{"id":412,"date":"2006-07-21T11:24:15","date_gmt":"2006-07-21T11:24:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2006\/07\/21\/hybrids-vs-hummers-1\/"},"modified":"2006-07-21T11:24:15","modified_gmt":"2006-07-21T11:24:15","slug":"hybrids-vs-hummers-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2006\/07\/21\/hybrids-vs-hummers-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Hybrids vs. Hummers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Via a mailing list, Reason<\/cite> magazine has an article claiming that SUV’s are better for the environment than hybrid cars<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

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).<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

(I can’t say I’m not tempted to drop this link into this Making Light thread<\/a> (scroll way down for a nasty little pissing contest about Hummers), but I’m trying not to be a Bad Person these days…)<\/p>\n

It’s sort of telling that even the commenters on Reason’s own site find this analysis a little dodgy<\/a>. I particularly like the inclusion of the cost of planning each vehicle, which I’m sure involves no hand-waving at all. The stated vehicle lifetimes are a nice touch, too– they give the Hummer a lifetime of 300,000 miles, but take the warranty value of 100,000 for the Prius.<\/p>\n

I did want to comment on a couple of elements of the article that show up again and again in these articles, though, and will do so after the cut.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

First is the oft-repeated claim 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.” We’ve had a Prius for a couple of years now, and this is news to me. Kate drives the hybrid back and forth to work (I can just barely manage to drive it to the store, if I need to), and averages something between 40-45 mpg in the winter, and 45-50 mpg in the summer, pretty much in line with the advertised values for her car (a 2003 Prius). The plural of “anecdote” is not “data,” and all that, but these statements about the mileage are directly contradictory to our experience with the vehicle (and those of other Prius owners I’ve talked to), which makes me question their validity.<\/p>\n

The other thing that always drives me nuts about these discussions is the comparisons they make to other cars, as when a market researcher is quoted as to what people do when gas prices increase:<\/p>\n

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“They buy a Chevy Aveo,” says Spinella. “It delivers the same fuel economy as a Prius, but at half the price.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

(The mileage claim is, of course, based on the claim referred to above. The Aveo<\/a> claims city\/ highway mileage of 26\/34 mpg, while the 2006 Prius<\/a> claims 60\/51 mpg)<\/p>\n

This sort of comparison comes up all the time– the other popular form is to claim that you’ll never save enough on gas to make up for the higher price of the hybrid compared to some much cheaper little compact car. Which is true, as far as it goes, but then, I could also buy a pair of roller skates, and get even better<\/strong> gas mileage than the Prius. And, really, roller skates would be about as useful to me as an Aveo…<\/p>\n

There’s a fundamental misunderstanding here about how people buy cars, or at least about how the people I know buy cars. The choice isn’t between a Prius and some subminiature toy car. If we hadn’t bought the Prius, we probably would’ve gotten something else in the same general price range– a Camry, or some such. When we were in the market for a new car, we figured out about how much we could afford (about the cost of a Prius), and planned to spend that amount of money. When we replace my car in six months or so (shortly before the warranty on the rebuilt transmission runs out), we’ll do the same basic thing.<\/p>\n

The real apples-to-apples comparison, then, is between a hybrid and something that costs about the same amount of money as a hybrid, which might be a larger car with more options. The people buying Aveos aren’t people who would’ve been buying Priuses (Prii?) in the first place (unless they decided to buy two cars for the same money…).<\/p>\n

It’s probably not worth getting too worked up about this– Reason<\/cite> is not, after all, a publication I usually consider reliable. I do get a kick out of the author praising Ford for backing off their promise to produce 250,000 hybrid cars by the end of the decade, though– it’s sort of fun to picture the same author thirty years ago declaring that tiny little Japanese cars will never make it in the US market…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Via a mailing list, Reason magazine has an article claiming that SUV’s are better for the environment than hybrid cars: 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… Continue reading Hybrids vs. Hummers<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=412"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}