Some of the cites I linked to mention that large power plants produce electricity much more efficiently than small ones, which is why the electricity at your house is 1/3 the price of electricity produced by a small gas generator (like the engine of a Prius.) I don’t know if this efficiency also translates to overall reduced emissions when comparing hybrid auto emissions to coal fired plant emissions. I have found no studies but would love to see some, if anyone’s got 'em. My gut says no, though - there have been decades of research into making gasoline burn cleaner, I don’t think coal has been given the same level of attention.
A very good point ocurred to me when reading your post - gas-electric hybrids don’t have nuclear material in them, but they do have those gigantic batteries. In an accident, I imagine battery acid could get sprayed all over the place. Unpleasant images leap to mind. :rolleyes:
Well that seems another blow to society (Big Brother tracking us like we are all sex offenders).
While a heave load will cause a depression, and roads that have heavy truck traffic can get tire ridges (much like dirt roads get ruts), I was thinking more that small hard high PSI tires will be more likely to cause and further ‘open’ pot holes.
Once open a small tire is more likely to fall into it (wider tires have more of a chance to strattle it) and then impact the opposite side with very hard rubber.
The extra weight of a larger car more than cancels out the effects of the smaller contact patch of small high-mileage cars. Also, the narrower contact patch means that any given point on the paving is driven over less often.
It’s a lot easier to clean up X amount of pollution from one big source (e.g. a power plant) than X amount of aggregate pollution from lots of little sources (e.g. automobiles).
Also, people could just get over their peasant superstitions about nuc-u-lar stuff.
A little. The Prius does not run off other energy sources than fossile fuels at all, but it simply wastes less of it. The whole car is designed to reuse energy that is otherwise simply lost and store it in its battery. For example, if you brake, normally you’d just lose the speed you have, generate heat from the friction of the brake discs and that then just disappears. There are many such clever reuses of energy in that car.
Even if the costs of owning a Prius are the same, you’ve still consumed less fuel. And you’re calculating under the assumption that gas prices don’t go up. In my country we pay about 2.5 times what most Americans pay for fuel (we do calculate damage to the environmental into the price), and even the cheapest country, Spain, pays almost double that of what most Americans pay. If the euro hadn’t been this strong, the prices of fuel would have been infinitely higher.
Well the question becomes is how much would you save on gas over eight years with the Prius (56 mpg) over your current car. (?mpg) Since I don’t know how much you drive or pay for gas I can’t tell you that.
Also, if you buy a new car, how long till you change it? Do you keep a car >8 years?
Are you sure about this? The MPG seems wrong. Honda Hybrid system is different than Toyota. They have a huge gain highway mpg over in city mpg. IIRC the sticker on mine when bought in 2000 was 60 mpg city and 70 mpg highway.
Osip
I took that number from the Honda website under full specifications then fuel efficiency. It shows the Insight MT (not the one I used because it’s lighter) at 61/66 and the CVT at 57/56. These are city/highway EPA estimates for 2005. The CVT is the continuous variable transmission which I surmise adds the extra 100 lbs to the vehicle weight but allows those nice smooth startups in the city?
I used the heaviest version of each vehicle to make it as “apples to apples” as possible.
Let’s suppose that in 8 years, a person with a hybrid drives 100,000 miles. Let’s suppose they’re getting 50 mpg, while with a non-hybrid car they would have gotten 20 mpg. For every 50 miles they drive, they burn one gallon and save 1.5 gallons. Over the eight year period they thus save 3000 gallons, or about $7500 at todays prices. Furthermore it’s reasonable to assume that the batteries will get cheaper over time, while gasoline will only get more expensive.
You need to read the rest of the post. No, they don’t need to be plugged in, but there’s no reason they can’t be plugged in. Once you plug them in, you’re saving yourself a huge amount of money - and releasing coal smoke into the atmosphere.
Okay, let’s use your numbers. A hybrid generally costs 5k more than a comparable all-gas model. At the end of 8 years, the battery will need to be replaced. Dealers estimate that the batteries will cost between 2-5k in eight years after the prices have come down. So you trade a savings of $7500 for a cost of somewhere between 7-10k. Doesn’t sound like a savings to me. Especially since your 20mpg versus 50mpg doesn’t really hold water - generally the cars comparable to the hybrids do a lot better than 20mpg, and hybrids reportedly don’t do nearly as well as they generally claim. So your $7500 is probably more like $3000. In the end you’re paying more.
The Prius cannot be plugged in even if you want to (unless they changed the specs since last year).
How do you save money by plugging in anyway? The Prius charges its battery from energy that in other cars is lost in the braking process. It is not running a petrol driven generator to charge the battery. It is recovering energy that would otherwise be wasted. So no need to plug it in and no advantage if you could…
In my family, all the time. Especially newer cars. There’s one we bought new that is now 19 years old, one we bought used (but fairly young) that lasted about a decade, another one bought used (off someone’s short lease) that will probably last at least until 10 years, and so on. We’re a drive it until the wheels fall off or the engine explodes type of family.
Same here asterion 200,000 miles it not a big deal on a car made in the last 10 years. I’d like a new car. I admit it. My Pathfinder has 190,000 miles on it. But it’s doing great. I don’t have good reason to replace it.
There are two schools of thought. Drive it into the ground, or replace it every few years.
My plow truck is 30 years old. My primary vehicle is 13 years old. I’m lookin but can’t justify 35g for a new vehicle. This also gives me more choices. Lots of time to look, and find the right ‘next’ vehicle. Let them get the kinks out.
The government wants the ability to make the taxes variable based on several factors; peak vs. off peak commute times being the major one, but also in-state vs out-of-state travel. I believe they also wanted the ability to track traffic patterns. This little black box could answer alot of questions (privacy concerns aside)
My mom works for a Honda dealership and according to her, the folks at the dealership crunched the numbers and unless gas jumps to around $5/gal or so, it won’t pay to have a hybrid as far as saving gas. (And presently, used hybrids are selling for more than new ones.)
Of course, one thing that hybrid do, that no one’s mentioned: They make it cheaper to drive more and farther. Since you can now go 600 miles for the same amount of money that it cost you to go 300 miles.
I don’t think that the “plug in” variety of hybrids are all that great shakes, either. Yeah, I know, those cars would reduce our dependence on foreign oil and would reduce air pollution if they were in wide spread use, but would they really? First of all, how many people could be bothered to plug in their car every day? Secondly, how much is it going to drive up their light bill? Third, how many people live in apartments where plugging in their car would be difficult, if not impossible? Fourth, what about the increased load on the electrical grid if these things became common? In some places, the power grid gets overtaxed in the summer time with the use of A/C units, adding a bunch of cars to the mix is going cause even more problems. No doubt, hybrids are the wave of the future unless someone figures out cold fusion.