not regenerative breaking ala prius) and can go 60-100km per charge and ~60mph - a glorified golf-cart that can easily do what my second car does) is very promising.
The luxemburg-designed soon-to-be-indian-built compressed-air car all over wired yesterday is also an alternative.
Sorry for being too lazy to bring links, feel free to google. Karma whores welcome to do the work.
At the moment there is no silver bullet here in Australia. There are compromises, and there ARE non-perfect choices that are cleaner than others (and I'm making some such choices, even by owning a large 4WD). Green idealists don't like non-perfect choices, which is why I call them tree-hugging idiots. I much prefer the pragmatic approach of actually making a difference by voting with my consumer dollars for what the best compromise (and hopefully soon a win-win non-compromise product) between environmental and affordable.
The important thing to understand here, if you allow me to make an analogy, is that just because there's a VIA desktop processor that runs windows reasonably at 30Watts, doesn't make it immoral to own a Xeon or a high-end desktop CPU. Rather than point the finger at the consumers, hit your local government representative for government subsidies to encourage low-power alternatives, be they EDEN CPU's, LPG vehicles (installation is subsidized and LPG fuel is not/very-lightly taxed in Australia for this very reason), diesel or mains-powered vehicles.
And never forget, the math counts.
As long as Toyota keeps selling the Prius for nearly twice any other compatible car in the same category, I'll be eyeballing a Diesel VW Golf, maybe a diesel Alfa or even a second diesel 4WD, and, quite possibly if the bladerunner goes commercial, one of them.
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TFA failed to note that the environmental impact dates between 1930ish and 1992, and years before the appearance of any nickel-battery hybrid vehicle. TFA also fails to note how much of the nickel there goes to Toyota and how much to Toyota's hybrid battery usage. It seems to be a great whitewashed assumption.
If anything, World War I and World War II used most of the nickel from there. Maybe TFA should've checked its sources a bit closer.
>> And where is the evidence that an American vehicle actually lasts 300K miles vs a Japanese vehicle?
That's putting words in my mouth. I never made it an American vs. Japanese thing. I own two Japanese vehicles - a Nissan Patrol and a Toyota Echo. The former is likely to outlast the latter by a very long shot. Patrols typically do over 400K, I've seen lots going 600,000-1,000,000. Cars from the Toyota Echo category would typically do ~200,000, and would very rarely go over the 300-400K range.
I will admit I am somewhat naive as to the aspects of owning a Prius, as I've never owned one. I was informed by a Prius owner I've known that replacing the battery is a major financial pain. I've also seen this little bit on the "The Age" (major Aussie paper) site yesterday:
"I looked into a Prius when I was buying a car recently, but decided against it after I found out that the battery needs replacing after about 7-8 yrs, and that the replacements cost about $7,000. The battery is rechargeable, making it fuel efficient & low on emissions, however apparently the energy required to create each battery is so great as to negate the savings made during the driving life of the car."
This is a vibe I've been getting from lots of directions ever since the Prius started selling here.
I do admit you may be right and it might be FUD. Would you care to refute it?
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I've always maintained that the least-environmetally-detrimental cars are cheap subcompacts such as the Geo Metro. The Metro got 58 mpg (look it up on wikipedia if you don't believe me). The Metro is no longer in production (didn't sell well) but cars such as the Chevy Aveo, Honda Fit, and Toyota Yaris come pretty close. Yet you will not see many subcompacts in the driveways of supposedly environmentally-conscious yuppies, because a Chevy Aveo doesn't have that "I'm better than you" image.
The Prius is powered by not one, but two engines: a standard 76 horsepower, 1.5-liter gas engine found in most cars today and a battery- powered engine that deals out 67 horsepower and a whooping 295ft/lbs of torque, below 2000 revolutions per minute. Essentially, the Toyota Synergy Drive system, as it is so called, propels the car from a dead stop to up to 30mph. This is where the largest percent of gas is consumed. As any physics major can tell you, it takes more energy to get an object moving than to keep it moving. The battery is recharged through the braking system, as well as when the gasoline engine takes over anywhere north of 30mph. It seems like a great energy efficient and environmentally sound car, right?
The ICE in a Prius will usually kick in at much lower than 30 MPH; unless you accelerate very gingerly, it will usually kick in somewhere around 12 MPH. Also, 0 to 30 MPH acceleration is "the largest percentage of gas" only when you aren't going much over 40 MPH, since energy is proportional to the square of velocity. And a physics major who tells you that it takes more energy to get an object moving than to keep it moving, without qualifying that he means "in a vacuum" (or at least, under low drag conditions), should change majors. Not that this invalidates anything else in the article, it's just that as an explanation of a hybrid's theory of operation, it isn't very good.
You would be right if you went by the old government EPA estimates, which netted the Prius an incredible 60 miles per gallon in the city and 51 miles per gallon on the highway. Unfortunately for Toyota, the government realized how unrealistic their EPA tests were, which consisted of highway speeds limited to 55mph and acceleration of only 3.3 mph per second. The new tests which affect all 2008 models give a much more realistic rating with highway speeds of 80mph and acceleration of 8mph per second. This has dropped the Prius's EPA down by 25 percent to an average of 45mpg. This now puts the Toyota within spitting distance of cars like the Chevy Aveo, which costs less then half what the Prius costs.
That's also not a very good characterization of the problems with the old tests. The biggest problem is the city tests, which show many cycles of acceleration from a stop to just barely over 30 MPH. That might hold for urban driving, but these days, city driving in a major metropolitan area (such as Orange County, CA, where I live) includes a lot of acceleration from 0 to 45 or 55 MPH between traffic lights that are often spaced half a mile apart, or less. And accelerating to just 42 MPH uses twice the fuel that accelerating to 30 MPH does. But that doubling applies to all vehicles, not hybrids. Also, the sensitivity to rate of acceleration is not nearly as great as the sensitivity to top-end speed, so I suspect his "3.3 MPH per second" is of only minor relevance.
One thing noticeable about the new tests is that they are done for shorter periods, which does not allow for vehicle warmup. So the new test might be more accurate for those with short commutes (20 minutes or less). For those with long commutes, it might be less accurate. The Prius mileage is demonstrably sensitive to engine temperature, after all.
The point is, you could drive a Prius with a speed profile that follows the old EPA schedule, and you would come close to the old Prius EPA rating (maybe exceed it, even). But you also would have to follow that schedule to get the EPA mileage in any other car.
The actual drop in Prius MPG due to the new testing is more like 16%, from 55 MPG (combined city/hwy) to 46 MPG. Even if the author is singling out the drop in city MPG, which went from 60 MPG to 48 MPG, that is only a 20% drop, not the stated 25% drop. But true city driving (as defined in EPA tests) is a rare thing, at least in my experience. In highway driving, there was only a 12% drop.
But, I wanted socialized health insurance!
Ladder frame. Steel bumpers. 6 gauge steel fenders etc
I don't put many miles on my '60 Saratoga anymore. It's mostly just for looking at.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Hence a dinky underpowered econobox vs. the Prius.
The MPG will be very similar, performance likewise.
Sure your payback is short if you compare it to a 20mpg car. How about comparing it the cheapest Toyota econobox.
But don't forget to take into account that hybrids make hippy chicks puddle. And who can put a price on that. That would make the comparison Prius vs. VW Microbus.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
It's just that simple. No need to complicate things further.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
You've got lifespan in hours, two different dollar amounts for killowatt hours - retail and commercial and then "energy payback".
So when you say energy payback. Do you mean it will take Me the consumer less? From the point of view of the power grid? Can you explain again in more detail.
Sorry, I wasn't trying to draw an American vs Japanese argument, just it seems to boil down to such many a times.
:P):
So sure, considering hybrids first started selling ~1997, and the most popular version is the 2004 generation of the Prius, 7-8 years for battery replacement is pulled out of nothing; do the math.
I don't know how much energy is used to create the battery, but the battery is fully recycled (Toyota offers $200 bounty), it has a 150K mi warranty in California (100K in some other states). Also, the battery SoC is kept between 40% and 80% constantly with no deep-cycling under normal usage, it's not mistreated like a cel-phone/laptop battery, and so tends to last a long time as current real history is proving. No Prius has had it's battery replaced due to age yet.
Batteries cost $3000 USD retail ignoring junk yards for parts, and the price of technology constantly deflating due to economies of scale and such.
A well-known Canadian taxi driver has already bruised up his taxi Prius well over 200Km http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8839690/ with no battery replacement.
It's relatively safe to say a Prius will last as long as any other vehicle on the road under normal care which happens to be a lot of just rotate tires and oil and not much else.
If find it strange some single out the Prius when most don't even keep their other vehicles past 10 years. I think the energy calculations should include the amount needed to produce the gasoline used by the vehicle by the amount the vehicle uses, lifetime.
Then some personal hard numbers (making me probably biased
$3743.90 petro
$ 144.20 oil
$ 740.05 service
$ 356.22 tire replacement
$4984.37 total over 62399K miles ~ $0.08 per mi.
Maybe it's "The Age" that needs to be supporting its position with real numbers...
Current hybrids have components that are capable of being recycled in a higher proportion of their total social energy costs than non-hybrid models. Light-weight metals (rather than the sound-deadening metals now common in conventional vehicles) and plastics currently have higher desirability so more of the hybrid's non-electronic components can be bought and sold more readily in the scrappage and recycling industry.
With that comes a price, though. It is more energy intense to recycle high-tech electronics, battery(ies), related components, motors, controller(s) and small items such as special gauges and regenerative braking parts.
Whatever costs more to recycle than to scrap will be scrapped (short of government incentives to encourage the former). So be surprised if the recyclable component costs top the non-recyclable by any meaningful metric. Or that hybrids would have higher costs because more of the components/materials are recycled.
In all, while the industry as a whole the cost of recycling is about $119,000 per vehicle, hybrids cost more than $140,000 per vehicle to recycle. Again, the owners of the vehicles do not pay this amount. Recyclers pay and resell at a typical 11 percent profit margin over and above their total expenses.
Surprise! It turns out that a huge chunk of the high cost of hybrids is born by the customers of the recycling industry. Suckers!
How can a vehicle costing $30,000 generate $140,000 in recyclables?
Remember that we are discussing energy usage, not the cost of the vehicle. Over time, for instance, the vehicle will sell on average of five times in its lifetime, each time at a portion of its original cost but generally bringing the lifetime expenditure for the vehicle into the two to four times original cost range depending on desirability and demand.
I'm beginning to understand. If I buy a car for $25000 and sell it for $15000, and that person sells it for $10000, and the next guy sells it for $5000, that's $55000 that the car's consumers pay, collectively, just to take possession of it.
We are also discussing energy consumption, not costs. That $140,000 in recyclable energy costs will generate $160,000 to $220,000 in net revenue to recyclers. Additionally, the support industries to recyclers expend significant energy for the production and maintenance of necessary recycling equipment. Government agencies and those who remanufacture recycled material into other products similarly expend significant quantities of energy in support of the recycling of a single car.
Who'd have thought that a car costing $25000 to the original buyer (and $55000 in total purchase price, as we've seen) could contain enough value to generate so much revenue? Obviously, Toyota has the wrong business model. Instead of selling Priuses to consumers at a mere $25K per pop, they should just build the cars, and then immediately recycle them! I own some Toyota stock, and that would be a big boost to my portfolio.
Toyota currently has the most sophisticated methods of disposing of the nickel batteries found in Prius. But to do so today is likely to remain energy intense and unprofitable until the quantity of such batteries is high enough to encourage others to invest in the development of better recycling methods. CNW calculates that it costs $3 in energy to recycle a conventional lead acid battery and more than $93 for the Prius battery.
That's pretty misleading. A car's lead-acid battery weights about 1/10 the NiMH battery of a Prius. What's more, the Prius battery is probably replaced about 1/3 as often. So the recycling costs by weight are about the same for lead-acid and NiMH batteries. If the previous revenue figures have any validity then $93 is not going to be a deterrent to recycling the NiMH.
I think we've been had. This "study" seems to be just an early (and elaborate) April Fool's joke.
But, I wanted socialized health insurance!
Sooo, what was the funny part again? At least they should try to be funny about it...
Besides the number unaccounted for mentioned already by other, I can only say about ecology: Obviously, if you are going 100 Miles per day on a Highway, buy no hybrid car. By an light, if possible used car. If you are going to be for 1 hour per day in the traffic jam of your city, buy a hybrid (or even an electric only...).
If you are concerned about material being transported around during production, demand for duties or - the easies solution: make energy more expensive. The only reason why the normal automotive manufacuteres have more effective production chains is that they are established longer and produce a larger amount of vehicles. Otherwise they are very happy in buying part from all over the world.... I am sure that in the moment when a significant part of the nickel produced in the mine (which is NOT equivalent to the mine delivering ALL the nickel for the Prius) will be used for the Prius, a short production chain will be established.
If your nickel production facilities suck because of poor enviromental laws, request better laws and let them pay the damage.
If you just make things (engery consumption, SO2 emmission, special waste) mor expensive buy taking taxes the market will settle the problem by itself.
I have to echo stephentyrone, as an aussie who grew up in the bush with unsealed roads all around we never needed a 4x4. The only acceptable use of a 4x4 is park rangers, some firefighters, and those going into the deep outback (for which they can hire). Everything else for farming, or general use that gets a bit offroad a ute is more than enough.
Dipshits are always justifying their use of 4x4s but RARELY need them, just as they defend steel or aluminium bullbars when there are only a very very limited number of people who need them. 70% of the australian population is metropolitan, the other 30% is mostly still urban in the country towns. There is a tiny number of people who live outside country towns in the bush (like I did), and only a tiny number of those actually need a 4x4 for their jobs. Compared to SUV sales which are like 1 in 4 you can see how a person would be skeptical of your claim seeing as you didn't say it was for your job.
You may well absolutely need you 4x4 for work, but there are a hell of a lot of people who use your exact same reasoning who are full of shit mate.
http://john1701a.com/prius/owners/jesse3.htm
5 37&highlight=crock#post2494537 and http://priuschat.com/index.php?showtopic=30444&st= 0&p=403215&#entry403215
n sumer-report-list_x.htm for a ranking of reliability by manufacturer. Hummer is almost dead last.
This CNW story is such crap and its numbers make no sense. It's old news. I posted my critiques of CNW's old news before at http://www.my350z.com/forum/showthread.php?p=2494
Did you know that CNW claims that the Prius costs $325K to DISPOSE while they claim it cost $13K to make it? Did you that a VW Phaeton the sold for $64K to ~$100K incurs $2.5 MILLION in disposal costs? This is the type of crap that CNW spews out.
It also makes perfect (!) sense that they claim a Prius only lasts 100K miles when the HV battery is warranted for 10 years/150K miles in CA and a few other states. The Prius also has an excellent reliability record while the Hummer H2 has a terrible one... so therefore, the terrible one should last 300K miles. Right....
See http://www.usatoday.com/money/autos/2007-03-01-co
(manufacturing cost) != (ecofriendliness).
I can't give you exact numbers, but the most inefficient petrol engine you can imagine dragging 2.3 tonnes of truck (empty) - something that does ~20L per 100K, or 5km per Litre, converted to LPG (which does roughly 25L/100km or 1-to-4), having done 25000km for me since I bought it, has cost about 70 x 40A$ 90Litre LPG tanks and about 10 x 50A$ 70Litre petrol tanks.
That's my 1993 dual-fuel LPG-converted Nissan Patrol GQ (I haven't bought a diesel cuz I didn't know any better at the time).
I won't bother with the service figures because they're as negligible in my example as they are in yours.
That's 3300A$ which is (about 2600US$) for 25000km (~15400 miles).
Which is about 0.17$ per mile.
Consider the following which makes this a moot comparison to begin with
[a] A 7-seater that takes me in the bush on weekends. A prius isn't either of these.
[b] A Patrol is designed for a longer lifespan - Going on 200K as an AVERAGE lifespan of a prius (basing this off rough average lifespan of a vehicle in its category, not its battery life) two priuses would need to be built and recycled for a single patrol.
[c] It's comparing US oil prices to Aussie ones, fuel may cost differently there and here
[d] This is an example of an LPG-converted vehicle that is unimaginably fuel-hungry in the first place. A fairer comparison may be a prius-sized Sedan converted to LPG.
[e] We haven't touched on price-depreciation, which would be uncomparable anyway because it's two different vehicles depreciating on two different markets, at two very different phases of their life. That has, however, been known to make significant contributions to the TCO of (relatively) expensive new or almost-new cars.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not anti-hybrid, quite on the contrary.
I'm just saying that as of today, here in Australia, the fact that the Prius is as expensive as diesel cars - starting at circa 40K$ for new (and I haven't seen any other hybrids around yet, though I may be out of date) make it not the king of the hill, but just one of a few pragmatic ecological-economic options to take, be they (factory- or aftermarket-installed) LPG, Diesel or hybrids, as consuming roughly half of what an equivalent petrol car consumes makes it no more eco-friendly than a diesel, that achieves roughly the same figure.
And since I've mentioned the 40K$ figure for Diesels or the Prius, it may be worth mentioning that cheaper 4WD's (not exactly Land Cruisers but not softroaders either), such as the Hyundai Terracan Diesel, retail for ~30K$ new and can do a hell of a lot more than either a Prius or a VW Golf, and would display the fuel economy of my wife's tiny Echo.
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>> You may well absolutely need you 4x4 for work
Close.
An Aussie such yourself may be aware that some people (quite a few, in fact, in this country) regard this as a hobby and deliberately buy a 4WD for this purpose.
I need a 4WD so I can go 4WD'ing in Victorian high country, not for work. For work I use a train and a pair of rollerblades, which may be considered 4x4 if you think about it, however their fuel economy is somewhat debatable
Call me up next time you go do the S-track at O'tools flat or Wombat state park during mud season with your ute. I'll bring a few stubbies, sit back and watch.
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I would assume the hummer to be a box actually, to better estimate what aerodynamic friction that a car would have against the wind. better than a shphere shape. Even finner would be two box one on top of the other a bit shorter but then this would had a lot of complication.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
First off, the HV batteries are warranted for 10 years/150K miles in CA and a few other states. This guy is at 280K miles BTW. http://john1701a.com/prius/owners/jesse3.htm
y /2004/hybrid.html.
They're also recycled. See http://www.toyota.com/about/environment/technolog
"Is there a recycling plan in place for nickel-metal hydride batteries?
Toyota has a comprehensive battery recycling program in place and has been recycling nickel-metal hydride batteries since the RAV4 Electric Vehicle was introduced in 1998. Every part of the battery, from the precious metals to the plastic, plates, steel case and the wiring, is recycled. To ensure that batteries come back to Toyota, each battery has a phone number on it to call for recycling information and dealers are paid a $200 "bounty" for each battery."
The Hummer H2 weighs a whopping 6400 lbs. An 06 Prius weighs 2890 lbs.
Informative would have been that the battery are recycled (as pointed out by other post) and tehre is a bounty of xxx$ (200$ was cited) to get them back. And yes they DO KNOW what to do with the old battery : get the nickel back or reuse it for new battery.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Fair enough. Get and use what meets your needs, and the choices aren't as bad as what TFA makes it out to be.
Don't forget to take in account that diesel has roughtly 10-13% more energy content by volume which skews any direct MPG/LKm comparison between petro and diesel.
My family used to own a Nissan Safari Patrol 4x4 (I think thats what it was called anyway) which they bought in 1990. It survived 16 years in the Saudi Arabian desert with *NO* spare parts required. I also, stupid me, got it stuck in a lot of soft sand situations, and it got out of it with ease - my current Nissan Sentra has trouble getting off a half inch of wet grass. That truck was awesome, I highly recommend it.
You know, I don't get this whole "Prius owners are smug arseholes" thing. Maybe some are, like some Hummer owners buy them to increase their attractiveness. I would like to own a Prius because it gets a good mileage rating. I don't drive offroad. I just think, for some crazy stupid reason, it would be really neat to drive for 500+ miles before having to fill up the tank again. For the amount of driving I do, it would almost certainly be cheaper overall owning a Prius due to the reduced amount of petrol purchased. Add in the fact that oil prices - and thus petrol prices - change constantly, ususally upwards, then having a car that doesn't guzzle a gallon of the stuff to move just 15 miles or so means I'm less financially screwed due to world oil price fluctuations. Its nothing to do with "OMG I'm better than you". Its about, say, driving from Houston to San Antonio (200 or so miles) with the AC blasting the whole way and only having to fill up when I get there, or perhaps halfway on the way back - or, in an ideal world perhaps, when I get back. Is that really such a crime?
7-year/100,000-mile powertrain warranty begins from the original in-service date
1-year/12,000-mile non-powertrain warranty begins after expiration of original warranty
3 years/36,000 miles or on date sold as certified preowned
We refer to those as "Toorak Tractors" in Melbourne (Oz), but you see it everywhere of course. It's always a 40-something mother of one or two, shopping. The main purpose of the vehicle's increased ground clearance is in picking parking spaces from a distance, and the bull-bar is to make sure that when she's crap at parking, the other cars suffer and not hers. And the snorkel is just a phallic thing, everyone knows that. Lately it's always a BMW or Mercedes or some glitzy schmitzy thing with GPS and radar and beepers and other creepers.
However, Diesel engines do have a much longer lifespan, on average. They are very low maintenance and fatigue very gradually, almost imperceptibly. They are terrible for city driving because they release a lot of soot, but the other emissions are mainly CO2 and very little sulphur or benzene or other nasties that lighter fuel engines release (hence the engine life is longer due to less corrosion).
The main (other) reason 4WD SUV's have a long lifespan is because they are engineered to survive the conditions they operate under (like the old Volkswagen Beetle was). When you look underneath one of the proper ones, like a Landcruiser, you see all rust resistant parts, no compromises on gearbox design or bearing sizes or break system specifications. It's not like a bubble car which is manufactured to be shiny and round, with a muffled lawnmower engine inside and aluminium foil body.
However, from the environment point of view, it is true to say that most cars you see have one person too many in them.
Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
I don't know squat about Hummers or Priusi (?) but I did investigate some figures comparing gasoline to electric bicycle engines.
I found that the 4-cycle gasoline engines were quite a bit more economical over their lifetimes than the comparable electric setups were:
http://www.norcom2000.com/users/dcimper/assorted/
(The question I have now is this: if an electric engine has a higher cost-per-mile than a gasoline engine does, then how can you improve the overall efficinency of a gasoline engine by adding a [less-efficient] electric motor onto it?...)
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The "cost=pollution" theorem is generally accurate, but course the question of pollution itself (particularly which types of pollution impact the environment more or less than which other types) is much more complicated. Simpletons tend to insist that anything electric must be a better choice than any internal-combustion engine, just because internal-combustion engines have exhaust pipes, and, you know, like, "icky stuff" comes out of them--but that's rather short-sighted; smog isn't the only type of pollution, nor is it even the most dangerous.
To compare the "ecological benefit" of electric vehicles (or even of combination-engine vehicles) it's easy to imagine 'no smog', but most people have difficulties conceiving the ecological damage of every car needing a new 1000-1500 lb battery every couple of years, and the disposal (or recycling) that such a massive industrial undertaking would cause--that we currently don't have at all yet. If you think batteries are friendly to the environnment, pick one (any one), crack it open and spread the contents on your vegetable garden and see how your salad tastes next week.
...Certainly batteries can be recycled, for that matter everything could be recycled, but for most materials it doesn't make economic sense and only results in using more energy and resources (and creating more pollution!) than just dumping them in a hole in the ground would.
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Also We Note: I became suspicious of hybrids early on, at least as they were marketed in the USA.
Why did California feel the need to offer rebates for purchasing them?
If hybrids really did last just as long and work just as well and get much better mileage, the government shouldn't have needed to pay anyone tax dollars to buy the things. I'm generally supportive of causing less pollution, but when the government thinks they have to hand out money to people in order to get them to buy a car that's supposed to be more economical than the cars they are currently driving, my bullshit alarm starts buzzing. I would bet that history will show that the cost per mile of hybrids will end up being WAY higher than for conventional petroleum-engine vehicles, and that this was simply a ham-fisted attempt to conceal that fact.
~
'But I have big objections to idiots who live in the suburbs and "need a big SUV" because they go skiing once a year / need to carry stuff back from Home Depot / whatever.'
Following that same line of thought, I have big objections to anyone other than police and military "needing" any form of automobile capable of exceeding 70 mph. These vehicles serve no purpose other than to provide criminals and terrorists a way to escape from police, and cause thousands of human deaths annually in the U.S. alone--not to mention the environmental damage and roadway deaths of millions of innocent animals caused by these high-speed, can't-brake-for-animals-under-any-circumstances missiles. I say we ban them.
(satire and sarcasm notice for those who don't get it)
Ignorance is curable, stupid is forever.
Very interesting post...got me thinking.
My ClimatePrediction.net client is currently chewing away on a pair of scenarios which, the app tells me, have approximately 3000 hours (wall-clock) to complete. By your figures, I'm adding roughly a ton of CO2 to the atmosphere for every four iterations I process (assuming I only leave the computer on to run CPDN, which is questionable).
If this is correct, it would perhaps be well for the Boinc people to call this out on their FAQ...
So you are a yuppie fag or a cashed up bogan who tears up dirt for no reason. Try REAL bushwalking mate, not this no-effort bullshit with all the amenities, I can go places no four wheeled vehicle can go with my own two feet. If you want to appreciate nature that's the way to go, if you want to conquer mountains that's the way to go. If you need to feel safe with a shitload of equipment, or you are too weak to carry your own tent or swag, go the gutless 4WD.
Some things in modern life are not needed, like women's magazines, your hobby is another piece in the decline of civilization. BTW do you live in Toorak by any chance? what a laugh.
Before I start, let me just say that I DO NOT think the Hummer is an "environmentally friendly vehicle". The current incarnation of the Hummer (the H3) is nothing but a GMC Canyon, a rather small pickup truck.
While the Canyon comes in both inline-4 and inline-5 cylinder models, the H3 comes with the I-5 by default, at 242HP. Five cylinders, people.. in a configuration that is known to be more efficient than V* models. Most cars have more cylinders than this "truck". And when it comes to trucks, believe me, there's a huge difference between this and a 5.7L V8.
Towing capacity. When we needed a truck to tow our new boat (3500lbs wet-weight, which was the max for our van.. doable, but barely) we specced these out of curiosity. Unfortunately I don't have the number on hand, but an H3 could not tow our boat; it had a towing capacity near 2500lbs. This is not a heavy-duty truck.
Frankly it gets to me when people tout the "OMG ITS AN SUV" line; don't get me wrong, they are not what we should be driving to save the environment; but take a look at the number of half-ton pickups out there with 5.7L V8 engines. We don't see this as a problem, because these full-fledged trucks are perceived as working vehicles.. But go ahead, take another look. Look at the number of trucks on the road with pristine paint jobs and sexy aluminum rims. Working vehicles? I think not. The truck has been made into one of the most beautiful vehicles to drive, but they are also one of the most costly to our environment.
There are lots of examples out there for us to use to show how insensitive we're being to the environment.. The Humvee, the H1 and even to a lesser extent the H2 are all good examples. The H3 is not. Pick something with a little more gusto, like an Avalanche or a Suburban/Tahoe/Yukon. A Yukon Denali was on par with a Hummer H2, in terms of both the niche it filled and the gas it consumed (minus the v-peen factor). The Denali is still here, the H2 is not. Its time to move on.
Please, pick your battles and stop whacking this dead horse just because its name is Hummer. There's a lot worse out there, and believe me, there's a lot more Avalanches and Yukons on the road than there are Hummers.
Just my $1.35.
-Aikon
p.s. I'm not picking on GM, I just choose to write about what I know.
Only three things are certain; death, taxes, and apocryphal quotations - Ben Franklin.
if you truly care about it as much as you say, then buy a diesel!! a diesel VW, especially, gets the same gas mileage as a Prius at about 10,000 dollars less. And no problems with battery disposal at the end of the life of the car! No battery replacement, either!
It is by my will alone my thoughts acquire motion; it is by the juice of the coffee bean that the thoughts acquire speed
This is yet another attempt to juggle numbers to make what you are selling look better. Not really different in kind from Microsofts 'get the facts' campaign that tells us that MS Windows with Office, at about $1,000.00 per seat is cheaper than Debian Linux, at $0.00 per seat. There will be a few who beloeve it. As P. t. famously said, "There's one born every minute."
Energy costs to manufacture a vehicle are directly reflected in the cost. The Hummer costs (and weighs) several times what the prius costs (and weighs). the gas milage (taken from EPA figures) reflect this too. About the only figure where I see a real win for the Hummer is in batteries. The prius has more battery mass than the Hummer. Batteries only last about 3 years, then they have to be replaced. (Typcal for lead acid batteries.) It's a simple question of mass. More weight of metal means more fuel to recycle it or to refine it. You could express it in pounds of car per year to manufacture. By that metric, then both would loose out to a Mercedes. Most cars last about 7 years. Mercedes commonly are driven for 20 years or more. 300,000 miles on the odometer at end of life is not uncommon.
It'll be an interesting dynamic when light weight electrics using ultra capacitors instead of lead acid batteries become available. I hope some of us are still alive when that happens.
Everybody knows 3 people with my name.
Here's the critical bit: "...this information takes into account historic ACCIDENT and disposal records..."
:)
Obviously most of those tiny little cars are more likely to be flattened in an accident with a big old SUV and totalled. With the H1, you simply break out a spatula and scrape the other car off of your bumper. Hence the hummer is more likely to survive for almost 400k miles.
The story is absolute crap and I've already emailed The Recorder's Editor-in-Chief Mark Rowan a week ago when the story appeared on digg
i deBySide.jsp?column=1&id=23173
g ine.jsp?year=2007&make=Toyota&model=Prius
From the article: "The new tests which affect all 2008 models give a much more realistic rating with highway speeds of 80mph and acceleration of 8mph per second. This has dropped the Prius's EPA down by 25 percent to an average of 45mpg. This now puts the Toyota within spitting distance of cars like the Chevy Aveo, which costs less then half what the Prius costs."
Here's the 2008 mpg Aveo getting 23/31 according to the EPA's 2008 website http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/calculatorCompareS
and the 2008 mpg for the Prius getting 48/45: http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/calculatorSelectEn
HOW THE HELL DO YOU Call 23 city compared to 48 city "spitting distance". Even 45mpg highway and 31mpg highway isn't "spitting distance".
The guy is a complete liar and should never write another article. If the reader has to look up every claim the guy makes and prove which ones are true and which ones are false what good is the article?
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
Quoting costs for a car that hansn't broken 70k miles isnt very convincing though. You dont run into the real costs of the car until you run up the miles more. Real service and parts failure has yet to hit your car. My passats cost per mile is probably not much higher than yours at that point, no mechanical failures, same oil changes, new tires and some more gas admittedly (it is a full sized sedan after all but still makes about 32mpg highway). The real cost is keeping your car on the road.
Nothing personal against your pirus... the same would hold true of any car. If you were spending more than that on your car in the first 70k miles that would be pretty damning.
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
I think I have this right. There are really two commercial versions of the Hummer. One is very expensive and is the military version with some military stuff removed and a few ammenities added. Probably will last as long as the military version. The other is a typical GM SUV with a lot of Hummer-like sheet metal wrapped around it. Basically, a Suburban in a Hummer costume?
Will a GM SUV last for 300K miles? A lot depends on whether GM has actually overcome the quality problems that plauged them from about 1960 until the 1990s. They may have. I drove a low mileage GM SUV from Seattle to Vermont a few months ago (cheaper than a moving van) and it really seemed to be a far better vehicle than the godawful junkheaps I occasionally rented on business trips during the dark decades. But even if they have, I don't think the commercial SUV is likely to go 300K miles routinely unless it is used mostly for highway driving. So, I think 150000 miles might be a better estimate of Hummer mileage.
And $3.25 per mile for a Prius. That's $325,000 for 100000 miles, right? Not very plausible no matter how you figure costs.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
Subarus get almost the same gas milage as their FWD competitors.
At least in the states, I've noticed there's a difference between '4WD' and 'AWD'. Subarus and other cars generally have AWD, trucks have 4WD. The difference is in the differentials. 4WD generally locks the differentials, generating maximum traction, but forcing the tires to slip when turning, lowering milage and tire life while in that mode. AWD has, at most, limited slip differentials(frequently if you break a front and a back you still lose traction as the diffs are standard). The gas milage hit is generally from the extra weight and wastage of the extra mechanical connections, which would not be significantly reduced by making the AWD option 'optional'.
I don't read AC A human right
I'd call a battery replacement routine maintenance on a high milage car. The batteries are only rated for 6 years or so. Just like replacing things like belts, spark plugs, and brakepads. They're infrequent maintenance items, but still routine maintenance.
I don't read AC A human right
Whatever you drive, staying at home or riding a bike will produce an environmental benefit exceeding that of using any kind of car/SUV. Downshifting produces instantaneous results. I don't see how we can buy our way out of a problem caused by excessive consumption, even by buying a more fuel-efficient vehicle.
The Hummer numbers are probably from military records, based on (possibly diesel) H1's -- you know, those super-wide ones that almost no one drives -- maintained by on-staff mechanics and driven by soldiers.
In the civilian world people buy H2's and H3's, and they dump them after 100,000 miles because they get bored, or they don't change the oil often enough, or other reasons that apply equally to the Prius.
I've seen as many high-mileage Accords as I have Chevy pickup trucks. Small cars last as long as big ones.
So, what's six inches long, has a head on it, and drives women crazy? A hundred-dollar bill, of course! (Yeah, it's old, but I chortled.)
> If likes attract, explain why it is that men with money attract women without.
Keyword: IMAGE. Not money.
> You do realize women only say "size doesn't matter" when you have a small one.
You show your penis to every women you meet on the street?
Of course it matters to keep them (as in sex in all its aspects matters), but not to get them...
Or it could be that trucks are a hell of a lot easier to repair than compact cars where you have to remove every component just to change something simple. Or that they hold their resale value better. Or that they're more durable. Or that they generally have long generations which make finding parts in a junkyard a simple process.
Don't forget: the advantage(s) of regenerative vehicles slides toward nil during highway driving.
I like my women like I like my coffee. In a burlap bag tied to a donkey.
... or that trucks don't go flying over people's heads. Often.
Only three things are certain; death, taxes, and apocryphal quotations - Ben Franklin.
Oh, I wouldn't suggest banning them for a second. I'm just saying that the owners are idiots. They're welcome to waste their money if they want to. (Of course, I would like to tax the hell out of them - the less money idiots have, the better off everyone else is - but that's another matter altogether).
Any damage caused by test drivers is unlikely to have recurring/chronic problems associated with it.
Entirely untrue. How the vehicle is driven in the first hundred miles can be critical.
Anyone remember when Chevrolet brought out the Corvette ZR1? They recalled a bunch of them because the person who was driving them from the assembly line to the transport truck let the RPMs get too high during the break-in period and damaged some of the camshaft bearings. Apparently it was the middle of winter and they were cold and wanted to get done with the job as quickly as possible.
Even with modern production materials and techniques ring and pinion gears, for example, undergo break-in wear for about 500 miles and can be permanently damaged by driving the vehicle too hard during that time.
There is no reason to buy a brand new car with more than 10 miles on the odometer. The distance driven between places like the assembly line, storage lots at the plant, a transport train, onto and off a transport truck and finally onto the dealer's lot usually is less than one mile. Any additional mileage comes from test drives and moves between dealer lots and should also not total anywhere near 100 miles. At 100 miles, the car is most certainly "used".
I'm probably feeding a troll here, but you actually seem to believe what you say, hence the reply.
Hobbies don't have to be practical. In fact, they are almost by definition unpractical. Some people like to shoot arrows, some like to shoot guns. Some like kayaking, some like motor-boating. Just because somebody has different tastes than you doesn't make their hobby any less fun than yours. As somebody who both enjoys backpacking AND offroading, I can attest to this.
Troll-feeding time.
All good, mate.
I think opinionated bigot hypocrites whose hobby is trolling public forums and telling others their hobbies suck are idiots, so that feeling is mutual. By your same coin, I'm guessing you have no hobbies, and you do, wear or eat absolutely nothing that is not, strictly speaking, needed.
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Hmmm, let me ask my invisible friend who lives in a cloud. What's that, invisible friend? Grub is a heretic and I should kill him? Sorry grub, my invisible friend says I have to kill you now.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
In a second blog post (I'm the author of the other critique above) I look more at the other assumptions CNW made:
http://www.truedelta.com/blog/?p=66
Wait, you think it's good when idiots have less money, and you want to put more money in the hands of politicians?
I've met a few smart politicians. I've never met a smart idiot.
The original article is an opinion piece for a small college newspaper. The whole article is garbage. 1. Take the "spitting distance" mileage, for example. The new EPA combined mileage put the Chevy Aveo at 26 mpg, the Toyota Prius at 46 mpg. So I guess 20 miles more per gallon is "spitting distance." 2. The "Dust-to-dust" study is from a marketing firm, not a science journal. It arrives at an artificially high cost for the Prius by assigning it an arbitrary lifespan of 100k miles, and a Hummer 300k miles. There's Prius being used as cabs that have 200k on them now: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8839690/ And, insofar as a car lasting, what car do you expect to repair less? A Toyota Prius or a GM Hummer? You can check Consumer Reports for the answer to that one. A good analysis of the flaws in dust-to-dust is available at: http://www.truedelta.com/blog/?p=48 3. The Sudbury info is seriously outdated, and the comment about moon buggies (like, when did Nasa test moon buggies -- early 1970's) ought to have given the author a clue. Sudbury was polluted by a century of mining (1870 on). In fact, some of Sudbury's nickel went into making the Statue of Liberty. Currently, the mine is owned by INCO (not Toyota), and produces 100,000 tons of nickel a year, of which Toyota buys 1% (1000 tons). Nickel, by the way, is primarily used to make stainless steel. The Mail on Sunday newspaper, which ran the story the college article is a thin re-write of (visible here http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/pages/live/articles/ news/news.html?in_article_id=417227&in_page_id=177 0 ), used a stock photo from 1994 to illustrate the pollution (visible here http://www.photoboy.com/bin/Cklb?vmo=1173985067754 ). There were, of course, no Prius in existence or being manufactured in 1994.
Sudbury is no longer as polluted, as INCO and the city have planted over 8 million trees there since 1979. The best history online of the Sudbury devastation/reforestation comes from GM Canada (the trees were all cut down in 1871 to help rebuild Chicago after the fire), and it provides telling photos of some of the reclamation from 1979 to present.
http://www.gmcanada.com/inm/gmcanada/english/about /MissionGreen/Daily/Sep22.html
The acid rain problem David Martin of Greenpeace is talking about in is the situation pre 1972. INCO on regreening and SO2 emissions
http://www.inco.com/development/community/profiles /sudbury/default.aspx
celkin: 1
Anonymous Coward: 0
I win.
"Oh c'mon, I wumbo, you wumbo, he/she/me...wumbo, wumboed, womboing...wombology? The study of wumbo? It's first grade,
There is a 200 dollar bounty on dead Prius batteries.
Well I've wrestled with reality for thirty five years doctor, and I'm happy to say I finally won out over it.