Hummer Greener Than Prius?

An anonymous reader sends in a story from Central Connecticut State University, claiming that a Prius takes more energy to manufacture than a Hummer — 50% more. In addition, the article claims that the Prius costs $3.25 per mile over its expected lifespan of 100,000 miles compared to $1.95 per mile for the Hummer. The article gets its data from a study by CNW Marketing called Dust to Dust, which is an attempt to account for all the costs of vehicles, from manufacture through operation through repair and disposal. The $3.25/mile cost quoted for the Prius is the 2005 number; for 2006 it is $2.87. This improvement pulled the Prius below the straight industry average — all the other hybrids are still above that average. And the Hummer is not listed at all for 2006. Update: 03/21 00:44 GMT by J : You might want to take those figures with a grain of salt; I don't think anyone's seen the supporting data. Read on for details.

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.

Comments

Re:Greener and manlier

[teflaime]

Overcompensate much?

Re:wtf?

[instarx]

Did you figure in the reduction of the useful life of the computer and/or its components as a result of the amount of power cycling you're doing to it?

Oh, pulease. Not that old wive's tale again. YOu want to use anecdotal information to support this - well I can use it to debunk it. I've been using computers since probably before you were born, I've turned them on and off all the time, and I have NEVER had a hard drive fail, or a power supply for that matter. It is only when components are stressed beyond their capabilities (overclocking, high ambient temps, etc) that these issues have more than a remote chance of happening. Back when computers had tubes, drive platters weighed 2 pounds, connections were soldered and everything cost a fortune to diagnose and fix was the decrease in MTBF due to thermal cycling remotely an issue - and even then it had a big myth factor. You could turn 100 modern computers on and off ten times a day and you couldn't measure the difference in MTBF from 100 computers left on 24/7 (with the possible exception of the on/off switch).