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thegman
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Location: 12 yards out.
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 Posted: 05/03/06 - 09:27 Post subject: Hybrid vehicles: All hype?
For those of you who've considered buying a hybrid recently, consider this, which I snipped from an article I read this morning:
| Quote: | I talked to my sister yesterday.
She lives the perfect urban life in Portland Oregon. She buys organic coffee, she doesn’t own a car, recycles everything, takes public transportation, and loves it. She is socially conscious and, dare I say it, feels superior.
“You should drive a hybrid,” I can hear her say. “Cut your emissions… help make our country less dependent on foreign oil…”
I’d sooner buy a tambourine and start hanging out at airports.
Current hybrid cars are a boondoggle. They are a whitewash of pseudo-green. They allow hip suburbanites to feel good about driving their modified SUVs.
Don’t believe me? Let’s do a little math.
The RX Hybrid series is the Lexus hybrid SUV. According to the sticker, you’ll get an average of 30 mpg for the hybrid and 22 mpg for the standard. That’s an additional 8 miles per gallon for the hybrid, right?
Here’s where the fun begins…
8 miles to the gallon means you’d save about 3.6¢ per mile at $3 per gallon gasoline. You’ll need to drive 194,000 miles to recover the $7,000 you spent on the hybrid Lexus!
Put it another way, if you buy the non-hybrid SUV, you get 51,000 miles worth of free gasoline!
The Ford Escape hybrid is even worse. You’ll pay an extra $7,500 for the hybrid version. A comparison study showed that the traditional Escape gets 24 mpg, while the hybrid gets 26 mpg.
I’m sorry, but this is ridiculous.
As I hope you’ve seen, you’re not saving much in fuel, and you are clearly paying too much for hybrids.
My sister fell for the hype.
We can do a lot to reduce the U.S. fuel consumption by improving commercial and industrial fuel economy. An improvement from 6 mpg to 10 mpg saves 667 gallons of gasoline over 10,000 miles.
According to the National Commission on Energy Policy, a 32% improvement on freight fuel efficiency would save 740,000 barrels of oil per day.
You’d need to replace 87,000 Land Rovers with Toyota Priuses to get that kind of savings. |
I thought the numbers here were pretty sobering. It looks like hybrids are only a band-aid on an open chest wound.
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phillycat
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Posted: 05/03/06 - 09:41 Post subject:
It was my understanding that hybrids produced cleaner emissions however did not save in the amt of gas used.
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.jrjo
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Posted: 05/03/06 - 09:43 Post subject:
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.jrjo
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Posted: 05/03/06 - 09:49 Post subject:
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MechEngDropout
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Posted: 05/03/06 - 10:23 Post subject:
This is nothing new. The reason they aren't selling like hotcakes is because they aren't financially logical. But that's not the purpose of them. The real benefit is using less oil and pushing the economy toward lower oil usage, and also to reduce emissions. I'd be willing to bet when you factor in the cost of healthcare that would be saved by less pollution and crop loss due to droughts from global warming, the prices of the vehicles would be a lot closer. One of the problems with the oil economy is how small picture it is. Sure, it is a cheap fuel, but that's because we're only looking at the cost of the fuel and the power plant/engine. Same thing with other fossil fuels. Coal power plants are amazingly cheap, but that's just the surface costs. When you factor in the amount of damage the pollution is putting into our environment, healthcare costs are skyrocketing. But we don't tie in the costs of healthcare with fuel usage, so coal and oil remain economically sound ideas on the small scale that we have identified them.
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TriBob
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Posted: 05/03/06 - 11:23 Post subject:
You get the most benefit from city driving not highway. The electric engine engages during acceleration.
Some of the new engines that turn off several cylinders during highway cruising seems like a nice feature without much additional overhead. Still one engine some some electronics to control it.
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runaroundsue
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Posted: 05/03/06 - 16:04 Post subject:
interesting my 2002 Montana emits less HC and less NOx......but double CO2. But seeing that my van IS a VAN and 2002 versus 2004 small vehicles.....how much is the trade-off. I sure as heck feel safer in a minivan than a little honda or toyota.....and ummmmmmmm American!!
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airehead
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Posted: 05/03/06 - 17:09 Post subject:
/slightly off-topic:
Here in Cali they've given special dispensation for peeps who drive hybrid to occupy the HOV lanes even though they're single occupants.
The hybrids are causing huge delays because they can't/won't go with the speed of the traffic, thereby snarling up the HOV lane which now goes as slow as the surrounding lanes.
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MechEngDropout
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Posted: 05/03/06 - 17:53 Post subject:
| airehead wrote: | | The hybrids are causing huge delays because they can't/won't go with the speed of the traffic, thereby snarling up the HOV lane which now goes as slow as the surrounding lanes. |
Why can't/won't they go with the speed of traffic? It's not a power issue... many hybrids actually accelerate more quickly than just the IC.
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airehead
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Posted: 05/03/06 - 18:34 Post subject:
| MechEngDropout wrote: | | airehead wrote: | | The hybrids are causing huge delays because they can't/won't go with the speed of the traffic, thereby snarling up the HOV lane which now goes as slow as the surrounding lanes. |
Why can't/won't they go with the speed of traffic? It's not a power issue... many hybrids actually accelerate more quickly than just the IC. |
I don't know about the mechanics--maybe at a certain speed it switches to gas consumption? or vice versa?
All I know is that is a huge complaint around here.
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