Get a Hummer

[archerships]

http://www.reason.org/commentaries/dalmia_20060719.shtml

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 elephantine Hummer costs. The energy cots of SUVs such as the Tahoe, Escalade, and Navigator are similarly far less than the Civic hybrid.
...
As for Hummers, Spinella explains, the life of these cars averaged across various models is over 300,000 miles. By contrast, Prius' life – according to Toyota's own numbers – is 100,000 miles. Furthermore, Hummer is a far less sophisticated vehicle. Its engine obviously does not have an electric and gas component as a hybrid's does so it takes much less time and energy to manufacture. What's more, its main raw ingredient is low-cost steel, not the exotic light-weights that are exceedingly difficult to make – and dispose. But the biggest reason why a Hummer's energy use is so low is that it shares many components with other vehicles and therefore its design and development energy costs are spread across many cars.

It is not possible to do this with a specialty product like hybrid. All in all, Spinella insists, the energy costs of disposing a Hummer are 60 percent less than an average hybrid's and its design and development costs are 80 percent less.

Comments

my name is URL

[perich.livejournal.com]

Link?

Re: my name is URL

[rosefox]

Seconded; I'd love to write this up for Treehugger.

Re: my name is URL

[rosefox]

But why, when someone else will do it for me? *)

Re: my name is URL

[rosefox]

...though once I saw the source, Googling did help me turn up some slightly less biased information on the study, which is always a good thing.

Re: my name is URL

[rosefox]

All sources are biased. It's only a question of direction and degree.

Treehugger owns the content I create for them, so I won't repost it here, but it'll show up on their site at 0700 Eastern Time Monday and includes several other sources, including direct quotes from the report and its author.

Re: my name is URL

[other.livejournal.com]

Huh? Umm, appealing only to biased reports is a logical fallacy. That would including getting information on cars only from a poltical advocacy group such as Reason. (Poltical advocacy groups are biased?!? Shock horror!!) Biased reports that aren't verified by independent unbiased sources are worthless scientifically. rosefox is right, slightly less biased information... is always a good thing.

This thread has some people calling the report bullshit. That thread is not unbiased either, but it should provide some counter-balance to the Reason article.

Re: my name is URL

[danlyke.livejournal.com]

Here's the original report.

[(Anonymous)]

If we really wanted to decrease fuel cosnumption *right now* we would change our regulations to allow vehicles like the Japanese kei cars, and to encourage motorcycle use, and safety.

It is not surprising that at thsi point hybrids actually cost more in energy, we're still investing in research and development. 100 years ago airplanes, and even cars, were not nearly as practical for transportation as horses.

[smandal.livejournal.com]

Furthermore, energy is one thing, carbon emissions is another. As we move away from fossil fuel power generation toward nuclear and other technologies hybrid cars will pay off.

[perspectivism.livejournal.com]

This is so awesome. Great find!

[h-postmortemus.livejournal.com]

Hmmm, I'll need to read through the whole report but I have to say that on the surface this has some strong validity to it, but there's also going to be fallacies.

Valid:

• Measuring energy costs for a vehicle should include its manufacturing, maintenance and disposal.
  
• A simpler design using cheaper materials will cost less to make than a complex design with expensive materials.
  

Fallacy:

• Using a standard vehicle lifespan value provided by the manufacturer, who is biased, rather than data from un-biased sources. Hybrids are too new to know what their true useful lifespan is.
  
• Assuming all vehicles have the same lifespan.
  

There's a bunch of stuff I don't know without reading the article. What about man-power energy costs, were they included? What about energy costs of emissions on the environment? How about re-use of components and materials?

I wouldn't call the article itself biased, because it's pretty factual. New manufacturing that doesn't use existing infrastructure will always cost more to run, resulting in more expensive procucts. Initially more expensive. As costs are recovered and especially as demand increases, manufacturing costs go down because the existing infrastructure is changed or expanded to encapsulate the new technology.

I'm sure someone who wants to "pooh-pooh" environmental concerns can use this article to try and support their stance. But certain undying facts remain:

• Fossil fuels are limited in availability
  
• Combustion engines are horribly inefficient
  
• Burning fossil fuels produces a lot of waste, none of it useful and some of it quite harmful
  
• Humans are both greedy and lazy by nature
  

Invariablly, the market will turn away from combustion engines. I've been noticing recently that the trend for SUVs is actually dying off, with the market for Big Bad-Ass Vehicles is shrinking to a profitable specialty niche while the housewives who don't know how to drive are retreating back to more managable, but still large, vehicles.