By driving a Prius.

Boy, these indulgences just aren't all they're cracked up to be.

I kid you not. Recently I saw a Prius broken down by the road as a Hummer drove by it. If I weren't driving I would have taken a photo. For reasons I have not quite mastered I find seeing a Prius broken down, wrecked or being towed cheers me up to no end.

This gets us back to the gullibility of a toddler on the subject of energy conservation. When Chris Demorro of Central Connecticut State University said that the Prius costs $3.25 per mile, I first assumed that he is just some public-university student who botches numbers. But no, it appears in Art Spinella's original report, "Dust to Dust". There it is on page 21: The energy cost alone of the Prius is $3.25 per mile, and the Prius lasts an average of 109,000 miles.

Gee, if it took $350,000 in energy to buy and drive a Prius, never mind labor costs, where would all that money come from? $7300 in gas (109K miles times 45 mpg times $3 a gallon) plus a $21K sticker price does not make $350K. Sure, there may be some tax subsidies too, but 300 grand?

One possible clue to this impossible arithmetic is that the report also says that lack of peer review is a virtue.

The $350K figure includes maintenance costs over car's lifetime. Still, even at dealership prices I do not see how this is possible.

The "Dust to Dust" report also says that the average H1 Hummer lasts 35 years and will be driven 379,000 miles. These vehicles may be rugged, but...

The $350K figure includes maintenance costs over car's lifetime.

But again, only the energy cost, not labor.

This report is a real honker.

One interesting thing from the report is that the EPA mileage is only 45 mpg at highway speeds. My 1971 Datsun 1200 got just about that same mileage and cost a fraction of the price of a Prius

There are at least two things deeply wrong with the underlying study. First, saying that a Hummer has a lifespan three times as long as a Toyota? No way. Second, the discussion of nickel-based batteries in the Prius ignores that nickel is a heavily recycled metal. That greatly reduces its pollution footprint and I think even reduces its energy footprint a bit (recycling is probably considerably less energy intensive than mining and smelting).

To continue, I just recalled where I thought the 300k mile lifetime for the Hummer came from. It probably comes from mixing military and civilian vehicles into one pool. In any case, this study strikes me as being very deceptive.

one should be very skeptical of any report froma marketing research firm especially one that says " Clients include major automobile manufacturers" and especially one that appears
to be a one man band.

No Doubt someone in the auto industry wanted this report
and they got what they paid for.

It'sa pity Simberg didn't even bother checking the math
before Gibbering about what it said.

Rand, you really should hold off on your glee whenever you see an opportunity to put down environmentalists. liberals etc. It makes you look, well you know what it makes you look like.

Don't reach out for every straw that makes you feel superior in your rejection of every endeavour to curb greenhouse gases.

Try driving a hybrid; your friend Instapundit does. And trust me, the Hybrid Highlander gets an average of 27.5 mpg in mixed city/highway driving; these are actual numbers, not EPA numbers.

Of course that gives you the opportunity to trash the EPA, which is probably something else you'd like to dump on, if that's any consolation. After all, it does have the word environment and the even worse word protection in it, which must mean it is a commie plot to take away our freedom ;-)

No Doubt someone in the auto industry wanted this report
and they got what they paid for.

This study's numbers are obviously way off. But why would "someone in the auto industry" not want to assist gullible morons in assuaging their guilt over imaginary sins? Automakers all get to make nice tidy profits charging more for the economically-foolish hybrids credulous worrywarts buy, with the added bonus of being seen as good corporate citizens. And the fleeced consumer with more money than brains gets to bask in the glow of their own self-righteousness. Win-win-win!

"Try driving a hybrid; your friend Instapundit does"
Posted by Toast_n_Tea at September 30, 2007 07:14 PM

And Glenn has always noted that while the gas mileage is nice. He chose the Hybrid because it accelerated better then other competing SUVs.

I think were not seeing the $350,000 cost being directly translated to the actual price of the vehicle because some of that money is potentially being amortized over the entire line up of Prius vehicles. I think we are also seeing some indirect costs that the researcher is trying make by interrupting the dollar value in environmental impact these nickel plants are causing.

And recycling isn't necessarily the holy grail of environmentalism it is made out to be either. Especially in terms of carbon footprint.

My 1971 Datsun 1200 got just about that same mileage and cost a fraction of the price of a Prius

First, the reason that a Datsun 1200 cost half of a Prius in constant dollars is that it just wasn't a very good car by today's standards. Noise, room, acceleration, etc., all sucked in comparison. The Prius isn't even rate as a compact any more. A Datsun 1200 would today be a sub-sub-mini lemon. It might still be hyperbole to call that kind of car a "hairshirt", but it was a lot closer to one than a Prius is.

I think were not seeing the $350,000 cost being directly translated to the actual price of the vehicle because some of that money is potentially being amortized over the entire line up of Prius vehicles.

This does point to one truth: One of many ways in which the "Dust to Dust" report is wrong is that it has ludicrous amortization. A Prius does not use $3.25 of energy per mile by any stretch of the imagination. Maybe Spinella supposed that they scrap and rebuild the Prius factories every year, and every Prius on the road.

This balance sheet is so silly that it could be misleading to even call it deceptive. Except for those gullible few who really want to be deceived.

Funny how most of you posting here choose to attack the messenger or crow about how the 'Prius vs Hummer' comparison may not be as valid as presented.

You choose to ignore the issue that the hybrids are not the great 'solve all our energy problems' autos that they pretend to be. The Prius (and other hybrids) have flaws that are not factored into the whole energy/environment debate. This is the reason the rest of us level headed folks continue to poke holes in your theories. Nice try.

Boy, there must be lot of Prius owners who read this blog and got their feelings hurt.

I visited Sudbury in June 2005 for a lunar & planetary mining conference. Demorro is flatly, flagrantly wrong. Scrubbers have been added to the superstack, greatly reducing the environmental impact. The region around Sudbury has been cleaned up, and is stunningly, dramatically GREEN. He carefully couches his mischaracterizations in the past tense- “The acid rain around Sudbury was so bad it destroyed all the plants and the soil slid down off the hillside” -but it's not so any longer.

As for shipping raw materials "around the world," where the hell do you think we get strawberries in the winter months? Transportation is cheap. I have little respect for environmentalists these days, but Demorro is just another BS artist.

The claim linking the desolation around the Sudbury plant to the Prius has been disputed. See:

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/consumer/caring/article.html?in_article_id=414825&in_page_id=511

The money quote: "...You also sought to blame Toyota because the nickel is used, among countless other purposes, for making the Prius hybrid car batteries. In fact any damage occurred more than thirty years ago, long before the Prius was made. "

Go to the link to read the entire rebuttal.

Pick your agenda, and you'll be able to find some report somewhere to back it up. If you have money, you can pay someone to generate the report to your liking.

Auto companies are just as willing to mark up hybrid prices right now as they were to mark up SUV prices a couple years ago. The one constant is the gullible consumer who jumps on the going fad.

Hybrids aren't the answer, but they're a step in the right direction. I'd much rather drive an electric car powered by on-board fusion (and while we're at it, why don't we make it fly too?), but those are a little rare today.

Random thoughts:

Chris Demorro of Central Connecticut State University should avoid plagarizing others work. James Martin's commentary is better written.

The "Dust to Dust" numbers take into account more than the kitchen sink. Actually it seems to include all the sinks at raw material excavation, refinery, manufacturing plant, any shipping vessels, and car dealership. At least it includes the energy expended by janitors and the repair costs of transport ships. I suspect they double dipped a few numbers more than once.

Without the report, a simple run of the economic numbers finds that the additional cost of a Prius will not be over come by the savings in gas within a 5 year period, unless you throw in government subsidies in the form of tax breaks.

TnT is an amazing form of hypocrit in telling Rand not to get excited about news at the risk of looking like an ass. TnT ought to try clicking the second link. The first link has hyperbole, but the point is understood in the second link.

I looked at the Sudbury plant form Google Earth. You could see the plume from superstack easily, but zooming in, you could also see trees across street in the neighborhood. The green ponds near by looked bad, as well as obvious ground damage north of the facility. However, reading the commentary about superstack makes it clear the damage is far older than the Prius.

In the race to be environmentally friendly and oil independent, the US government has done a great job of making it extremely difficult to pick up a very fuel economic diesel car. Volvo won't even attempt to pay the cost to clear their new car. VW isn't selling the Jetta TDI anymore. Hopefully, Honda will bring its 52 mpg Accord diesel in 2009.

somone asked why the auto industry would want to smear the Prius?

Easy the prius is a top seller. For a carmaker without a hybrid line,
smearing all hybrids is in their interest.
For Carmakers with a hybrid, they make far less money then
they do selling Hummer's. So smearing hybrids may help
stoke SUV sales.

And for that matter large companies are balkanized.
Maybe one group acted independently of the others.

Dude, I saw a picture of a tree once. This means that the article is TOTALLY WRONG, man!

The "Dust to Dust" study has some valid concerns, but they have made some basic assumptions that don't hold up. Most Toyota last much longer than ~100K miles and there are multiple Priuses (Priui?) in taxi service in Portland, Or. that have over 250K miles on them with the original battery and only standard scheduled maintenance. Toyota actively buys back the batteries in any wrecked Priuses, and most parts of cars have been recycled for years.

I have documented mileage on a '06 Prius of 49.5 MPG average over 1,500 mi of driving from Sacramento Ca. to Spokane Wa. at an average speed of 75MPH with 2 adults, a child, a dog, and luggage for 2 weeks.

Most people don't realize that how you drive a car affects the mileage you get, and that any efficient, high MPG car, can get terrible mileage with bad driving technique. Of course this can be taken too far in the other direction, http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2007/01/king_of_the_hypermilers.html

:)

Stan has an important point to make regarding how a car is driven. Driving a Toyota Hybrid Highlander for example requires a very different approach to using the gas pedal. Since the car literally glides with the Electric Motors on pretty much at any speed, you just need to intersperse short bursts of gas need to keep the car gliding since you are looking for the optimum cooperation between the two systems with maximum time in the electric mode. Personally it is a delight. And for fast drivers, the response even when you are doing 85 is phenomenal when the electric motors kick in. Excellent car, and 27.5 mpg with mainly city driving is nothing to snicker at in an SUV with a 3.6L engine. I strongly suggest more of you just experience one without simply scoffing on the sidelines.

The one change I would like to see is the ability to completely shut off the electric system when needed such as when climbing very steep hills, where I've had a mild burning smell that may be emanating from the motors, due to the switching back and forth possibly. Maybe Stan can tell me how to turn it off :-)

Tom W., the messenger was deeply in error at the least and warranted my "attack".

And its not like people totting hybrids are any less sensational in their claims. At the end of a movie called 'Arctic Tale' a young actress says something to the effect, "If your parents buy a hybrid then polar bears will have an easier time getting around." Gimme a flippin' break.