Prius plant in Canada causing pollution?

It sounds like Rush and your neighbor have been reading the same debunked report - the one that assumes a Prius will only last 100K miles, while the Hummer will be good for 300K miles.

Do a search for CNW, you'll find it on here.

 

Goggle Prius Hummer myth. There have been several compelling refutations of this. If you want practice in searching Priuschat archives, that'd work too.

 

Typical fuzzy-minded neocon nonproducer credulous ludicrous Limbaugh cr@p. The Sudbury nickel mine has been open for more than 100 years (gosh, who knew there were so many steampunk hybrids running around soiling the Edwardian era of this planet?). Prius today accounts for about 1% of the mine's output.

Links to two debunkings; the first is longer:

http://www.thecarconnection.com/Auto_News/...12220.html?pg=1

http://www.betterworldclub.com/articles/hu...e-efficient.htm

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Doug @ Jul 2 2007, 08:52 AM) [snapback]471452[/snapback]</div>

He was going off of a 2005 report by CNW Marketing, run by Art Spinella, which said that the cost per mile of a Prius is more than the large SUVs. This looked at the "dust-to-dust" of a car - from mining and manufacturing, engineering, transportation, maintenance to eventual recycling and disposal.

Although it was supposedly un-biased, all the hybrid entries were highlighted, so clearly he had a focus on that. As Russki says, that was based on a Prius being driven 109K miles over its life, while most large SUVs (Durango, Yukon, Hummer, Expedition) were listed as being driven more than 250K miles. In fact, the overall cost of the large SUVs was significantly more than the Prius, but because they were driven more miles, the cost per mile was lower. If the Prius was driven only 128K miles in its life, than it would beat the SUVs.

What hasn't been reported, is that the follow-up 2006 report by CNW shows that the Prius is cheaper per mile than the large SUVs. However, this is just an excel spreadsheet, and doesn't give any details as to why they changed their mind (driven more miles, or improved efficiencies of larger production?). But you can definitely tell the Hummer owner (not they will want to listen) that the producers of that study have revised the study and the Prius now beats the Hummer.

The Canada plant is a different beast altogether. There was a story in England newspaper that a Toyota plant used to make nickel for the Prius NiMH batteries was denuding the landscape to the point that NASA used it for training for their lunar missions. Okay, clue #1 - lunar landings were in the 60's, 70's, Prius came out in 1997 (2001 for U.S.). Other points: The Sudbury mine is not owned by Toyota, but Toyota does buy approximately 1% of its output (other car manufacturers probably also buy output). The mine has been cleaned up considerably since the bad old days, and finally, all cars use nickel for chrome and stainless steel, so the percentage that gets into the NiMH batteries destined for the Prius is a small fraction of the 1%.

Hope this helps.

 

I feel compelled to point out that the numbers in the CNW report are not just a bit off, they are ludicrous, and nobody should give them any credence whatsoever. For example, if you take the "energy cost per mile" data from that report, for a typical vehicle, and multiply by US total passenger vehicle miles, you come up with a total US "energy cost" for driving that is roughly 20 times larger than total US spending for energy of all types. It's not just that the Prius-versus-Hummer ranking is wrong, it's that all of their numbers are off by about a factor of 100 (first), and then, in addition, they manage to get the Prius-versus-Hummer comparison wrong.

Really, just about the only thing you need to know is that several reputable studies, including one by the US Argonne National Labs, have concluded that, for the average car, the fuel you put into the tank accounts for 85 to 90% of the total, lifetime ("dust-to-dust") energy consumption of the car, including production, use, and scrapping. Once you have that firmly in mind, then you realize that what ought to have been obvious is in fact obvious: to a close approximation, cars that get lousy gas mileage use more energy, cars that get good mileage use less.

In fact, the Prius does take slightly more energy than the average car to produce than a straight-gas car of similar size. But it more than makes up for it with low fuel consumption. Toyota's own dust-to-dust study puts the lifetime energy use of the Prius at about 67% of that of a Corolla. So, the Prius is not a miracle-mobile, it's just much more efficient than a straight-gas car. And, up to the capacity of the vehicle, it's a vastly more efficient way to get around than a Hummer.

 

Why even respond? Consider the source. Accurate? Reliable? Honorable?

 

Danny should just put a button on the home page for this thread. It pops up more often than conversations about the weather. What a pile of rubbish.

Tom

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(qbee42 @ Jul 2 2007, 11:03 AM) [snapback]471560[/snapback]</div>

Indeed. Maybe he should setup an entire website dedicated to this issue.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Doug @ Jul 2 2007, 08:52 AM) [snapback]471452[/snapback]</div>

He got it from a libelous story published in the Mail on Sunday newspaper titled, "Toyota Factory turns landscape to arid wilderness." The story was phony, ascribing a century of nickel mining (which went to, say, building the statue of liberty, World War II, etc) to the Prius battery. The paper also ran a photo to illistrate the Prius "pollution". Unfortunately, the photo was a stock photo taken years before a Prius had been built. The paper finally retracted their story and printed the following disclaimer:

Toyota factory
http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/pages/live/a...in_page_id=1770
Last updated at 09:34am on 9th May 2007
It has come to our attention that a story originally published in the Mail on Sunday has apparently been misinterpreted by some of our readers.
In order to prevent further misinterpretation, we have removed the article from our website. The following letter was published in the Mail on Sunday on May 13, 2007:

Your article about the Inco nickel factory at Sudbury, Canada, wrongly implied that poisonous fumes from the factory had left the area looking like a lunar landscape because so many plants and trees had died. You also sought to blame Toyota because the nickel is used, among countless other purposes, for making the Prius hybrid car batteries.

In fact any damage occurred more than thirty years ago, long before the Prius was made. Since then, Inco has reduced sulphur dioxide emissions by more than 90 per cent and has helped to plant more than 11 million trees.

The company has won praise from the Ontario Ministry of Environment and environmental groups. Sudbury has won several conservation awards and is a centre for eco-tourism.
Dave Rado
Colchester

If you're curious, you can read the text that was "misintrepreted" in this thread (and how did readers misinterpret? It's not like this piece was orginally written for the Onion):
http://priuschat.com/index.php?s=&show...st&p=353597
I'm sure they pulled to story to avoid being sued for libel. There's not one real fact in their orginal story.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Doug @ Jul 2 2007, 09:52 AM) [snapback]471452[/snapback]</div>

As part of final assembly each Prius is put in a secret room where it is sprinkled with Magic Pixie Dust which absorbs the negative ecological impact of the nickle and chromium used in its manufacture. Toyota will categorically deny this as it is a proprietary process that adds millions of dollars to its bottom line. I know because my cousin is married to a Japanese woman whose family is well placed.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(JimN @ Jul 2 2007, 08:15 PM) [snapback]471993[/snapback]</div>

:lol: :lol: :lol:

Given that stainless steal is 8-20% nickel, (or so I've heard) I wonder how much nickel is in a hummer (H2 or H3). It would be pretty funny if there's actually more in one of those vehicles.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(qbee42 @ Jul 2 2007, 10:03 AM) [snapback]471560[/snapback]</div>

Well, there is a sticky in the Prius and Hybrid News forum.


<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(tripp @ Jul 3 2007, 05:44 PM) [snapback]472637[/snapback]</div>

I've wondered that too. It would be pretty funny.

 

I happened to be flipping through stations and heard that diatribe. First, all Prius drivers are liberal wackos. Second, they are all self-righteous. Third, they are whiners about the environment. He happens to know that anyone driving a Prius is definitely NOT a conservative anything, and furthermore they're ignorant of the "fact" that the Hummer is more environmentally friendly.

But the REALLY funny part was the caller he was talking to said "Where do these people think the electricity comes from that runs their cars? COAL or NUCLEAR POWER! They have to plug them into the walls to recharge!" And because Rush knows all, he readily agreed.

If Rush is right, perhaps I should take a left?

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(tripp @ Jul 3 2007, 07:44 PM) [snapback]472637[/snapback]</div>

What about chrome? I'm looking at all of the chrome on some of the domestics (GM in particular) and all I can think of is.....Edsel.

I am so disappointed Toyota chose to add chrome to the Prius. My 2005 has very little. I hope when it comes time for me to trade up to a newer design the chrome is gone again.

Isn't the production of chrome not very environmentally friendly?

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(jolleyman @ Jul 3 2007, 11:11 PM) [snapback]472757[/snapback]</div>

LOL!!! So typical. They know absolutely NOTHING about what they're bashing.

I got the power rundown on my local G&E.

Renewable: 7% (a large percentage from biomass & waste-probably local and wind-probably from PalmSprings area) Solar is less than 1%. They really need to work on that.
Coal: 12%
Hydroelectric: 9%
Natural Gas: 53%
Nuclear: 20% (probably from San Onofre)

I know they're looking to increase Solar and reduce the others. They don't produce any of this so these are numbers from who they purchase from. 72% is from individual suppliers.

 

Idiots... Even if the Prius were and EV :lol: and running on pure coal it would still be cleaner than most ICE vehicles.

Yeah, the chrome plating has nickel underneath the 10 µm thick chromium cover. I wonder how much. All of that crap has got to add up. It's probably not very environmentally friendly but I don't know for sure. Google probably has the answer somewhere.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(JimN @ Jul 2 2007, 10:15 PM) [snapback]471993[/snapback]</div>

What's that? You say that during the final assembly of the Prius it is put in a secret room where it is sprinkled with the ground bones of pixies killed by nickle and chromium poisioning?

I thought so.

 

Prius plant?

At first it was nickel mining and ecological disaster.
Now the Prius is partially assembled in Canada?

Man, makes me feel good to be Canadian.

 

Toyota buys about 1,000 ton/year of nickel from Inco for use in the Prius. This represents less than one percent of the nickel production at Sudbury (0.75% from the numbers I found). To attribute all of the devastation caused by the smelter to a single customer is misleading. Just like global warming isn’t caused exclusively by Hummers.

In fact, much of the ecological damage that is getting pinned on the Prius was done a long time ago. The Inco Superstack was constructed way back in 1972 and was designed to disperse sulphur gases and other byproducts of the smelting process away from the city itself. Starting in the early 1990s, a major construction effort started to dramatically clean the waste gases before pumping them up the Superstack, removing around 90% of the sulphur dioxide. The upgrades were completed in 1994, and emissions from then on were much reduced. Again, this all took place before the Prius even went into production.

If you really want to zing your friend, make sure you tell him about how GM Canada actually points out the success of the Sudbury reclamation project on their website (link below). Really, one should blame Chicago more than Toyota, as Sudbury’s trees were all cut down in 1871 to help rebuild Chicago after the fire. GM provides telling photos of some of the reclamation from 1979 to present.

http://www.gmcanada.com/inm/gmcanada/engli...aily/Sep22.html