In his latest book The Weather Makers, Tim Flannery suggests we can all do our bit for the environment including by considering buying a hybrid car.
However, according to CNW Marketing Research Inc. as reported at Auto Spectator, and they spent two years collecting data on the energy necessary to plan, build, sell, drive and dispose of a vehicle from initial concept to scrappage, well, hybrid cars are not that energy efficient:
“To put the data into understandable terms for consumers, it was translated into a “dollars per lifetime mile” figure. That is, the Energy Cost per mile driven.
The most Energy Expensive vehicle sold in the U.S. in calendar year 2005: Maybach at $11.58 per mile. The least expensive: Scion xB at $0.48 cents.
While neither of those figures is surprising, it is interesting that driving a hybrid vehicle costs more in terms of overall energy consumed than comparable non-hybrid vehicles.
For example, the Honda Accord Hybrid has an Energy Cost per Mile of $3.29 while the conventional Honda Accord is $2.18. Put simply, over the “Dust to Dust” lifetime of the Accord Hybrid, it will require about 50 percent more energy than the non-hybrid version.”
And I recently bought a little red manual Ford Fiesta (non-hybrid) as my 17 year old daughter is now learning to drive. She is doing OK, but I keep my eyes closed a bit.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
No plug in hybrids or electric cars tested?
Can you research it a bit more for us Ender? Would be prepared to cross post – just let me know.
I will try
The more I look the stranger those numbers appear.
Scion xB rates $0.48 energy equivalents per mile.
Scion xB 33mpg. At $2.50/gal the energy of mobility is $0.076 energy equivalents per mile. After 100,000 miles the difference adds up to $40,000 worth of energy to build and dispose of the vehicle itself.
Doesn’t add up.
It seems like the study was done to make SUVs appear better than they are. THe other issue is the production runs of the vehicles. The longer the production run the lower the unit cost.
Ender,
I understand your point but yours isn’t a fair critique of SUVs. If they are built to last longer then it is correct to amortize the energy of construction. If they are more recyclable (higer %age of metal for instance) then their disposal costs are equally lower. I don’t think the study was designed for bias. It is just sloppy.
SUVs are (can be) more environmentally responsible than commonly perceived.
More study details —
http://cnwmr.com/nss-folder/automotiveenergy/
Robert Cote – Assuming that SUVs are built to last longer. Most SUVs are urban cars that are treated as a family car and would last as long as any other passenger car. Modern SUVs have just as much plastic as any other car.
The other consideration is that every car presently on the road is a hybrid electric car. Every SUV now has a quite large battery and electric motor.
The bottom line is that most large SUVs are not driven off road, are heavier, have less visibility, have greater danger of roll-over, are a great danger to passenger car drivers and use up to 2 or 3 times the amount of fuel to do the same job as a passenger car. If the car is heavier then it has more material in it.
Hybrids are a step in the right direction but are by no means perfect. They need larger batteries and plug in ability to be better. Even better are the newer electric vehicle with lithium batteries that have sufficient range to be a ‘normal’ car.
For vehicle emissions standards from the 1970s onward, see figures 6a and 6b in the paper “No Way Back,” which can be downloaded at http://www.aei.org/docLib/20030804_4.pdf.
The claim that SUVs worsen air quality is a red herring. Since the 1996 model-year, SUVs have had virtually the same VOC emissions as cars. The difference in NOx emissions began narrowing for late-1990s model years and disappeared by the 2001 model-year. You can see the relative emissions of SUVs/pickups and cars in figures 5a and 5b of “No Way Back.”
Even during the early-to-mid 1990s, the fact that people were buying more SUVs (as a fraction of all vehicles) did not make air quality worse. At worst, the popularity of SUVs slowed somewhat the rate of decline in fleet-average emissions. New SUVs might have been a bit higher emitting than new cars, but they were still much cleaner than the average car on the road. Regardless of what happened in the past, EPA’s “Tier 2” regulation, which began phasing in for the 2004 model-year, requires SUVs and pickups to be as low emitting as cars.
Environmentalists, smart-growthers, and even regulators keep bringing up SUVs as a special contributor to air pollution, but their claims are false. I have yet to see anyone from these groups present emissions data in support of these claims. As far as I can tell, none have even bothered to look at any. Since SUVs burn more fuel, it seems to be taken as given that they emit more air pollution. Evidently it doesn’t occur to these folks that SUVs might also have larger catalytic converters, or that they could compare data on actual emissions of cars and SUVs to see if their claims hold water.
I’ll just ramble a bit on the environmental benefits of SUV use patterns. SUVs don’t replace 2004 Prius’ (which are not the lowest polluters BTW) but rather 10-15 year old minivans, even older station wagons or possibly two vehicles. When the SUV takes home a half dozen sections of fence, a posthole digger and 8 bags of cement they are removing a diesel delivery truck from the road. When my wife picks up our oldest and her three friends and all their schoolwork and field hockey equipment at practice we are replacing 2 normal vehicles. This is the same vehicle that gets us to the mountain cabin in snow when a normal vehicle would be turned back by the highway patrol. SUVs last longer so their use of natural resources other than fuel is lower.
If the ecoluddites really wanted improve gas mileage there’s a way and it lowers NOX emissions as well. Eliminate oxygenates from the gasoline formula. California regular unleaded has only 111,400 BTU per gallon. What happened to the other 13,100 BTUs? Glad you asked; the gas has been replaced by air and carcinogens. Yep, that’s right putting air into a gallon of ice cream gets you civil penalties for fraud but is required for gasoline. That’s right putting carcinogens in your ice cream gets you jail time but is required in gasoline.
Oh, and because SUVs are so profitable for the manufacturers they are generally better designed and provide enough profits to allow companies to pursue secondary goals such as lower emissions and safety. Then there’s performance. Yes, SUVs are successful loophole vehicles because passenger cars were so overregulated it became worthwhile to find ways around the rules. One unmentioned performance category is also an embarrassment to the anti-highway crowd; road condition. Our trillion dollar underinvestment and diversion to transit of infrastructure investment and maintenance money has left us with lousy roads that in part drives SUV adoption.
Robert, from what I understand, the argument here is about energy consumption (and extrapolating to related greenhouse emissions) not VOCs, NOX and air-pollution.
Talk about red herrings!
SUVs are bigger and heavier than small cars, and therefore need more fuel to carry a person from a to b. that’s just the way it is.
SUVs do not take old minvans and station wagons off the road. Old vehicles are taken off the road because they are old. Rather, new SUVs are chosen INSTEAD of new, more fuel efficient cars.
Your examples of SUVs avoiding the need for diesel delivery trucks or 2 trips to pick up kids is not bad, except that:
– diesel is not so bad relative to petrol in terms of greenhouse, and
-the proportion of trips that involve lugging lots of people or lots of equipment is low compared to the single person going from A to B on a trip about the suburbs – this holds true for any kind of car, including SUVs. You only need to look out the window on any car trip to see that the vast majority of other cars with 4 or more seats generally only have one passenger – the driver.
We’d need to see some data to check, but my feeling is that it would be better in terms of greenhouse in most cases to own a small car to use everyday, and then use two cars or hire a delivery van on the odd occasion that you need more transport capability than a small car can handle.
The topic of this post is market research that has found that the embodied energy in making a car is comparable to the energy consumed in transport fuel, to the extent that some ‘efficent’ cars are supposedly not efficient in reality when you look at full life cycle energy consumption.
I find this hard to fathom – i would think that the embodied energy in construction of a car would be dwarfed by the energy used in propelling that hunk of material and passengers over tens of thousands of kms for 10+ years, and that fuel efficiency would therefore be much more important than energy used in manufacture. I don’t have anything to support that though, i will need to do some research, so it was a good, thought provoking post for me.
Robert Cote – most of the arguments you use to justify urban SUV use are distortions of the truth.
“When my wife picks up our oldest and her three friends and all their schoolwork and field hockey equipment at practice we are replacing 2 normal vehicles.”
Does not have to be done in an SUV. I used to have a Toyota Lite-Ace that did exactly the same thing.
“This is the same vehicle that gets us to the mountain cabin in snow when a normal vehicle would be turned back by the highway patrol.”
I and 95% of Australians never drive in snow. On a recent trip to Kalgoorlie, a mining town where you would expect there to be heaps of SUVs, there where virtually none. There were more on the streets of trendy West Perth where I work.
“SUVs last longer so their use of natural resources other than fuel is lower.”
A Ford Territory or Prado is just a larger car. There is no evidence to suggest that these last longer. There are as many old cars on the road as old SUVs. In Kalgoorlie again I saw heaps of old Holdens and Fords over 20 years old. The only SUVs where the real 4WDs that I have no objection to. These are the Toyota Troopies and Landrovers, heavily coated in red dust, that bear obvious marks of off road use.
Here are a few statistics for you from a recent edition of Occums Razor
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ockham/stories/s1604721.htm
“The Australian Transport Safety Bureau Monograph No.11, of September 2003, included the following key findings.
1. Four-wheel-drives involved in fatal accidents increased by 85% between 1990 and 1998, whilst the overall number of fatal road accidents decreased by a quarter over the same period. This is likely to be because of the increased distances driven by 4-wheel-drives on Australian roads, as an overall percentage.
2. In accidents where 4-wheel-drives contributed to the cause of the crash, fatigue, alcohol or other drugs were a major factor. Four-wheel-drivers were more likely to be affected by alcohol than drivers of any other class of vehicle.
3. Four-wheel-drives were far more likely to roll over in a crash than a standard passenger car (35% compared with 13%).
4. Occupants of passenger cars accounted 64% of the fatalities in accidents involving 4-wheel-drives. The fatality rate for 4-wheel-drives was only 18%.
A senior US journalist, Keith Bradsher, has published an excellent book, ‘High and Mighty: SUV’s the world’s most dangerous vehicles and how they got that way’. This book is about the American experience, but much of it applies to Australia. Here’s what he says about rollovers. US Federal crash statistics show rollovers are less than 1% of US vehicle accidents, but result in 25% of all vehicle deaths. SUVs roll over five times per 100 crashes, compared with 1.7 times for cars. The 1999 US insurance surveys found that large SUVs, such as Ford Explorers, resulted in 39 deaths per million registered vehicles. Bigger mid-sized cars accounted for 14 deaths. Large family sized passenger cars accounted for only nine per million registered vehicles.
SUV rollover killed 2,049 occupants in America in 2000.
The report ‘Driveways deaths: fatalities of young children in Australia as a result of low-speed motor vehicle impacts’, said that large 4-wheel-drives were over-represented in accidents where young children were killed in driveways.”
Well I dont know, we have two 4WDs and they are necessary for their load carrying capacity and off road capability. I have another truck, a 2WD which gets bogged the minute it leaves the tar. I pay for my choices and I’m not having some whacky academic telling me what to do (on the topic of driveway injuries many new vehicles have cameras and video screens for reversing)
rog – “I’m not having some whacky academic telling me what to do”
Thats right rog, what would wacky academics know anyway.
I have nothing against 4WDs being used for off road purposes. There is no subsitute for this kind of work. However Porsche Cayennes and BMW SUVs cannot be considered work vehicles. Really the Toyota Prado etc are more luxury cars than serious off road vehicles. I did all my off road driving in plain old Hilux diesel 4WDs. Most of the time, even though we had to drive for about 5 kms on dirt roads to reach the bombing range where I serviced the radios, we took an Nissan Minibus.
Hilux 4WDs are only utes with the springs on top of the axles and 2 diffs – hardly off road vehicles, better off with the minibus.
Further on Ender’s post above, weren’t there a lot of rollover fatalities in Aust due to people losing control of their SUVs last holiday season?
Many SUV’s aren’t used offroad or for load bearing. Re: ice, snow & mtns, you can manage on many roads with a normal car (different if yr really heading out in the sticks but most don’t).
there’s an amusing profile of 4WD drivers at TAI: http://www.tai.org.au/Publications_Files/Papers&Sub_Files/4WD%20web%20paper.pdf
also, cut & pasted:
“Released only weeks ago, a national analysis of major single-vehicle crashes by Monash University’s Accident Research Centre determined SUVs were significantly less “crashworthy”, or safe for the driver, than small or medium-sized cars. “4WD vehicles performed poorly in single vehicle collisions irrespective of whether the collision involved a rollover,” the report concluded. “Anecdotally, many people choose to purchase 4WD vehicles based on a perception of high levels of occupant protection in these vehicles. In single vehicle crashes at least, the results show this perception is poorly founded.”
Being high and heavy, SUVs handle like light trucks, take longer to stop and, given the same reaction time, will hit a wall or a pole with greater force. But SUV drivers are also less safe precisely because they think they are secure. The AAMI survey, for instance, found that twice as many four-wheel-drivers as regular motorists admit to using a hand-held phone while driving. As European studies have shown time and again, owners of small cars drive more safely because they sense they’re vulnerable.”
http://drive.com.au/editorial/article.aspx?id=8730&vf=3&bg=5&pp=2
SUV’s are also dangerous because their “drivers are 1 1/2 times as likely as regular drivers to meet with abuse in shopping centre car parks.
Even Ford Australia’s own marketing research, sighted by Good Weekend, reveals that four-wheel-drivers are seen as “exhibitionists, would-be’s and wankers”. ”
on rollovers: http://www.suvrollovernews.com/
Ender and Phil
I just did my bit for global warming by buying the biggest engined SUV I could find. It’s throaty when pumped up in first gear and goes like a bat out hell. I also get about 12mpg. This ar alone will ensure my city doesn’t die of frost bight.
So thank me as I am doing my bit to save the world.
Yr excused joe, due to their sheer bulk and leaden heads, trolls need larger cars with strong engines.
Joe that’s weak mate – I’ve bought a D9 ! I’m finding it difficult to park at Woolies though.
Believe it or not Hummers are a for wimps. In a amazing display of one-upmanship I saw a person driving around Ocean Reef in a Unimog. Thats a man’s SUV.
http://www.unimog.com.au/
Nobody asked why Dr M bought a little red Fiesta for the young one?
Was it inital outlay or something relative to peak oil?
Nahhh
Greenhouse perhaps?
M’s a closet RC!
Looks like the loopy green left has just proved that 1+1+1 = 1.
What is an RC?
It/the red fiesta goes faster than my bicycle – except in heavy traffic.
Phil
you just talked me into buying a D9. That’s the only way you ensure a park at woolies. You just ram the friggin car in the best spot outta there.
Only getting it if I can mange 3 mpg though without the cat converter.
D9’s have more uses than just shopping, busting union picket lines and converting ”iconic” trees into landfill make for a very attractive package.
Well if you really wanted my respect you’d acquire a Komatsu D575 Superdozer.
A 152.6 tonne machine with a Komatsu SA12V170E diesel engine producing 858 kW (1,150 hp).
Rog – yes excellent for busting up demos – especially with Israeli military tweaks. And if you have two and a very large chain and ball you can convert useless native vegetation into yak pastures. Also very important technology for use in marriage counselling too – in that they free one from the nagging wife and children to be surrounded in your air-conditioned, stereo equipped, GPS auto-steered, and sat-phone enabled cabin. And you’re a bloke’s bloke right – so ripping up the land is a big sexual turn-on that your wife will thank you for later.
Rog
Quick. Do you know where Phil and Ender live? I just traded for a D9 and want to practice demolition derby while they are busy on their computers screaming about the danger of global warming by 1 deg next 100 years.
They want live out in the fresh air. Maybe I’ll help them while showing off the D9’s capabilities!
Jennifer: In my book, a closet RC = undercover Real Climate fan.
My father used to tell me that “there was none so stupid as he who didn’t want to know”. Well there is one more stupid, & thats the one who wants to believe.
Hybrids were developed to meet the Californian emission laws. Having made the things the companies looked for a way to increase sales, & found the urban greenie. You know, the ones who want to change my life, to save the planet, & who find it so convenient that they can do their bit, by buying a different car.
When confronted with research which shoots down their nice little “pie in the sky”, they can’t believe it. Why, because it is not what they want to believe. So, what do they do? They start going on about SUVs, & 4WDs, & even Bulldozers, for gods sake. Any thing to get away from the ugly [in their minds] truth. The bloody things are a snow job, designed to amatisse the cost of developing them for California.
The studdy looked at total costs of all the vehicles, from mining the iron ore, to recycling the bits, & eliminating any toxic residue.
& what did they find? That the very small saving in fuel usage was more than negated by the energy costs of the extra materials, & manufacturing effort, with the cost extra recycling, & toxic residue elimination.
When the Mayor of London was looking for a boost to his greenis credentials recently, he floated the idea of banning old vehicles from the city.
It transpired that many of the London establishnent, dismayed at the lack of a “British” car industry, have taken to driving restored 60, & 70 Jaguars, & the like, in a flurry of patriotism. [It is also good business as these things appreciate, rather than the other thing].
With their pull they got the Heritage Trust to do a bit of quick research. They looked at the energy used to produce the new Mini. Just the energy to produce the thing, not supply all the materials as well. What did they find?
You can run your 1960s, Mk11, 3.4l Jag [Inspector Morse car] for five [5] years on the energy used to put the Mini together. Add in the energy to supply the steel, plastics etc, & it will be up to double that. You would have to drive your new little car for 8.65 years, if it lasted that long, before you reached “energy parity” with driving a restored old, big, car.
So, if you are a real greenie, rather than a lata one, get down to the wreckers, & pick up an old Holden Kingswood, & take it to a workshop to be restored. Not only will you be helping to save the planet, but you will be helping to supply employment at home, & helping oue balance of payment position as well.
Oh, & if you want to bring your fuel consumption down to something like a hybrid, just turn the engine off at traffic lights, thats their main saving.
Plug in electric is even more inefficient use of energy, with its massive losses. It just transfers the emission of the polution to a place out of town.
Hasbeen
Hasbeen, the problem with the research is that it is nonsense, not that it contradicts any pie in the sky.
The CNW study was designed to disfavor hybrids. A large part of the increased energy costs they cite are due to the relatively small production runs of the hybrid models. That’s why they cite ‘planning’ costs. They do this in a number of places in their report, to the extent that if you were to agree with their methodology, it would always be energy inefficient to produce any new type of vehicle, as the per-unit costs would be higher _at the start of the production run_..
which is what the CNW study is counting on to support their conclusion. If most people don’t buy hybrids, then the hybrids will be more expensive on a per-unit basis, and they can publish such studies.
If hybrids start selling in large numbers, however, their entire argument falls apart instantly.
For myself, I’d strongly prefer to be able to drive a plug-in hybrid, and get the electricity for the nightly charging from a breeder reactor.. zero marginal emissions, and the fuel gets burned down to the level that the waste fades to natural levels after a few years.
Hasbeen – “That the very small saving in fuel usage was more than negated by the energy costs of the extra materials, & manufacturing effort, with the cost extra recycling, & toxic residue elimination.”
Only if the cost of that is grossly exaggerated. A Prius does not have really many more components that a high end SUV. The ‘complexity’ of the hybrid drive is really just a more sophisticated automatic transmission.
“pick up an old Holden Kingswood, & take it to a workshop to be restored.”
That runs on leaded petrol with no catalytic converter to reduce dangerous emissions and uses twice as much fuel.
“Plug in electric is even more inefficient use of energy, with its massive losses.”
Electic power -> lose 10% -> charge batteries -> lose 15% -> power electric motor -> lose 10% -> drive car
Gasoline -> lose 85% -> drive car
So which really has the massive losses – hmmmmm
Even if the electrity comes from coal there is less than half the emissions because the electic car is so much more efficient than an IC car.
Jonathan – “For myself, I’d strongly prefer to be able to drive a plug-in hybrid, and get the electricity for the nightly charging from a breeder reactor.. zero marginal emissions, and the fuel gets burned down to the level that the waste fades to natural levels after a few years.”
Was with you 100% until the breeder reactor bit. Please not nuclear – we can do without it.
Replacement batteries for hybrids are ~$7k, they only last 8/9 years, less in the tropics.
Ender, why didnt you tell me?
It is a valid consideration, resource use for the entire life cycle of a product, but.. .. Jonathon captured my thoughts – the report is biased on the small runs, no economies of scale yet, for hybrids. It’s not just about the particular models of cars but the new technology which is still evolving. Standard engines are mature technology. I also wonder if they used assumptions about the construction process for traditional cars – lighter hybrid cars are starting to bring in a new, less resource intensive approach to manufacturing and assembling cars. If we acted on the basis of this report then we’d ban concept cars.
err – I thought there was a huge waiting list for Prius in the USA?
Rog – “Replacement batteries for hybrids are ~$7k, they only last 8/9 years, less in the tropics.”
What has the tropics got to do with it? The NiMH battery of the Prius is really babied and will last the life of the car. The 8-10 year thing is a bit of a red herring.
New batteries using nano-technology:
I can supply the link however the article is on a site I subscibe to.
“Gotcher estimates that a battery using nano materials will have 2-5 times the power density of a lead acid battery, 10-20 times the power density of current NiMH batteries, and be 5-10 times more powerful than conventional lithium-ion batteries used in cell phones and laptop computers.
“We have a lot of the performance characteristics of a NiMH battery, the same energy density — actually just a tad more — and much more power.
“We can take very rapid rates of charge and discharge,” he continued. “We can charge and discharge our battery in three to six minutes. That’s full charge and discharge. That’s one of the reasons why we are very excited about this battery technology being applied to full electric vehicles.
“One of the problems that all manufacturers have faced with electric vehicles is the long recharge time it takes; typically four to eight hours. And now, with this battery technology, it looks plausible that we can build an electric vehicle that you can pull into a charging station and charge in six-to-eight minutes.” ”
and
“”We have test data where we’ve recharged ours at a 20C rate, so that’s three minutes and then a full discharge in three minutes and we have data that illustrates these batteries’ lifecycle will go out to at least 9,000 cycles, and probably more.”
The average cycle life of your conventional car battery is 300-500 cycles.
Just as impressive, when it comes to energy density, which Gotcher said is comparable to NiMH batteries, a nanotechnology-based lithium battery has a far wider performance window. He commented that a NiMH battery can only safely utilize between 35-40 percent of its inherent energy density, whereas test batteries using Altair’s electrodes can access 90 percent.
“For the same sized battery, we can go twice as far.” ”
Ender, you are still at it. You want to compare your Prius to a “High end SVU”. You prove my piont for me. You must get some practical knowledge too. $75 worth of hard valve seat inserts, during our restoration, will have our Kingswood running like a dream on unleaded, & then you can fit a catalytic converter, if you must.
You are going to have to do some very hard selling to convince me of the advantage of that bit of gear. If the idea is, once again, to transfer the polution out of the city, it may do its job. But the cost, energy wise, of extracting the exotic materials required, make the balance very doubtful.
May be, you have forgotten that our earlier Holdens were light cars. Much lighter than your Prius, even before it gets the ballast of all those batteries. Most people got over 30 miles per gallon, 7.5 L/100K would be reasonable consumption to expect from a restored version, particularly if we use some upgraded modern electronics.
Talking consumption, the supply manager, at my old company, was telling me a couple of months ago, that they have been very disappointed with the results of the 5 they bought 18 months ago. They replaced 2 Holdens, & 3, 4 cylinder Toyotas.
The savings have been from 320 liters to 1700 liters per year. The average is only 620 per car per year. Hardly a good return, either financially, or energy wise. At this rate it would take 15 years for energy break even.
One thing the research did not take into account, but should have, is the total life cycle of the things. These things are going to be scrapped at 7 to 8 years, when the time comes for new batteries. At this age, they will not be valuable enough, for any one to be prepared to put $7000, or $8000 worth of batteries in the things.
They will be in the hands of their third or fourth owners. Yes, thats right, the very people who, often, are unable to find the money for a couple of new tyres. Its not just pie in the sky, its head in the clouds, too. As I said, there’s none so stupid as he who wants to believe.
Jonathan, I’ll join you, if you will throw out the combustion engine, & just use batteries, provided you throw the electric windows out with the engine.
Phinxi, if only that was happening, but its not. 30 years ago the “family” car was about a ton. After 30 years of weight saving, it now weights about 1.5 tons, or even more. Its only the new engine technology that allows them to give the same fuel consumption we enjoyed in the 60s.
When I go for a drive in my 1980 car, with its 1970s technology, I enjoy 7.4 L/100K economy, close to your hybrid, because it is light. Of course I have to supply the power for steering, & I crank the windows up & down, all by my self.
If I want the boot open, I have to walk back there, with the key, but I don’t suppose I’d want it open, if I did not want to go to it. I have to unlock the doors, one at a time, & I have to go to the door to do it. I even have to walk to the radio aerial, to adjust that. But I have saved some pollution, you see, with all this exercise I have saved a couple of trips to the gymnasium.
Hasbeen
Toyota warranties the Prius battery pack for eight years. Any other time span is speculation.
There is some talk that charging to 60% capacity extends battery life and running it dead flat and then fully recharging shortens battery life.
May as well stir the pond up and see if there are any bites left.
If I had a dollar for every time a complete stranger has walked up to me and said something like “I wish I’d never sold my old Holden tonner. I got rid of it and bought one of those (insert recent model light commercial vehicle of your choice here) and bloody hell, does it use some fuel!”. Perhaps they are just being polite, maybe I look like I need cheering up a bit.
I suspect we have all adopted a position in terms of life style for primarily emotional reasons and then look for evidence to justify ourselves.
The big problem with the old utes was rust, especially doors, sills and around the rear windows. Otherwise those 253 V8s were great motors.
Hasbeen – “May be, you have forgotten that our earlier Holdens were light cars. Much lighter than your Prius, even before it gets the ballast of all those batteries. Most people got over 30 miles per gallon, 7.5 L/100K would be reasonable consumption to expect from a restored version, particularly if we use some upgraded modern electronics.”
A lot of the economy of the Prius comes from aerodynamics. There is one huge advantage in the city that the Prius has. The engine stops in stop/start traffic and it creeps forward on the electric motor. This is something that your Holden cannot do unless it is an EcoCommodore.
But you are right the Prius as it is now is not the answer. It was a compromise that the motor companies thought they could sell. The next generation of hybrids will be able to be plugged into to the grid and have a larger battery pack. You should be able to do your whole commute on electric only and get an equivilent fuel economy of 150mpg.
“One thing the research did not take into account, but should have, is the total life cycle of the things. These things are going to be scrapped at 7 to 8 years, when the time comes for new batteries.”
This is a beat up. So far the early Prius’s are still going strong with 200 000 miles on them without the battery being replaced. As I said before the Prius’s computer really really babies them and does not allow deep discharges.
In the future the plug in hybrids and battery electric cars will supply the missing storage and enable renewables to really shine. Thats why I don’t think we will need breeder reactors.
Ender, I’m in the United States, and it’s just not credible to think that we’ll build enough wind or solar power here to take over our power generation needs. Remember, if a large percentage of vehicles become plug-in cars of whatever stripe, that increases the load on the electric grid above and beyond what it would otherwise be.
Deep-burn cycle nuclear reactors can produce a phenomenal amount of power with great efficiency, and the radioactive waste problem is much reduced from our current shallow-burn reactors.
Win-win-win, I think. Certainly, the United States suffers more pollution and death from our Coal infrastructure than we ever have from nuclear, and new reactor types will have much better safety characteristics.
Hasbeen: I drove my last car into the ground, and I intend to drive my Prius until it stops as well. I didn’t buy a Prius until this year because I didn’t want to incur the environmental cost of an unnecessary car being built for me. Your assumptions as to the considerations of hybrid drivers are just that.
You’re also assuming that the cost of batteries will not decrease at all over the next ten years. I’m assuming that the batteries will get cheaper and that gas will get more expensive.
We’ll have to see how that race goes.
Jonathan Abbey – “Ender, I’m in the United States, and it’s just not credible to think that we’ll build enough wind or solar power here to take over our power generation needs.”
Yes thats what they would like you to think. In fact a recent study of the wind potential of the Midwest concluded that there is sufficient wind power sites to power 1.5 times the then electricity consumption of the US.
http://www.nrel.gov/wind/wind_potential.html
That is just wind let alone solar, geothermal and biomass.
I don’t think that all power can come from renewables however we must first reduce power consumption by 40% or 50% with energy conservation which can be done. Renewables with storage can then ramp up to 60% or 70% of load. You also get to drive the storage around eliminating your addiction to oil. Coal at this lower level used in Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle power plants can be 55% or 60% efficient and the CO2 can be captured and sequestered or released at a much lower rate than now. Also IGCC eliminates the toxic wastes that are presently spewed out of coal plants.
Breeder reactors breed plutonium. One of the safety factors of present nuclear reactors is that they use fuel that is not suitable for weapons. Any attempt to produce weapons is easily detectable and fairly easily controlled. With hundreds of breeder reactors producing plutonium which is immediatly weapons grade there is no chance in hell we can control the spread of nuclear weapons.
Other than that I hope you like your Prius. I only get to drive work’s one.
These number just don’t add up. According to this the Toyota Echo ‘costs’ nearly 50% more than the Scion xB – but the Scion is based on the Echo – same engine etc – how can the same car with a different shell consume so much less energy than the original car.
And what about the VW Golf v the BMW X5 – the Golf consumes 13% more energy ‘dust to dust’ than the BMW X5. These numbers are screwy.
Ender, that info on batteries is most encouraging. If it translates to real life, the Arabs are going to be in trouble, financially, in the near future.
Aerodynamics is not much advantage to the hybrid, constant running, at moderate to high [90 to 140 KPH] is their weakest piont, with no chance for regeneration. I can see no reason to pervent the addition of an no, off function in our Kingswood, although, fitting a more powerful alternator, & larger battery to allow for this is probably counter productive.
The fact that some have done 200000 miles does not impress me much. High, short term usage, I suspect you understand, is the easiest usage. Plenty of Taxis have done 3 times that, without any breakdown.
Speaking of Taxis, when the taxi companies are buying their second hybrid, to replace their first 1,000,000 mile one, you will have a real argument for their econonic advantage.
Boxer, I have to agree. The only people who can realy enjoy driving old cars are, rich people, who like riding in taxis fairly regularly, or reactionary old buggers, like me, who have a very sound knowledge of the old technology. It also helps if you are retired, & looking for something interresting to do.
I even work on my cars, beside the shed, so I get fresh air, & sun shine while I’m at it. [The truth is, the eyes are no longer good enough, to see well enough, in the shed].
My wife is attracted to a 1970s english sedan, & I have thought of replacing her modern rice burner with one a few times. The thought of the nagging, that would follow the inevitable break down, prevents this. Currently, any inconvenience is blamed on the local Toyota dealer.
Jonathon, why drive your Prius into the ground, maintain it properly, & drive it even further, particularly as you will be able to afford new batteries, perhaps Enders beaut new ones.
My eldest daughter is driving our 1985 Toyota Creseda, with 344,000 kilometers on the clock. With good maintenance it is still a totally sound, reliable car, which she took over when we no longer had a use for a large car. It has another 4 years, & 70000 kilometers, before it would require a paint job, which will be when it dies.
Well, its time to take my tong out of my cheek, but only slowly. I still find the picture of our roads, once again, flooded with Kingswood, quite delicious. I find the view of our roads, full of white goods on wheels, very depressing, even if practical.
Hasbeen
Hasbeen – “Aerodynamics is not much advantage to the hybrid, constant running, at moderate to high [90 to 140 KPH] is their weakest piont”
One of the guys that has a Prius as a tool of trade car had occasion to take of the wheel covers. His range dropped 50km straight away.
I tend to agree with you about the older generation of cars however the solution for the future, barring some economic crash that renders new cars unaffordable, is not to return to old cars.
Hasbeen, your Creseda may yet do another 100k more. But drool, my HZ is back on the road after I fixed the drivers side door latch spring with a pair of pointy nose pliers.
I bet you can’t fix any of these new cars hybrid or otherwise with a pair of pliers and several hours of curses.
buggerbuggga part of the appeal of hybrid for early adopters is that they can ‘hack’ them in ways you can’t do with traditional cars, eg fiddle with energy sources and settings. And their parts are cheaper and strong lightweight materials will revolutionse manufacturing, ie reduce the high capital intensive nature of traditional car manufacturing plants.
Re comments above comparing durability of new cars to old cars – you can make this same point about most modern new cars (not just hybrids) and most modern consumer goods and modern buildings too. All built-in obsolescence, all generic and samey. I really dig old cars, but we’re seeing new developing technology that will improve and non-hybrid car manufacturers are already flirting with new innovations – inspired by hybrids and consumer pressures. They may need some major modifications in the future, but I reckon classic old cars will stay on the road. (I welcome new more efficient appliances and vehicles but I too am sceptical about replacing some functional old appliance with new ones due to total lifecycle energy costs – particularly if the old appliance or car then gets used by somebody else).
On quality and durability of modern products: manufacturers should have to take back their own products (this process also encourages them to learn what the failure points of their products are) and deal with the waste. This might lead to more leasing rather than purchasing. It can lead to a more reliable, durable product OR a product designed for easy disassembly, using material ingredients that can easily recycled for reuse in a new version of the same product (ie not downcycled to a last-use product eg a speedhump)
Not the Kingswood !
The HZ at least had the Radial Tuned Suspension. The first Holden to handle. Its predecessors beat tractors for ploughing straight ahead.
But all the Kingswood reminiscing will only be a brief retro reprieve for those with spanner dexterity. Check out the streets. Kingswoods virtually gone in cities. Swept away in a sea of car deals, the Korean invasion, a glut of second hand cars. Air-cons, 6 stackers and fuel injection.
Most people don’t want to know anything about car maintenance. Nobody checks anything. People want very long service intervals.
But it’s refreshing that Buggers are still out there holding back the tide. As a protest about durability and quality. (second hand Hyundai anyone??)
Phil,
Re your D575
1. Use of ball with chaining is rare unless using low horsepower a side
2. Are you predicting much better economic times in yaks if we are going to see new D575’s (at around $4-5mill each) in woody veg management? Usual path is downstream from the mines to the end of a chain. Often a long way downstream – still some D9E’s around, which went non-current pre-1970.
3. So many of the dozers used in in woody veg management are obsolete and frequently unservicable
4. But, if you were depending on a recent phenomenon, then a reading of the widely available literature on woody vegetation increase in Australian rangelands should convince you that “God’s bulldozer” is also obsolete and has been unservicable since pre-1902
Phinxi; on your last point, IMHO it’s a bit unreasonable to send all the rejects or otherwise useless appliances and stuff back to a manufacturer in China.
eco: God knows that “woody” is nothing but a passing phrase
Ecosceptic – thanks for filling in details. My piece was purely fictional.
Tell us some more about God’s bulldozer !
Phil,
I think the person you really need for that is Rod Fensham – see an earlier thread on this blob
Perhaps not – Rod doesn’t like fire.
yes absolutely buggabuggerblogger. It depends of course on distance between place of mnfr & use, & by where raw materials come from, costs, and cost of disposal (ie can be substituted by disassembled/recycled parts? the current financials would have to change). I’d be hopeful, if manufacturers had to take back the waste from their own products that they’d make more lasting products with local service (jobs) but I can’t predict the outcome. (This is already starting in Europe).
Things generally aren’t made to last today – is this true, ie that appliances, cars etc are really less durable these days? Seems like it. As a result, are they more affordable (ie is the inflation-adjusted price less today?)or can we just afford them because we’re richer?
Philosophical
Maybe not, but he seems to have unrealizable expectations of drought
Ultimatly the kingswood rules all, basically cheap to buy reliable and easy to fix they beat most other cars, and if you wanna get all technicalgo and modern go to the wrecker get a rear ended VN-VS and do a VS Kingswood, basically the Ecotech6cyl and gearbox in a old kingwood saving 2 cars and the environment the remaining parts from the vs can be recycled easily as well as the red 202 of the like from the kingswood (being mainly made of steel) resulting in a solid car, with economy and power AND very little waste. all for bout 5-7k Alot cheaper then a prius or a new commodore etc. AND looks better too has that old school class to it.
If all else fails havent people heard of 6 speed gearboxes with 2 over drives, 6th gear 100k at 1000-1500rpm little power LITTLE emissions and the like.
Just my input anyway hope someone takes it seriously
Steve
Ender have you thort about the inviromental damige that the minibus leavs think about it if the minibus damiges the dirtroad mor than the hilux whick it duse then the masinery to repar the track to a good condition