I'm sorry -- I lost the thread on your reference to "this question" that they ignore ... do you mean recycling the batteries?

The question of the manufacturing/disposal/recycling process being (in total) more polluting than the pollution savings by buying "green".

The battery isn't going to last forever, and to keep that car on the road beyond the death of that battery, a very expensive new (energy intensive to produce) battery will need to be installed, and the old battery (energy intensively) recycled. What does a diesel need to last a long time? Oil changes....filters.....general care. Toxic waste? 0 Expensive Batteries? 0 Rare earth materials? 0

A VW Polo diesel can get EIGHTY miles per gallon. With no fancy batteries/motors/electronics.

Heck, even a C220cdi gets in the low to mid 40's!

Indeed. I've a friend out in Portland from my days in the electric vehicle hobby. He bought one of the first Honda Insight hybrids when they first came out. Battery packs on these were nothing more than 150 to 200 nickel hydride D cell (yes, flashlight D cell) batteries strung together in series.

A few years down the road, his battery pack started showing signs of age and lowered capacity. He was already well past the 80K mile warranty on the battery pack. He asked the local Honda dealer what it would cost for a new battery pack. He was quoted $5500 PLUS labor.:eek:

Being used to working on electric vehicles, he eventually figured out how to disassemble the battery pack, install new D cells and solder them back together. But even just paying for the D cells alone, it still ran him $1500 for the required number of nickel hydride D cells.

And from what he related, you definitely don't want to try to drive an early Insight with the IMA turned off or inactive due to a dead battery pack - that little 3 cylinder gas engine couldn't get the car out of it's own way by itself according to him.

Toyota initially offered an 8 year/80K mile warranty on the battery pack for the Prius as well. But I've noticed in the last couple of years they've dropped that to 3 year/36K miles.

Respectfully, guys,, I'm skeptical to the whole horror story premise. Got any links to back it up?

I guess we'll find out pretty soon, though, because Toyota has sold over 2 million Prii worldwide (the second million in less than 2 1/2 years), so we should be up to our kiesters in dead hybrid batteries in short order. Tree-hugger armageddon! How deliciously ironic.

I agree, the entire arguement completely fails the common sense test. Even a Prius consumes several tens of thousands of dollars worth of gasoline over its useful economic lifetime. If that much energy were consumed manufacturing the car, even if it was more efficiently priced than gasoline (ie electricity) it would add many thousands of dollars of cost to manufacturing the car. Given that Toyota profitably sells the Prius for about $25K, I don't see it.

I remeber before I got a hybrid, I was a skeptic and thought buying a hybrid was all hype. I remember reading and even mentioning to a fellow coworker who was looking into buying a Prius that a replacement battery will be very expensive, like somewhere in the neighborhood of $10k! Boy, was I grossly misinformed and fell for it. While hybrid batteries are expensive, they're really nowhere near $10k! Nowadays, repacement batteries have dropped.

Remil, the first Insight was sort of a production hybrid prototype that Honda sold at a lost. It served a marketing and research purpose. The 1.0 liter engine can actually propel the car without the IMA battery, but it's important that you have a functional IMA system to make the car perform as designed.

For those who drive a prius, what mpg do you get on average. I really like the Gen. 3 Prius, but I know it makes no economic sense to buy one now. The EPA rating is higher.

Edit to add: If the VW Polo gets 80mpg why don't we get it since gas is such a big issue here? 80mpg? Wow!

That is 80 miles per imperial gallon, not US gallon.

So that polo is only getting about 60mpg. Hybrids get that.

Ah, I found the missing link. A company called CNW Marketing Research put out a paper several years ago called "Dust to Dust," in which they rated the design, construction, use and disposal of a Prius as higher per mile than a Hummer H3 for the 2005 model year. Trouble is, the paper estimated the Prius averager lifespan as only 109,000 miles! The Hummer, according to CNW, would likely last 300,000 miles. The company argued that the car was usually the second vehicle in a household and used mostly for short trips.

Also, the creation of innovative technology for the Prius was more energy intensive than the "amortized" technology of the Hummer, according to CNW.

CNW's findings were widely challenged, of course. And CNW has since changed its tune. Unfortunately, you now have to pay for their reports, but Wikipedia sums it up:

"CNWMR has since added data for 2007-2008 model year cars in the June 2008 release of their "From Dust to Dust" study and the Prius cost per lifetime mile fell 23.5% to $2.191 per lifetime mile while the H3 cost rose 12.5% to $2.327 per lifetime mile.[2] The Prius and smaller hybrids in general now cost less per mile than any large SUV, according to their own data."

I wouldn't ridicule the original report -- CNW was dealing with a very fluid market that probably shifted significantly between the time data was collected and the paper was published. Before 2005 the car was kind of a curiosity. Since then, over 1.5 million have been sold worldwide.

Here's the link to "Dust to Dust": http://www.cnwmr.com/nss-folder/automotiveenergy/DUST%20PDF%20VERSION.pdf

Uhhh, no. Japanese government subsidized the development costs. Otherwise, you'd be paying around 40K for one.

Even with that help, they took a bath on them the first couple of years. I read an interview a few months back with Toyota's CEO. He'd had them cut the initial build cost in half. He said if they could cut that in half again (ie, to 25% of the initial build cost), then they'd clear as much on a Prius as they did on a Corolla.

No way Jose. When you take the rare earth metals required for the motors and batteries, add in the energy to produce those batteries then to dispose or hopefully recycle the batteries the increase in energy required is about 1% more than a conventional vehicle.

Where you probably pulled your information from was a "study", and I say that very loosely, by CNW marketing where they equated vehicle cost with energy use, then made all sorts of other weird assumptions about vehicle lifespan to "conclude" that a Hummer used less energy than a Prius, which was total BS. That said, it was very good marketing since people believe a marketing firm more than they believe scientists from MIT.

The same has been said for solar panels, but it's pure BS just like the CNW blurb was.

That was supposedly completely wrong. From what I heard Toyota and Honda saw the billions given to American car companies through PNGV and started their own programs because they were afraid of being left behind. Of course the domestic automakers squandered any head start they had and shot themselves in the foot w/ SUVs, but that's something else.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKTOyiKLARk

Just to supplement the other top gear link in thread

Top Gear is awful! :D

I love 'em because they love to BS, but that's really what do most of the time. Switch positions and the results will be the same, the car drafting the other car will get better mileage, although the BMW was still more inefficient while drafting the Prius even if it did get slightly better mileage. I supposed if someone's commute to work consisted of them ragging on their Prius the whole way then they might like a BMW diesel instead even if it gets slightly worse mileage, but the point of most hybrids is that their owners don't need to drive in circles at WOT to get to work. ;)

Here's what it comes down to. If the price of gasoline tops $4 again, it will spur sales of hybrids, foreign and domestic. The average person cares first and foremost about saving a buck. You can argue all day about hidden costs and ecological impact (got to laugh when Prius critics don their Birkenstocks and "green up"), but the average joe is going to look at the window sticker and the price on the gas pump. For many people in the market for a family people-moving appliance that gets 40+ mpg, a hybrid is going to make sense.

Consider Japan, a country with a vibrant car culture but very expensive gasoline. There, the Prius was the best selling car for 20 months running until the new Honda Fit hybrid edged it out. And for 2010 it broke Japan's record for greatest domestic sales in a model year, topping the Corolla's high mark set in 1990. This is a bread-and-butter car with a track record for reliability, and it's been rewarded for that in the market. It's not a hit with enthusiasts, but it's not meant to be.