An article (see link) claims that actual energy use by a Hummer is less than that for a Prius. I'm currently reading through the full article, and while it raises some interesting points about hybrid vehicle usage, there is a flaw; it estimates that the cost of a vehicle to society can be greater than that which the owner pays.
Obviously, such a situation doesn't exactly fit classical economics or satisfy the accountants. So while other calculations do demonstrate that hybrid vehicles are more costly to the owner than one with an internal combustion engine, this study does not demonstrate this effectively. My mistake to take this source at face value.
I'm still waiting, by the way, for a good analysis of how much toxic waste is produced to generate the batteries and composites used to make hybrids go. Anybody got a source?
Podcast #1047: The Roman Caesars’ Guide to Ruling
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The Roman caesars were the rulers of the Roman Empire, beginning in 27 BC
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7 comments:
The article also claims that the car is worth ~5-10x it's original purchase price when it's taken apart and recycled. Cool business model.
Yes, but it does do one thing right; it points out that when a vehicle (say a Prius) costs more to make, that does correspond to more pollution and more energy use.
Exactly how much is unsure. Nobody really seems to want to count the barrels of toxic waste created to make a lightweight hybrid car. What a shame.
And try using your real name. From this point forward, I'm going to be deleting "anonymous" comments. I'm not FBI or anything.
Quite right. If a Civic hybrid didn't take more resources to make than a regular Civic, I'd think someone was batty. I'd be very curious to find out what it takes to build a hybrid over an equivalent gas-only, but, unfortunately I'm an individual without a think-tank or company behind me to get the job done. All I've got is this study, and it has problems. So, until there's a good study, we have to pick our lesser evil: unknown (to the consumer) impacts of producing the batteries at a few location, or paying lots of money to hostile Middle Eastern countries and spreading more combustion pollution across the whole US. Show me something concrete or I'll keep favoring the batteries over funding our enemies.
Well, you can take www.edmunds.com (and my) calculation that you'd need to drive about 50,000 miles per year to break even financially, for starters.
How many other things could you do to reduce petroleum (and other energy) usage with the $5000 extra one pays for hybrids? CF bulbs, energy star appliances, new windows/insulation, etc..?
My first comment is that I think it's idiotic to pay over MSRP for a car (as Edmunds implies from the true market pricing number). Being able to get a regular civic under MSRP while a hybrid Civic is priced over MSRP is a bum deal if you really want a hybrid - I can't do much about that, but it does swing the ROI calculation.
For energy reduction in general, CF bulbs have a great ROI and I try and get everyone I know to try it. I have and I'll continue to try and do more (windows are next), but I live in a house and can do that. Lots of people live in apartments and have fewer remodeling options available to them. At least they can get the CF bulbs.
Now, as to reducing petroleum consumption to stop funding US enemies abroad: in 2000, the US got about 2.8% of it's electrical energy from petro sources (the best info I could find quickly was this). Now, to be fair, we do import some natural gas, but we net-import only about 15% of our comsumption (see here), so our imported natural gas generation in 2000 was 16% * 15% = 2.4%. Being generous, 5% of my power consumption fuel goes to foreigners.
Oil, on the other hand, is a bit more tilted. We net import ~2/3's of our oil. From that we derive 90% of our gas. We import another 10% of our gas already refined. The sum-total of this is 70% of gasoline's crude component goes to foreigners, a good portion with some level of hostility toward us (there's always Canada - they're usually nice). (Data from 7/14/06 week, all units in thousands of barrels, oil imports = 10701, gas imports = 1050, oil use = 15906, gas refined from oil use = 9228, % foreign gas = (1050+10701/15906*9228)/(1050+9228)). So I'm back to not liking gas too much because of funding our enemies.
Now, working all the way back to the beginning of the threads. As an individual, the hybrid is marginally beneficial to my pocket book (depending on the study and how good a negotiator you are at the dealership - I got mine well under MSRP) today. As a country, though, our foreign policy needs to unhook from the unstable parts of the Middle East. We need to stop paying them oodles of money and we need to remove their oil power over us. I think developing and encouraging the hybrids is a step (not the step - a step) in reaching that goal because they'll only get more efficient and cheaper from here. I may be right, I may be wrong, but I'm putting my money where my mouth is. And finally, all the way back to the beginning: I would like to see a real cradle to grave energy study to see if I being insanely stupid, but this one wasn't it. Until I see a study saying that hybrids are insanely stupid (besides the fact that people will pay over MSRP for them), I'm going to be an advocate.
And, to top all that off, it just drives me up when really bad studies get legs.
Well, when nobody does a good study, bad studies will get legs.
That said, I would suggest to you that maybe there is a reason for no good studies; maybe the evidence actually is clearly against hybrids, and people just don't want to admit it.
Given that the cost is much higher and the lifespan projected is much lower, I dare suggest that there is a lot of petroleum being burned to make and deliver these that actually makes the whole thing break-even or worse.
A similar datapoint; someone calculated around 1994 that the pollution required to power an EV1 significantly exceeded that of standard gasoline powered vehicles. Ouch!
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