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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.
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
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.
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....)
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?
since we're ultimately fuelled by carbon from plants,
Not my boss. He's such a tight-ass, he eats coal and shits diamonds.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
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.
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."
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
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
Well, I can't speak for Hummers. I can't say I like them much myself. However, the 100,000 miles estimate isn't for the vehicle itself, but for the expected life-expectancy of the batteries.
Speaking of reliability, I have family members with GM cars, specifically Buick and Pontiac, which have well over 200,000 miles and are still running well. They aren't sticklers for maintenance either often going 10,000 to 15,000 miles between oil changes. There are quite a few vehicles nowadays with suggested oil change schedules in that range, but I'm talking about 10+ year old cars with 5,000 mile maintenance schedules.
These cars have had as few problems as any Japanese car I know. American automobiles had terrible reliability in the 70s and 80s but they've improved considerably. The problem is the occasional lemon and the fact that they haven't been able to change public perception.
I have a Honda myself. The real problem I see facing the American automakers is poor decision making. They seem incapable of producing the kinds of cars consumers are looking for. They also lack commitment to specific models. Instead of improving existing models and following a process of evolution they're quick to abandon what they have for something completely new. Then there's the ridiculous obsession with SUVs. They seem to exist in a vacuum. To this day they're stuck competing amongst each other instead of responding to foreign competition.
Ford introduces the new Mustang with 60's style design cues. Despite not helping Ford overall the car sells reasonably well in the short-term. Chrysler and GM see this and rush to produce their own muscle cars with classic muscle car design cues. This doesn't help these companies in any meaningful way, but they invest untold resources into these vehicles anyway. It's like they've oblivious to what the foreign competition is doing. Those are the cars the Americans should be thinking about.
The Americans have this expectation that a single vehicle will make enough of a dramatic impact that it will enable their companies to finally be successful. It's a stupid, short-sighted expectation. Something else I find funny is that the Americans need to move manufacturing overseas to be profitable while the Japanese and Europeans open new factories in the US and continue to be very successful. Of course, the Americans are crippled by unions. And that is a big hindrance to success on the part of the US automakers, but that's a whole other story. Suffice it to say that management can't be blamed for all the problems they're having.
Reliability, however, is no longer a problem with US cars. In fact, American cars have been consistently shown to be more reliable than European cars. European cars may be better designed than the American counterparts, but that doesn't make them more reliable.
I don't think hybrids are the wave of the future. They will never completely replace gasoline engines, another technology will arrive before that happens. I see hybrids merely as an overly complicated stopgap measure. They sell because it's a fad. Most people will never save enough in gasoline to make up the premium a hybrid costs over a standard model. And it's a fact that the manufacture and disposal of batteries is very polluting.
The US would be better served driving diesels. Either that or automakers should start offering the same small displacement engines offered in Europe: 1 and 1.2 liter engines. The problem is that the American public is obsessed with the size of it's automotive penis. They need to drive around in vehicles putting out 300hp and more. God forbid a car feels a little sluggish. Then there's the obsession with over-sized SUVs which is another aspect of the same problem.
"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.
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.
Here is what they ACTUALLY used for the lifetimes:
So, not only did they lowball the Prius at 109k, they put the H1 down for 379,000 miles. If you read the explanation of expected life, the author says:
So, basically, they have some kind of formula that they're not going to share with us. But just trust them.
This paper is really a hoot. You can get it from http://cnwmr.com/nss-folder/automotiveenergy/Dust% 20Zip%20Folder.zip
The first 300 or so pages are the explanation and tables. Then there's another 60 pages of the author answering emails. Yet nowhere in those 60 pages can I find anyone apparently asking for hard evidence that the 109k/379k numbers are anywhere in the ballpark. You would think more than a couple of people asked that. But maybe I missed it. Did I mention this went on for 60 pages?
And then the next 120 pages are disclosures, articles, correspondance, photos of cars, editorial cartoons and song lyrics. I am NOT joking.
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.