Commentary

Reason.org
July 19, 2006

Have You Hugged a Hummer Today?
Hybrid vehicles' overall energy costs exceed those of comparable non-hybrids
By Shikha Dalmia


Ford Motor Company did itself a huge favor recently by backing away from its pledge to bump-up its hybrid production ten-fold in four years. But, as it turns out, the company might have done the planet a whale of a favor too.

Just last fall, CEO Bill Ford was valiantly promising in a mega-million dollar ad campaign that the company would never, ever turn away from its hybrid pledge because these vehicles were central to the company's reputation as an "innovator and environmental steward."

Never mind that at the time Ford was losing $2,000 to $3,000 for every hybrid it sold because consumers won't pay the entire $6,000 extra that it costs to produce a hybrid over its gas-powered counterpart. Never mind also that in the real world -- outside of the Environmental Protection Agency's tax-payer funded testing sites -- hybrids don't deliver anywhere close to the gas mileage that the agency attributes to them, as auto-writer Richard Burr reported in the Weekly Standard.

Bill Ford had given his word on hybrids and you could take that to the bank (ruptcy court). But hybrids have received such a thrashing in the market lately that even Ford was forced to take-off his green eye-shades and read the red-ink on the wall.

According to Art Spinella, the uber-auto analyst and President of CNW Marketing Research, hybrid sales every month this year have been down compared to the same time last year. Even sales of the Toyota Prius – the darling of the greens – have dropped significantly. The only segment besides taxis where hybrids are still holding steady – taxpayers will be happy to note -- is the car fleets maintained by the government.

What's particularly interesting is that individual consumers are defying all expectations and turning their backs on hybrids at a time when gas prices are soaring. (The average U.S. retail price of gas spiked to a record high of $3.01 last September following hurricane Katrina, and just last week it hit its second highest price ever at nearly $3.00.) Nor is the reason all that mysterious. Spinella's customer satisfaction surveys show that 62 percent of hybrid owners are dissatisfied with the fuel-economy performance of their cars given what they have paid for them.

This means that when gas prices go up, these people don't rush out to buy more hybrids. "They buy a Chevy Aveo," says Spinella. "It delivers the same fuel economy as a Prius, but at half the price."

Consumer interest might revive if the cost of hybrids goes down substantially – or the cost of fuel goes up and stays up for a long period of time, Spinella believes. Until then, however, the hybrid market is unlikely to come out of the deep freeze, a reality that even Ford had to finally acknowledge.

But despite all these drawbacks, hybrids are at least better for the environment than say….. a Hummer, right? Nope.

Spinella spent two years on the most comprehensive study to date – dubbed "Dust to Dust" -- collecting data on the energy necessary to plan, build, sell, drive and dispose of a car from the initial conception to scrappage. He even included in the study such minutia as plant-to-dealer fuel costs of each vehicle, employee driving distances, and electricity usage per pound of material. All this data was then boiled down to an "energy cost per mile" figure for each car (see here and here).

Comparing this data, the study concludes that overall hybrids cost more in terms of overall energy consumed than comparable non-hybrid vehicles. But even more surprising, smaller hybrids' energy costs are greater than many large, non-hybrid SUVs.

For instance, the dust-to-dust energy cost of the bunny-sized Honda Civic hybrid is $3.238 per mile. This is quite a bit more than the $1.949 per mile that the elephantin

 

Had read that some of the technology used to build hybrids cancels out the actual savings in fuel, your post above just confirms what I've read. There is an answer to the gas problem BUT we don't have it yet. It is not to get rid of our hummers.

 

It is too bad the links in that article didn't work. It would be nice to go to some of the pages sited in that piece.

 

Here is the link; enjoy!
http://www.reason.org/commentaries/d...20060719.shtml

 

That's very interesting. Makes sense to me.

 

Very interesting....I think I'm actually going to print copies of this article out and keep them in my purse. It would be a great "hand out" when certain family members give me a hard time about my "energy hog"....thanks for posting. You made my day. One copy is definitely going on the bulletin board at my office

 

Unfortunately, this is not accurate.

CNW is a libertarian-biased organization that has distorted the facts. Their "study" makes several inaccurate assumptions. They conclude that the majority of energy expenditure comes from manufacture, when studies by MIT, Argonne National Labs, and others show quite the opposite. Toyota does admit that Mfg energy req't is somewhat higher for a hybrid, but it is far outweighed by the lower driving stage req'ts (~85% over the vehicle's life). CNW uses no serious, scientific, peer-reviewed data to back up their outlandish claims.

They assume the life of a Prius is 100K miles, and a Hummer is 300K, which seems a dramatically unrealistic comparison. A number of Priuses have exceeded 200K miles and Toyota is reporting 180K miles with no discernable battery degradation. Most people drive their Hummers fewer miles than a commuter vehicle, presumably due to higher fuel cost... a 300K Hummer is probably a rarity, whereas Toyota's reliability is top-notch (I put 290K on my 4Runner before it got totaled), and 300K Priuses should not be unusual.

The CNW report claims, inaccurately, that the hybrid batteries are not recycled. Toyota and Lexus have a comprehensive battery recycling program and they've been doing so ever since the electric RAV4 in 1998.

If you read the report, you see it is mostly filler with no references, a number of cartoons, no detail about how they did the analysis so that the numbers could be checked. It has an amateurish feel.

Admitedly, the Prius may acutally use more life-cycle energy than a comparable economy car, such a Scion xA, and I don't know that Toyota has disputed that, but the Prius's emissions are much cleaner than the xA. And it may be that a smarter alternative is one of the new super-clean diesels, or in time an all-electric (Teslamotors should have a grocery-getter companion to their all-electric roadster by 2009). Maybe hybrids are not the end-game. But you seriously would have to have a brain disorder to believe that a 9 MPG road-hog is easier on the environment than a Prius. Seriously.

 

I think it's interesting that this is Carster's first post. It's funny that the FUH2 crowd frequents our forums, just looking for false information. [sm=nono.gif]Get a life!

[sm=americanasmiley.gif]

 

Carster, you sounded ok up untill the dipsh!t crack at the end.

It never ceases to amaze me how some of you people have the arrogance to believe you can "save" the planet. The planet is fine! It was here long before you were here to baby it, and it will be here long after you and all people are gone. It will be going through the same stages it always has, with or without you.
Humans have only been here a very small, small, fraction of earth's life. There is nothing we can do to it thats worse that it's already been through.

Get a life, and then enjoy it.

 

Sorry folks...Correct me if I'm wrong about this..

This is not a Prius/Toyota/Lexus/hybrid anything forum..this is a HUMMER forum..we are not out on these other namby-pamby Hybrid, exo-freak, liberal moron forums, beating our HUMMER Drums in your face...

Your last ignorant remark about the 9 MPG is so much the typically narrow mined bullchit I have grown to expect from you and idiots like you..You targeted the HUMMER again..you never prefaced the Tahoe, the Yukon, The Navigator, the Excursion, the Escalade..do these not count too?..or are they just not the poster child you ELF fukheads have tagged us HUMMER owners with?

Good bye and I hope yourcrotch gets infested with Camel fleas..





Man he's lucky this was Good Friday, or I would have really let him have it..