better yet, buy a bicycle and it will take the prius an infinite number of years to catch up, now that is amazing.

How about not even buying a bycicle? Just walk, saves more money!! And who needs shoes? Just though it out and walk barefoot everywhere!!

Remember that kid in college who never attended logic classes? He's the author of that last article.

Ugh.

I second the notion that the article was a steamy pile of Chim Chim cookies.

old article, no matter what they say a Hummer still blows i know i used to own one, i love my prius 20x more than that heap of S**T

Reading the whole article, I think they're saying some things that some will misconstrue (like if you notice that the batteries in the Prius have a higher up-front impact, but ignore the part about the Prius quickly making up for the impact with greater efficiency), but it wasn't an entirely bad article.

That said, I think using a "pound for pound" impact measurement is a little bit of a silly premise. That's like saying the the 400 pound morbidly obese guy scarfing a bucket of chicken cosumes fewer "caleries per pound" than a fit 190 pounder eating a chicken leg. Is the implication that the former is more healthy than the latter in an "caloric impact on food"? It's ridiculous.

The Hummer is just a waste. Buy a lighter vehicle.

The article was stupid and the Hummer was irrelevant. Let me restate the main premise of the article:

"It takes no energy to manufacture a used car. If all of us only bought used cars, think of the energy we'd save. P.S., Don't buy a Prius."

If everyone buys used cars won't there be a slight shortage of them in a few years.

JeffD

I don't think so. Right now, cars that are ten years old or more have little demand on car lots in the U.S. (discluding undocumented immigrants). At that point, the demand in developing countries is greater than the demand in the U.S., and such cars are shipped to Mexico and other developing countries, where they can actually be sold.
If there was demand for used cars in the U.S., the cars would never be shipped out of the country. (actually, wouldn't this mean that Americans would simply just keep driving the cars they already own, retaining the same car for 30 years or more, until the car no longer ran?)
So if someone turns 16yrs old and buys a car, they will have that same car when they are 50 years old. The only demand for new cars then would be from new drivers. So technically then, there would not be a shortage of used cars. Every time someone dies, it frees a used car to the market. haha!

The article also misses the point that most Hummers will be sitting in junk yards and land fills five years from now. Did they factor that environmental impact into their report?

The planet earth has a FINITE amount of oil. If everyone drives a Hummer (including China and India), how long do you think the oil will last? What if everyone drives a Prius? Seems pretty simple to me.

Wow! That's the worst most illogical article I've ever read. Must be a philosophy major that wrote it.

Yeah, I'd say, immediately.

The premise of the article seemed to be something along these lines: "there's a big energy cost to building a new car, but that disappears as soon as the car is resold once". Which is just ... stupid ... there's no other term for it. As one comment at the end of the article pointed out.

We actually had an intelligent thread, here, some years back, on the issue of whether replacing an older low-MPG vehicle mileage car with a newer, high-MPG car was an environmentally sound thing to do. Given that almost all the energy use of the typical car is in the gasoline it uses, not in the manufacture and scrapping, the general consensus was that, within reason, trading up to a higher-mpg car typically was an environmentally sound decision.

But then that article goes from dumb to dumber, with all the usual propaganda tricks.

First, we have to pick a tiny comparison car. The comparison vehicle for the propaganda is a 1998 Toyota Tercel (80 Cu ft interior volume, 9 cu ft trunk space), which as we all know is completely comparable to a Prius (96 cu ft interior vol, 16 cu ft trunk space). Then we have to exaggerate the mileage of the comparison car. The 1998 Tercel with 3 speed automatic got 27 MPG, per the new EPA ratings (see Fuel Economy). The manual got 30. No 1998 Tercel got the 35 mpg the author cites. Then we have to ignore the energy required to produce the comparison and only talk about the energy required to produce a Prius.

But here's where it goes from dumb to dumber. Even if you pick a tiny car, exaggerate the mileage, and assume that it took zero energy to build, even if you do all that, you still use less energy driving a Prius.

Based on the assertions in the story, you'd still use less energy by building and using a new Prius, for a 150,000 mile vehicle life, than you would by running a string of of these mystical energy-free 35 mpg used cars. Putting that another way, a car fleet consisting of new Prii, replaced every 150,000 miles, would use less energy than a car fleet consisting of mystical zero-manufacture-energy 35 mpg used cars. So even with the assumptions of the article, the arithmetic does not work out to support the author's point.

Which is just stupid squared, to construct your propaganda so that it doesn't make your point.

Anyway, on a smarter note, can anyone here find a reference for how much energy it takes to produce a lead-acid car battery? I already know that, lifetime, the Prius uses less total metal for batteries than a traditional car does. (Why? Because the typical car goes through 3 50 lb lead-acid starting batteries in its lifetime, based on industry statistics. The total amount of lead in those 3 batteries (about 75 lbs) is greater than the 30 lbs nickel in the Prius traction battery plus the (my guess, lifetime) 16 lbs of lead in the Prius 12V battery). I assume lead's a lot easier to smelt than nickel, but I can't find any reference to tell me how much less energy it takes to produce a pound of lead than to produce a pound of nickel.

So if I buy a used car, it's greener because half of it is not going to fall apart?

Umm, anyone care to read:
Pacific Institute

Even the new analysis can be flawed... considering the much lower efficiency of automation in the past. However, having more workers on an assembly line vs. robots does decrease the carbon footprint of mfg...

Mybe KandyRedCoi & I can start up a group ... waste-o-holics anonymous. Helo, my name is Gary, & being a previous owner of a 12mpg Range Rover, I used to be a waste-o-holic.

Funny that Hummers and their ilk, being such wonderfully popular (according to the GM ad man) & efficient vehicles, are just sitting on lots accross the nation ... even to the point where GM has to put 'em on extra parking lots at hotels

http://photos1.blogger.com/hello/115/6336/1024/Hummer2.jpg

while prospective Prius owners have to wait for deliver. I don't get it!

^lol^ yes yes from a 11mpg h2 to a 15mpg caddy ext, and now to my japanese princess the 40+mpg prius LOL

I read and was quite upset. The Prius pays back ALL of the cost of making it in somewhere betweeen 40,000 and 100,000 miles. Probobly closer to half the number these idiots are quoting. It will last far longer.

Driving a 10mpg hummer could produce more co2 out its tailpipe <let alone what it cost to make> in just ONE YEAR of driving.

Hill those are not H2's. They are the new H3's that are not built on a tahoe chassis. They are built on the GMT355 chassis which is known as the Colorado and Canyon twins. When the H3 came out it had the same motor as the Colorado. An Inline 5 Cylinder that was 225 Horse 225 Torque. Now they have a 5.3L V8 in them.

I've been discussing a thread over at gminsidenews that Gm basically should kill the H2. It's a complete waste.

For me I'd jump all over a used car that gets 35MPG for $4500 versus buying a new hybrid car for about $28,000.

But, My S-10 is paid for and all I have is typical maintenence and fuel costs and thats it.

The idea that most Hummers will be sitting in junkyards and landfills in five years strikes me as specious as the idea in the CNW survey suggesting that a Prius will last just over 100,000 miles. You may regard it as wishful thinking, just as the first fuel crisis didn't come anywhere near destroying all the old muscle cars. Someone will still likely be driving them, most likely someone who bought it very much on the cheap in the near future. Despite all the crying, the roads around here are filled with people driving trucks and SUVs hell bent for leather, at least until they get to the next curve or corner, when they have to slow down far more than I do. And dealers still face our public with the bluff faces of their stock of trucks and SUVs, with the cars hidden behind them.

As for the idea of the carbon footprint being paid for by the first owner, I took the best way out of this, by buying a used Prius. The main reason, as I have also explained on GMInsideNews, is that, despite whatever admiration I might have for Toyota devising this car, I was absolutely not going to hand Japan Inc. $25,000.