Hybrids consume more energy in lifetime than Tahoe

LOLOL... alrighty... these posts from comedy central are HILARIOUS!!

keep em coming.

 

My father swears that he saw an article somewhere that "proved" that it was better to keep an older car fixed up than buy a new car because the manufacture of a new car consumes more energy than the older car would ever use.

 

:lol: Thats a great article! :lol:

 

A post that is about PHEV's, but still relevant to this topic:

11. Yes, this isn't perfect, so let's just complain about it not being perfect and throw up our hands in dispair while pumping our cars full of the same stuff we have for the last hundred years, hoping to dear God that it doesn't run out in our lifetimes and that our generation don't have to suffer the effects of the global warming we've wrought. Our kids will live on Mars anyway!

Everything has to be developed to evolve. All technologies go through a period when the cost is high and they are not as efficient as existing technology. Why is it that criticism for environmental tech is always centered around high price and the environmental impact of alternatives when no one would make the same sort of criticism about plasma screens or HD-DVD drives? Never. Not once have I seen anyone say "gosh that HD-DVD sure makes video look purty, but I wouldn't want one because it takes too much energy to produce" or "that plasma screen at 54" is awesome, but because it costs $10,000 today we shouldn't even think about making anything like it ever again. It will always be too expensive for me to afford and I'd rather just have my old 20" CRT anyway."

Posted at 12:33PM on Feb 24th 2006 by n

 

Even more multi-tiered counterarguments towards these "claims:"

It doesn't 'prove' anything, but is indicative of the goals of research that sets out to accomplish a goal of "proving" a premise they have:

In Time's 'special report on global warming ("Be Worried. Be Very Worried). There is a subarticle entitled "Delhi Without Diesel." Now before I proceed, this is not some secondary attack on diesel vehicles ~ rather the diesel vehicles in India are very old and highly polluting, and the diesel fuel there is extremely dirty.

But anyhow, the article talks of of two peoples' fight to convert the vehicles in New Delhi to utilize natural gas (which is 'naturally clean' in terms of non CO2 emissions). "Oil companies ttrotted out scientists who claimed that CNG was just as polluting as diesel..."

As for the 'conclusion' of the article ~ "But Narain and Lal fought back. By December 2002, the last diesel bus had left Delhi, and 10,000 taxis, 12,000 buses, and 80,000 rickshaws were powered by CNG... Although air pollution in Delhi has stabilized, the fight for clean air is far from won..."


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This just goes to show what some people will do to stick to their current ways and keep making money off dinosaur technology, and resist change for the better (a la Tobacco industry style). As more and more hybrids are produced, costs and energy of production will come down to near current vehicle levels... and as one member put it - wipe the floor with ICE vehicles (sp?).

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Another problem with this research is that more than half the hybrid models available are performance-minded hybrids vs economical hybrids. Furthermore, the Prius is built alongside other Toyota models like the Camry. Soon, a Kentucky plant will be producing the Camry hybrid for the USA.

This research, that strives to prove a goal they had in mind (consider the Detroit News affiliation), is bunk, pseudoscience, and media sensationalization. One only needs to look at Toyota's efforts and research, increasing mass production of hybrid vehicles, and continual improvements to all aspects of hybrid systems to arrive at this point.

 

Study seems like total BS to me. What the heck is going on with their "$2.28 cents per mile"? Do they mean $2.28/mile or $0.028/mile? The latter doesn't seem right based on gas mileage and price of gas.

So, by their "claims", if I drive a drive these cars 100K miles, the "Energy cost per mile driven" are as follows:
Honda Accord Hybrid: $329,000
Honda Civic: $242,000
Honda Accord: $218,000
Hummer H3: $194,900
Scion xB: $48,000

So, somehow despite the the H3 being a big guzzler of the bunch and being more expensive then the Civic and Accord, it somehow costs has less "energy cost per mile driven". I call BS on that.

Where did the $47K difference between the H3 and Civic come from? Not even taking into account how much better gas mileage a Civic gets, it somehow cost $47K more to produce and dispose of the Civic than the H3? Makes no sense when Civics start out at ~$15K and H3s start at $29.5K.

 

Lol, good call!

 

The following is on Toyota's hybrid minisite under the environment/manufacturing:

'In fact, the next-generation Camry will be built without any use of mercury, lead or cadmium.. Further, two of Toyota's manufacturing plants have been designated as zero-landfill-producing operations."

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(cwerdna @ Apr 2 2006, 12:11 PM) [snapback]233843[/snapback]</div>

Judging by the size of the numbers, it looks like fuel consumption is actually accounting for a very small portion of their figures. I estimate that I'll spend about $6000 on gas for my Saturn by the time I've driven it for 100K mi (my driftwood 2006 package #7 still hasn't come yet come on guys, get a move on! ). Maybe I'll spend twice that on repairs. The price of the car was prob. originally around $15K. Those numbers could be pretty similar for the Civic (prob. less on repairs), so there's still ~$200K unaccounted for. OK, if we assume the market is working about like the way we expect it to, the car won't cost more to manufacture than the price paid for it, otherwise Honda would go out of business. So, I am left with the conclusion that the remaining $200K doesn't represent a cost that anyone actually pays out of their pocket, but instead is some conversion of environmental impact into dollars.

So my question is, HOW did they do this conversion? Without knowing that I have no way to evaluate the quality of their study. There are a lot of these kinds of conversions that would need to be done for this study, and different methods might produce widely different results. For instance, battery disposal is one where the Prius is at a disadvantage. Probably the Prius got docked for this, since it has more battery than most cars, but how did they measure it? Until they tell us things like that we really can't say anything about how good this study was.

So I guess what I'm saying is while I'm not ready to condemn this study as complete BS, at the same time, neither do I think it has increased my knowledge at all. Too bad, because I'd really like to see the guts of an honest study of overall environmental impact of the Prius compared to other vehicles. Does such a study exist?

 

the supposed study takes into account a LOT of phantom figures...


for instance, the ESTIMATED cost of replacing and disposing the traction battery. they apparently are applying some sort of cost to recylcing the battery although Toyota has announced a bounty on all the battery packs.

this is one thing that accounts for hybrids being more expensive to run. never mind that the battery is not likely to fail for at least 10 years. they apparently assume that battery technology will not advance and these batteries will still cost several thousand dollars to manufacture or replace.

iow, its mostly speculation based on PURE fantasy

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(DaveinOlyWA @ Apr 2 2006, 01:43 PM) [snapback]233867[/snapback]</div>

Well, regardless of whether Toyota pays a bounty or not, there would still be an environmental ("energy") cost. I don't think the numbers they were giving were intended to represent consumer out of pocket expenses, or even necessarily out of somebody's pocket total expenses.

And yep, they assume that battery tech will not advance ant the cost will not change, but I don't think that was their purpose, their goal was to determine the cost *now*.

Still, I'm not impressed by their survey because it does very much obscure the real overall costs over the long haul. One poster pointed out (rhetorically asked) "did they account for the R&D costs of the ICE engine all the way back to its inception?" And this is a very good point. In a sense, it's like giving the ICE engine a biiiiiiig head start in a race, and then asking the hybrid engine to catch up to it. Well it may or may not have caught up yet, but if the race were fair to begin with, it would probably be winning already, and in the long-long-long run it almost certainly will win the race, despite the late start.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daver969 @ Apr 2 2006, 02:35 PM) [snapback]233861[/snapback]</div>

Regarding Honda, exactly. It wouldn't make sense the Honda would be dumping so much money into a Civic and selling it what they price it at.

If people are curious from the last Honda financials, that were issued at http://www.world.honda.com/investors/quart.../2005-3rdqr.pdf, Honda for their quarter ending 12/31/05 had a profit of ~$1.1 billion on revnue of $20.9 billion. From http://www.gm.com/company/investor_information/earnings/ or http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?...p=irol-earnings, GM in the same period had revenue of $51.2 billion but a loss of $1.2 billion or $4.8 billion depending on whether you include special items.

 

The authors are marketing bozos.

GIGO

They most certainly do not know the average Prius life
Heck, I doubt they even know average Tahoe life
Does anybody here *really* think they this company has a clue how much energy went into fabrication of each and every material used in the cars looked at ??!!!?
I could go on, but this post would never end..

If this is the best Detroit can buy, all I can do is laugh.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(ohiocityprius @ Mar 31 2006, 11:25 AM) [snapback]233048[/snapback]</div>

We can all *try* to report incorrect news. In this case, I've sent email to Yahoo Finance (Yahoo -> Finance -> Help). You can, too. This came across a bit more as an article, vs a press release. When did press releases stop having contact information, by the way?

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(sub3marathonman @ Mar 31 2006, 02:50 PM) [snapback]233063[/snapback]</div>

It probably took them that long to figure out how to cook the books just right to get the result they wanted. <_<
Or to report it vaguely enough that people would believe it without actually being able to duplicate it.

If energy costs money, and a hybrid costs less to buy and drive than an SUV (meaning the consumer doesn't pay extra) and Honda and Toyota are more profitable than GM and Ford (meaning the car companies don't get stuck with the difference), something is really, really fishy with that report.

nerfer

(prestigious winner of "PriusChatter of the Year"... B) )

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(nerfer @ Apr 3 2006, 12:04 PM) [snapback]234272[/snapback]</div>

I don't see how that is relevant at all. If someone did a really good study I would expect it to take a while. On the other hand, it could be just an intern doing this as a side project for 2 years. Until we see the whole methodology and writeup, we just don't know.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daver969 @ Apr 2 2006, 05:35 PM) [snapback]233861[/snapback]</div>

I don't see how fuel costs were included AT ALL! A Hummer costs ~25 to 35 cents per mile for gasoline alone. So, that couple tenths of a cent difference between manufacturing/disposal energy costs pales into insignificance in my opinion. With gas only costing me 5 cents per mile, I've got a 20 to 30 cent lead for every mile I drive!
I know that the author says he included "drive" costs in his calculations, but THERE IS NO WAY a Hummer can come out costing only 2 cents per lifetime mile! Is this screwy math or what? :blink:

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(keydiver @ Apr 3 2006, 01:21 PM) [snapback]234308[/snapback]</div>

So after 100K miles a Hummer will cost 0.35*100000 = $35,000. That could have easily been included in those figures (>$200K for the Hummer and Honda cars).

Clearly they think there's some other cost that we're not aware of, and assigning a high dollar value to it, that accounts for the very large numbers.

But until they tell us what that other cost is, ???, yeah the whole thing seems very suspect to me.

 

Toyota published a Prius CO2 lifetime analysis based on 100K miles, normalized to a regular car of similar size, in a report titled Prius Green Report.

Of course, if we were to consider the Tahoe, the petrol consumption would be at least 3X and not the 2X the study used, and 200K miles lifetime for the Prius is IMO a more reasonable number (not sure about the Tahoe). Oh yeah -- we should double the materials cost on the Tahoe side compared to a regular, Prius sized car.

MPG(prius)/MPG(tahoe) for relative CO2 production is a *much* closer approximation.
From the report:

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(ghostofjk @ Mar 31 2006, 08:24 PM) [snapback]233178[/snapback]</div>

I think this paragraph from their website says everything about where they (he) stands.

"CNW Marketing Research's Vista del Lago conference center has hosted executive sessions for automotive executives. While some major renovations continue, the Center is accepting Session dates for 2007. 2006 is booked, but we can schedule sessions at Bandon Dunes Golf Resort or other Bandon top-notch facilities."

How many executives from Toyota make it there?