Hummer Greener Than Prius?

An anonymous reader sends in a story from Central Connecticut State University, claiming that a Prius takes more energy to manufacture than a Hummer — 50% more. In addition, the article claims that the Prius costs $3.25 per mile over its expected lifespan of 100,000 miles compared to $1.95 per mile for the Hummer. The article gets its data from a study by CNW Marketing called Dust to Dust, which is an attempt to account for all the costs of vehicles, from manufacture through operation through repair and disposal. The $3.25/mile cost quoted for the Prius is the 2005 number; for 2006 it is $2.87. This improvement pulled the Prius below the straight industry average — all the other hybrids are still above that average. And the Hummer is not listed at all for 2006. Update: 03/21 00:44 GMT by J : You might want to take those figures with a grain of salt; I don't think anyone's seen the supporting data. Read on for details.

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.

wtf?

Since when does manufacturing cost/cost over life equal friendly to the environment?

Re:wtf?

Especially when the comparison assumes up front that the Hummer will last 3x longer than the Prius. Makes the Hummer's per mile figure a lot better than it would be in an honest comparison.

Re:wtf?

Its not honest because they pulled these numbers out of their ass. They produced these studies early in the life of the Prius back when there were fears of it only lasting 100K miles. This has been proved wrong as they all have lasted 200K or more and the clock is still going.

Re:wtf?

And especially if the article tells outright lies to make its (dubious) case:

From the article: "The nickel is mined and smelted at a plant in Sudbury, Ontario. This plant has caused so much environmental damage to the surrounding environment that NASA has used the 'dead zone' around the plant to test moon rovers. The area around the plant is devoid of any life for miles.

The plant is the source of all the nickel found in a Prius' battery and Toyota purchases 1,000 tons annually. Dubbed the Superstack, the plague-factory has spread sulfur dioxide across northern Ontario, becoming every environmentalist's nightmare. "

Now compare that to Wikipedia's entry on Greater Sudbury [wikipedia.org]:

"The ore deposits in Sudbury are part of a large geological structure known as the Sudbury Basin, believed to be the remnants of a 1.85-billion year old meteorite impact crater. Sudbury ore contains profitable amounts of many elements, especially transition metals, including platinum. It also contains an unusually high concentration of sulfur. When nickel-copper ore is smelted, this sulfur is released into the environment, where it is toxic to vegetation. Carried aloft, it combines with atmospheric water to form sulfuric acid. This contaminates atmospheric water, resulting in a phenomenon known as acid rain.

As a result, Sudbury was widely, although not entirely accurately, known for many years as a wasteland. In parts of the city, vegetation was devastated, both by acid rain and by logging to provide fuel for early smelting techniques, as well as wood for the reconstruction of Chicago after the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. The resulting erosion exposed bedrock, which was charred in most places to a pitted, dark black appearance. There was not a complete lack of vegetation in the region, however. Paper birch and wild blueberry are notable examples of plants which thrived in the acidic soils, and even during the worst years of the city's environmental damage, not all parts of the city were equally affected.

During the Apollo manned lunar exploration program, NASA astronauts trained in Sudbury, to become familiar with shatter cones, a rare rock formation connected with meteorite impacts. However, the popular misconception that they were visiting Sudbury because it purportedly resembled the lifeless surface of the moon dogged the city for years.

In the late 1970s, private, public, and commercial interests combined to establish an unprecedented "regreening" effort. Lime was spread over the charred soil of the Sudbury region by hand and by aircraft. Seeds of wild grasses and other vegetation were also spread. In twenty years, over three million trees were planted. The ecology of the Sudbury region has recovered dramatically, due both to the regreening program and improved mining practices, and in 1992 the city was given the "Local Government Honours Award" by the United Nations, in honour of its innovative community-based strategies in environmental rehabilitation. More recently, the city has begun to rehabilitate the slag heaps that surround the Copper Cliff smelter area, with the planting of grass and trees."

Not true

Hummers may be more energy efficient, but how are they supposed to make you feel morally superior to others?

Think about it.

Re:Not true

They stated the Prius last 100K and that the Hummer last 300K miles.
They then take energy cost of production and divide by these numbers to get cost per mile
HAHA BULLSHIT! Reading the study they take very elaborate measure to get an exact accurate cost of each vehicle in terms of energy. Then they pull this shit. The Prius batteries are well known to last 200K miles and more. And only the military Hummers last 300K miles the commercial version doesn't even come close.

Reading the data makes me laugh

I think it will

And I'm a supporter of hybrids of that reason. I don't own one (my old car works fine) but I do think they are a technology that will be good for efficiency increases eventually. I mean we have to consider that this is essentially generation one technology. It will take time to get better. Look at the internal combustion engine to see the massive amount of progress there's been. While hybrids might not see as much, I think they will see large increases as the tech is refined.

Also there's other factors that may end up being useful. Electric motors produce nearly 100% torque from the word go, whereas ICEs need to operate at a higher speed for maximum torque. So if we changed up the way a car worked and had electric motors directly drive the wheels and the engine drive a generator, you'd have a car (or truck) with tons of low end torque. Also that allows for the use of a smaller, single speed engine. You can make a much more optimised engine if it only need to run at a single RPM rather than being variable. Of course there's losses from the mechanical-electrical-mechanical conversion, so that's something that has to be overcome.

That's actually how modern diesel trains work. Their power-plant doesn't drive the wheels, it drives a generator that powers electric motors. Hybrid locomotives seem to be quite a winner since there's already the conversion cycle, and adding 2000 pounds of batteries isn't really significant in the scope of a train weighing 5 million pounds or more.

So I'm happy that this technology is being developed, but you are right that people need to have a big glass of perspective and soda. They are NOT more efficient over all. They aren't even cheaper to you. Get a Toyota Corolla 5-speed manual if you want efficiency. Even if gas were $4/gallon, it'd still be cheaper over the life of the car than a Prius. Or hell, if you can swing the smaller size, get a Smart Fortwo.

If you want a hybrid that's great, I'm glad you are helping to support the research, but do be realistic about it.

Well amount of Energy != Green

The question is what type of eneregy is used, and how much is producted from the energy source. Automobiles are a lot more energy effecient then say a human. But they give off polution that is less "green" or more difficult for the environment to handel.

Re:Well amount of Energy != Green

since we're ultimately fuelled by carbon from plants,

Not my boss. He's such a tight-ass, he eats coal and shits diamonds.

BS

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.

$3.25/mile???

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.

Old News

A) I first read about this 'study' several months ago

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....)

A nice rebuttal to this article

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/2/12/115426/ 732 [grist.org]

-Rick

Is this still true?

As already noted, the Prius is partly driven by a battery which contains nickel. The nickel is mined and smelted at a plant in Sudbury, Ontario. This plant has caused so much environmental damage to the surrounding environment that NASA has used the 'dead zone' around the plant to test moon rovers. The area around the plant is devoid of any life for miles.

The plant is the source of all the nickel found in a Prius' battery and Toyota purchases 1,000 tons annually. Dubbed the Superstack, the plague-factory has spread sulfur dioxide across northern Ontario, becoming every environmentalist's nightmare.

"The acid rain around Sudbury was so bad it destroyed all the plants and the soil slid down off the hillside," said Canadian Greenpeace energy-coordinator David Martin during an interview with Mail, a British-based newspaper.

I thought this was old news & that the situation on the ground had changed since the 1970's and 1980's.

As an aside, the plant produce 130,000 tonnes (is that metric or imperial) annually.
The 1,000 that goes towards Prius batteries is negligible

nonsense

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.

Re:nonsense

Yes, but what if that object is grasping the husk of a coconut with it's talons? And what if it takes two of those objects grasping the husk of a coconut with their talons?

Re:nonsense

African or European?

Another advantage of the Hummer . . .

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?

because all energy has the same environmental cost

While the part about the manufacture of the batteries is interesting, to say that a Hummer uses less energy than a Prius is misleading at best and propaganda at worst. The mistake that is makes is to assume that all energy usage is the same when of course it isn't. When the issue is the environment, there are types of energy that are better for the environment than others. The article is acting as if burning old tires and solar energy were exactly the same when they aren't. Without more details on the environmental impact of the manufacturing processes used in each vehicle, this article is only useful for raising questions and making people who own Hummers feel good about themselves.

not the CNW BS again.

Oh man, How many times do we need to go over the flawed assumptions and conclusions from the CNW Marketing analysis.

First, it incorrectly assumes that hybrid batteries are not recycled. In reality, Toyota has very successful recycling program, including a $200 bounty on Prius batteries.

Second, it is interesting that TFA mentions the Scion xB. Yet it fails to note that the CNW report data on the xA and xB don't make any sense. They are built on the same assembly line, have the same powertrains, only differ in weight by 50 lbs or so, and have similar efficiency (~35mpg), yet the CNW study shows the lifetime energy use of these vehicles to differ by 50 percent. How's that work?

Third, the CNW report makes really bad assumptions about where the bulk of lifecycle energy use occurs (eg manufacturing vs operation).

In short, it's misinformed at best and is more likely an intentional greenwash to assuage SUV owner dissonance in a post 9/11 world.

Disclaimer: I drive a biodiesel powered Jetta TDI, not a hybrid.

not a complete story

While some of the numbers might be arguable, the whole article misses the point of any new technology argument.

-- First movers on new technology almost always are paying more and using more energy than their stick in the mud Hummer counterparts; the *hope* of the new technology is that with increased production efficiency it'll eventually become a good move. This is the argument of ethanol, bio-diesel, solar panels, hybrid cars, etc. The fact that they do more near term environmental damage than their conservative counterparts doesn't mean they shouldn't be explored on a low volume basis.

I do agree with the article though that a truly economical car is better for the pocket book and the environment without having to bet on the environmental returns of a new technology. But what Prius owners are doing is spending all this money and subsidizing en masse Toyota's research of building hybrid cars. I applaud them for doing so. That's something the article misses entirely. In this sense, the Hummer is certainly not more environmentally friendly than a Prius (because the Prius is a search for a better solution).

What the article doesn't mention is that mass transit and bicycles are way further down on the cost / mile and environmental damage than any of these cars. But that would be thinking outside the box.

Impossible Numbers

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.

Re:Greener and manlier

What woman wouldn't prefer a guy who already has a hummer, and thus doesn't need any from them?

Re:Greener and manlier

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.

Just because you don't see it...

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.