Prius Outdoes Hummer in Environmental Damage?

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Essayons @ Mar 15 2007, 09:23 AM) [snapback]405992[/snapback]</div>

So it costs $325,000 to own and drive a Prius for 100,000 miles. Who is exactly paying this? Am I going to get a huge bill in 8 years?

Adam

 

If it's some idiot journalism student regurgitating this garbage, perhaps we should all flood his inbox with refutations, rather than foam at the mouth about it on PC. If he's learning to do journalism, then we can teach him a lesson about fact-checking.

 

I hear all of this talk about carbon footprint and yet no one ever discusses the emissions and fuel used to import vehicles thousands of miles from Japan. Why is that never a consideration?

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Ichabod @ Mar 15 2007, 10:13 AM) [snapback]406009[/snapback]</div>

Good point. In googling this story today, I also came across the following files in a response on Digg. They are letters from the Mayor of Sudbury and from Inco to the Daily Mail, which, of course, the mail declined to publish (as it declines to publish any comments online that disagree with its piece). I thought I'd upload them here for reference in case the Digg links go bad but attachments seem disabled at the moment, so I'll just link to them instead.

Key points:

I particularly liked learning that the Daily Mail arid wildnerness photo is in fact a stock photograph taken in 1994, long before the Prius ever existed.

The Greenpeace quote from David Martin omits that he was referring to the situation prior to 1972!

Credit to original poster Dave Rado and his comment at
http://digg.com/world_news/Toyota_Hybrid_B...teland#c5390229

Mayor of Sudbury letter to Daily Mail
http://www.daverado.mvps.org/Letters/MayorReplyToMail.pdf

Inco letter to Daily Mail
http://www.daverado.mvps.org/Letters/IncoReplyToMail.pdf

A photo of the arid wilderness today
http://www.daverado.mvps.org/images/Ramsey-Lake.jpg

A gallery of current Sudbury photos:
http://www.sudburyphotos.ca/showgallery.ph...644&stype=2

 

Malorn, there was a long discussion about the impact/cost of shipping vehicles in another thread. Also, some Japanese cars are made in America, and some American cars are imported, so it's kind of a shell game... We all know that the Prius is an import though

Megan/Scott, it looks like the right people have already thoroughly debunked and let that chop-shop of a journalism outlet know about it.

 

Consider the source, then you can just shake your head in sympathy and ignore their sad state.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(malorn @ Mar 15 2007, 09:40 AM) [snapback]406022[/snapback]</div>

I would guess it's similar to the amount of emissions and fuel to ship GM vehicles around the world.

Ted

 

"The Prius costs an average of $3.25 per mile driven over a lifetime of 100,000 miles - the expected lifespan of the Hybrid."

Simple math will convince you that this argument is BS: $3.25 * 100,000 is $325,000. Who the heck could ever afford to drive a Prius if this were true?

~Buttster

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(malorn @ Mar 15 2007, 07:40 AM) [snapback]406022[/snapback]</div>

It's probably more than offset by all the addtional miles GM vehicles have to be driven to the dealership for repairs.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Squint @ Mar 15 2007, 11:26 AM) [snapback]406097[/snapback]</div>

Good one.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(malorn @ Mar 15 2007, 07:40 AM) [snapback]406022[/snapback]</div>

This is the case for ANYTHING we choose to buy. Food and clothing epsecially. Too many of us rely on food that is shipped from all over the world and the expense to the environment is incredible.


I was wondering why those Sudbury pics looked so desolate. I was just reading about that plant in my Environmental Science (Conservation of Natural Resources class) course book and it mentioned how they had replanted the area to aid in reclamation.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(F8L @ Mar 15 2007, 01:37 PM) [snapback]406154[/snapback]</div>

Yep. Here's a link to the actual stock photo the Daily Mail used. Date shot: 10/25/94.

http://www.photoboy.com/bin/Cklb?vmo=1173985067754

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(MegansPrius @ Mar 15 2007, 12:32 PM) [snapback]406217[/snapback]</div>

Looks like a scene out of the Matrix. I think I saw Squiddies flying around by the smoke stack. :lol:

 

someone needs to send an email or written letter to the head of the journalism dept there at school and make sure this dumbass gets an F for his assignment for not checking all (ahem.. ANY) of his facts.

Another nail in the coffin on the article
http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/calculatorC...=1&id=23174
^^^
Chevy Aveo, 23mpg city, 33 highway... now how that is within "Spitting distance" of the new EPA prius numbers I don't know.. oh wait maybe he used the old Aveo numbers on highway specifically with the low ball of the new prius ones?

Friggin reject.

 

The thread has already covered the highlights and provided links to prior discussion. I just wanted to add one thing.

Please don't nitpick CNW's ludicrous numbers. It makes it look as if they have some basis in reality, as if they might have been right except for a few bad assumptions.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The CNW numbers are so far divorced from reality, so many orders of magnitude wrong, that you do a disservice by discussing them as if there were anything there. You lend them credence by treating them as if there were any substance there.

I put my calculation in the prior threads on this topic, but I'll repeat the results here.

If everyone in America drove a Toyota Corolla, which is a pretty efficient little car as straight-gas cars go, then, based on the CNW "energy cost per mile", the total "energy cost" of our driving would amount to about two-thirds of the entire US gross domestic product. Alternatively, if we take the CNW numbers at face value, the total "energy cost" of our driving would be over 20 times the value of total US fossil fuel consumption, for all reasons.

So, the CNW numbers are total nonsense. Nor am I the only poster in prior threads to have noted this.

Basically, CNW says that every year, US cars consume 20x more fossil fuel energy than the US actually consumes, in total, for all reasons. It doesn't matter how they got those numbers. The results show that they are total, illogical, impossible, unmitigated horsesh*t, and they should be treated as such.

 

A simple look at fuel consumption shows how ridiculous this argument is...

Assuming that the H2 gets 13 MPG combined (generous), to travel 300K mi it would consume 23077 gal of petrol. Assuming that a gallon (US) of gasoline contains 35.5 kWh of energy, the H2 uses 819 MWh of energy during that time. That doesn't include the energy required to produce the vehicle (which is tiny compared to that number anyways).

Now, for the Prius. I took the new EPA combined mileage (46 MPG) and assumed a 300K mi lifetime. Over that time the car will consume 6522 gal of petrol, which comes out to 232 MWh.

Based on the fuel alone you can tell the argument is absolute crap. The amount of CO2 produced by the H2 comes to about 219 tonnes (assuming 19 lbs of CO2/gal burned). The Prius would pump out 65 tonnes. Considering that the H2 gets a pretty horrible rating for pollution the amount of NOx and SOx is vastly higher than that produced by the Prius.

 

Chevy Aveo, 23mpg city, 33 highway... now how that is within "Spitting distance" of the new EPA prius numbers I don't know.. oh wait maybe he used the old Aveo numbers on highway specifically with the low ball of the new prius ones?

Friggin reject.
[/quote]

The Chevy Aveo is a Korean car, not an American car, and brought over by ship to the USA.

Dave

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(malorn @ Mar 15 2007, 09:40 AM) [snapback]406022[/snapback]</div>

I think I've seen a couple of good calculations on this in prior threads, and everybody who has looked at it in detail says that the fuel consumed in large oceangoing ships is quite small, per ton-mile. That certainly matches what I've heard as an economist, that the reduction in transportation costs was one of the main drivers of international trade in the second half of the 20th century.

But it takes a look at the numbers to see how really, really small the energy costs of large-ship transport are. Almost unbelieveably small relative to any mode of land transport.

Here's a University of Iowa study on transportation of bulk grain. For large ships, they have figures on the order of 1000 ton-miles per gallon of fuel. Which would make the transpacific transport of the Prius work out to just a few gallons of fuel:

http://www.extension.iastate.edu/grain/inf...consumption.htm

By contrast, according to that study, unit trains are about half as efficient, and tractor-trailers are about 20% as efficient, as large ocean-going ships.

In fact, just about every source I find is in that neighborhood. Here's a fact sheet saying that a typical inland barge (not as efficient as a larger ocean-going ship) can get 540 ton-miles per gallon:

http://www.tulsaweb.com/port/facts.htm

So, I think we can dismiss this argument. The amount of fuel used to move a Prius from Japan to the US, by large vessel, is on the order of a few gallons of fuel.

And all the sources note that if cars got mileage like big rigs per ton-mile, we'd be getting 250 mpg. So, that maybe the source of confusion here: large freight-moving vehicles of all types are vastly more efficient per ton-mile than cars, and in turn, water transport is substantially more efficient per ton mile than tractor trailers.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(MegansPrius @ Mar 15 2007, 01:32 PM) [snapback]406217[/snapback]</div>

That was a Tuesday