Hybrid Autos....not so green after all.

[55CrushEm]

Not Easy Being Green
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Thursday, March 22, 2007 4:20 PM
PT

Feeling a bit smug about owning that hybrid? Better rein in that
contempt for those who still drive primitive conventional cars. It seems
that a Hummer is more ecologically friendly than a Prius.

Yes, the Hummer will burn much more gasoline and discharge more
emissions than a Toyota Prius driven the same distance. But a car's
ecological footprint - if we may twist an environmentalist phrase - is
more than just fuel mileage.

The feature that makes the Prius such a draw for the environmentally
conscious is really its weak spot: the battery. Like all hybrid
batteries, it's of the nickel metal hydride variety. The nickel for the
Prius is mined in Sudbury, Ontario, and smelted at a plant nearby.
Toyota buys 1,000 tons of nickel from the plant each year.

So far, so green? Maybe not. The landscape around the plant at the
city's edge alarms environmentalists. Some eco-activists blame the
bleak, lifeless countryside near the facility in part on its 1,250-foot
smokestack that belches acid-rain-causing sulphur dioxide.

'Sudbury remains a major environmental and health problem,' says David
Martin of Greenpeace Canada. 'The environmental cost of producing that
car battery is pretty high.'

But there's more. From the Sudbury plant, the smelted nickel is shipped
to Europe, where it's refined in Wales. Next, it's sent to China, where
it's manufactured in nickel foam. The nickel is then moved to Japan,
where Prius batteries are made.

But the long, fossil-fuel-burning journey doesn't end there. After the
batteries are placed in the Prius, some of the nickel is round-tripped
back to North America while some is shipped to Europe in cars sold
outside Japan.

This useful information comes not from the investigative efforts of the
mainstream U.S. media that allegedly exist to keep the public informed;
it's brought to us by Chris Demorro, an enterprising reporter with the
newspaper of Central Connecticut State University, The Recorder, and
London Mail reporter Martin Delgado.

While the Prius digs a deep environmental rut, the Hummer H3 plods on
with a much lighter touch. An H3 costs $2.07 per lifetime mile to
operate in environmental terms, while the Prius costs $2.87. Figures are
courtesy of CNW Marketing, which rates cars on the combined energy
needed 'to plan, build, sell, drive and dispose of a vehicle from
initial concept to scrappage.'

Then there's the expected life span of the Prius: 100,000 miles, or a
third of the Hummer's, says CNW. Toyota would have to go through the
same 'build, sell, drive and dispose' process three times for three
Priuses to provide the same amount of service provided by one H3.

We know some hybrid owners buy them for the fuel mileage and are not
obsessed with global warming. But that doesn't mean a hybrid is
necessarily a good choice, especially after the EPA lowered the 2008
model's fuel efficiency rating. The hybrid king of mileage actually gets
a city-highway average of about 46 mpg, down roughly 16% from earlier
ratings.

If mileage and economy are the top concerns, then better choices might
be Toyota's Yaris or Corolla, conventional-engine cars that get nearly
comparable mileage with no hybrid price premium.

We're not trying to disparage hybrids in response to environmentalists'
demonization of SUVs. Consumers should be free to drive whatever they
want. We're merely providing some little-known facts - and wondering
just what other 'green' alternatives being pushed on the public are not
so green after all.

[El Guapo]

precisely.8')

[Bronco Bob]

Simple solution for that, put in stack scrubbers to clean up the SO2, and
make the batteries in Canada,

[Dudeskey]

Thats what i was thinking for the longest time... you wreck one of those things right, you need a hazmat team to come and clean that **** up

[Bronco_Beerslug]

Another reason why we need to go to the forefront in this technology and others to move off the oil teet.

[Garcia Bronco]

Lol

[Bronco_Beerslug]

Simple solution for that, put in stack scrubbers to clean up the SO2, and make the batteries in Canada,Well, the scrubbers are actually not related to the stack other than the end of anti-pollution process but your right, installing scrubbers and No Nox would go a long way to cleaning up emissions there. When Bush postponed the Clean Air Act as one of his first acts in the WH that brought to a screeching halt the planned pollution controls for plants like this, even though this one is in Canada.

[enjolras]

I've seen this article in a few different places now and it's been pretty thoroughly debunked at this point.

One very large issue is that it attaches a huge 'expected lifetime' of 300,000 miles to the hummer while only attributing 100,000 to the Prius. This is based on the battery life. In practice, however, the battery lifes on last generation hybrids has far exceeded that rating thus dragging down that 'cost per mile driven' substantially. Furthermore, it doesn't take into account that a new battery can be put into the car thus preserving the entirety of the drive train with no need for a rebuild cycle.

There are other factual innaccuracies on the part of the reporters who originally wrote the piece. A quick google search will turn up quite a bit of commentary.

[Garcia Bronco]

Well, the scrubbers are actually not related to the stack other than the end of anti-pollution process but your right, installing scrubbers and No Nox would go a long way to cleaning up emissions there. When Bush postponed the Clean Air Act as one of his first acts in the WH that brought to a screeching halt the planned pollution controls for plants like this, even though this one is in Canada.

And the EPA folded like a cheap suit

[Bronco_Beerslug]

And the EPA folded like a cheap suitOf course, Bush put his people in the EPA.

[Bronco Bob]

I've seen this article in a few different places now and it's been pretty thoroughly debunked at this point.


Why am I not surprised by this?


One very large issue is that it attaches a huge 'expected lifetime' of 300,000 miles to the hummer while only attributing 100,000 to the Prius. This is based on the battery life. In practice, however, the battery lifes on last generation hybrids has far exceeded that rating thus dragging down that 'cost per mile driven' substantially. Furthermore, it doesn't take into account that a new battery can be put into the car thus preserving the entirety of the drive train with no need for a rebuild cycle.
Add to that as time goes by and more companies get on board, battery
technology will only get better.
Heck, even Bush is advocating putting more batteries in cars so that
in urban areas most of the power will come from plugging the car into
the wall and very little gasoline will be needed.


There are other factual innaccuracies on the part of the reporters who originally wrote the piece. A quick google search will turn up quite a bit of commentary.

Why am I not surprised by this?

[Garcia Bronco]

Of course, Bush put his people in the EPA.

These weren't his people and they knew it was wrong and they just quit. It was on Gummbals HBO show with regard to scrubbers and coal power plants.

[55CrushEm]

One very large issue is that it attaches a huge 'expected lifetime' of 300,000 miles to the hummer while only attributing 100,000 to the Prius. This is based on the battery life. In practice, however, the battery lifes on last generation hybrids has far exceeded that rating thus dragging down that 'cost per mile driven' substantially. Furthermore, it doesn't take into account that a new battery can be put into the car thus preserving the entirety of the drive train with no need for a rebuild cycle.

There are other factual innaccuracies on the part of the reporters who originally wrote the piece. A quick google search will turn up quite a bit of commentary.

I agree with your first paragraph....my first thought was "300,000 miles out of a Hummer......yah, right." But this is not the heart of the article, IMO.

What other innaccuracies are there? I noticed you didn't even comment on what most would deem to be the most startling parts of the article....namely, the environmental condition around the plant, the acid rain that it produces, and the large shipping costs/fuel consumption just to transport the batteries from place to place throughout the manufacturing process.

If this article doesn't fit your agenda, that's one thing......but if there are many other factual inaccuracies throughout the article, as you claim....please be more specific.

[alkemical]

Sweet New Battery Runs on Sugar (http://www.livescience.com/technology/070325_sugar_batteries.html)


In the near future, longer-lasting batteries could run on virtually anything sugary, including tree sap or flat soda pop.

Scientists say these sweet new batteries could operate three to four times longer than the conventional lithium ion batteries commonly used in cell phones, laptops, MP3 players and many other portable electronic devices. And they are biodegradable.

"By bridging biology and chemistry, we can build a better battery that's also cleaner for the environment," researcher Shelley Minteer, an electrochemist at Saint Louis University in Missouri, said in a prepared statement.

Sugar is used as fuel by all living things. Now Minteer and her colleagues have adapted enzymes from nature that can strip charges from sugar to generate electricity in fuel cells.

Like all fuel cells, the new device combines fuel—in this case, sugar—with air to generate electricity and water as the main byproducts. Unlike other fuel cells, all the materials used to build the sugary device are biodegradable.

The key ingredient making up the new device is the charge-stripping enzyme. The scientists incorporated this enzyme into membranes composed of chitosan, a commercial compound derived from crabs, shrimp and other crustaceans. These membranes are then integrated into fuel cells.

Minteer and her colleagues have developed a small prototype battery about the size of a postage stamp to successfully run a handheld calculator, findings they presented today at the American Chemical Society annual meeting in Chicago. They said the fuel cell could be ready for commercialization in three to five years.

So far the researchers have run the batteries on sap from trees and cacti, flat soda and sweetened drink mixes. They also tested fizzy sodas, but Minteer noted the carbonation appears to weaken the fuel cell. So far the best fuel source is simply ordinary table sugar dissolved in water.

Potential applications include portable cell phone rechargers. Other uses might include powering remote sensors for detecting biological and chemical weapons. Future research may include modifying the battery's performance for high temperatures and extending battery life, Minteer said.