AutoblogGreen

Toyota's Tsutsumi plant is one of the most environmentaly friendly in the world. The CO2 output per vehicle is much less then any of the plants the Big 3 manages. I don't understand this anger towards Hybrids/Toyota.

Check it out, it's pretty impressive.
http://www.toyota.co.jp/en/environmental_rep/06/download/pdf/e_fa08.pdf

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WOW!!!! Look at all these liberals jump to the defense of their own egos!!!
I have NEVER SEEN people eat up a company's internal propoganda more than I see here!
Somebody even called Toyota an "environmentally sensitive company". Hahahah!!
HAHAHAHA!!!!!
Nmae one AMERICAN company that gets any of this type of praise from LIBERALS!!

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Wow, GeigerCounter, calling me a "liberal" is about as stupid as - good God - I cannot even begin to think what!

I belong to the Constitution Party. Nope, don't consider myself a "conservative" Prius owner, but you would because you know nothing about me.

Being "conservative" means by it's definition that one wants to "conserve" the political status-quo.

No thanks.

Neither am I "liberal" (or more correctly, "socialist/communist"). True liberals would embrace the diversity of Christians having a different viewpoint on life than they do - this clearly is NOT the case - therefore "liberals" in the United States are anything but, and are much more akin to Nazis than the other major party that they continually malign.

Einstein said "one sign of insanity is do continue to do the same thing and expect a different result."

This can be construed in the political sense - continuing to vote for the Dumipublicans or Republicrats and then complaining when they are corrupt, power hungry and deaf to the populace except during election time when they "listen" only enough to hear what promises people want to hear - or buying cars, trucks and SUV's ("steamroller ugly vehicles").

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OK so a Prius is not a viable car for anywho need a vechicle for more than personal transportation. It is a limited scope, limted use, limited market vehicle. Sales are off and the general rabid hyperbole users are not buying anymore (surprise, surprise). http://www.usatoday.com/money/autos/2006-11-05-prius-usat_x.htm They have sold 500,000 WORLDWIDE in 5 model years - wow. That is a HUGE impact on the environment. Add to that buyers who wish they could file a lawsuit for only getting 37mpg form a 55mpg Hybrid.
That being said, I think the Japanese car makers are very good at P.R. and stretching a small accomplishment into a seemingly big deal (ask a japanese woman - they know all about making a big fuss over something small)
The Prius was not less an impressive then the EV1. The difference was people wanted one - why? It made sense? Even Enron accountants can't make the Prius a "Good Buy" No they bought it on blind faith because it was a Toyota.
A Hummer, H2 or H3 are more multi purpose than a Prius thus they are less efficient. Slot cars go really fast and handle great , but only on the slot track. A Prius is the same thing. Impressive around town under 30mph. Over that, in the snow, towing, unpaved roads or hauling cargo - well it is neither a "Good Buy" a "Good Idea", it is simply "Good Dog" Sit. Stay. Now Buy.

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The amusing part about this whole argument is that the righteous indignation held by Prius and other “green” car owners about the flaws in methodology and/or peer review is the same complaint other scientists have had on global warming studies. Yet, I doubt I’ll see many of these guys calling for the flaws in the specious “Inconvenient Truth” being analyzed.

The simple fact is that we all want our cars to be a good value both environmentally and financially. However, environmentalism has become a political (and almost religious) issue to some. This means that anyone or anything that might challenge that viewpoint is subject to be targeted and destroyed. Look at the punitive actions called against scientists and climatologists who disagree with the man made global warming theory (some are advocating the revocation of their credentials).

Personally, I’ll choose a vehicle that fits me. If I can get a hummer that suits my lifestyle and my budget, I’ll purchase it; if that turns out to be a Prius than I will choose it. What I reject is the “holier than thou” attitude held by some Prius owners that seems to state that I’m doing something wrong by purchasing a vehicle that fits me and not them.

Someone asked, “Why all the rage towards people wanting to do something to benefit the environment?” I think it’s clearly a response to the fact that so many are trying to force their views down someone else’s throat. You want to drive a Prius? Go for it. Just don’t try and force everyone else to do the same. Don’t shake your finger at them for choosing a hummer or act as if you’re superior in some way. You do your thing and I’ll do mine. Give it time and the market will make the decision. If you force it, you’ll only get more people rebelling against this imposed political correctness.

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Building a Toyota Prius causes more environmental damage than a Hummer that is on the road for three times longer than a Prius. As already noted, the Prius is partly driven by a battery which contains nickel. The nickel is mined and smelted at a plant in Sudbury, Ontario. This plant has caused so much environmental damage to the surrounding environment that NASA has used the ‘dead zone’ around the plant to test moon rovers. The area around the plant is devoid of any life for miles.

The plant is the source of all the nickel found in a Prius’ battery and Toyota purchases 1,000 tons annually. Dubbed the Superstack, the plague-factory has spread sulfur dioxide across northern Ontario, becoming every environmentalist’s nightmare.

“The acid rain around Sudbury was so bad it destroyed all the plants and the soil slid down off the hillside,” said Canadian Greenpeace energy-coordinator David Martin during an interview with Mail, a British-based newspaper.

All of this would be bad enough in and of itself; however, the journey to make a hybrid doesn’t end there. The nickel produced by this disastrous plant is shipped via massive container ship to the largest nickel refinery in Europe. From there, the nickel hops over to China to produce ‘nickel foam.’ From there, it goes to Japan. Finally, the completed batteries are shipped to the United States, finalizing the around-the-world trip required to produce a single Prius battery. Are these not sounding less and less like environmentally sound cars and more like a farce?

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Glen you tool, i think you are the 'american idiot'. You reasoning is naive. Propaganda mobiles? I don’t disagree on some of the publicity stunts and stretched facts, but when it comes right down to it, north American cars are rubbish.

US pay and benefits? Why are they cutting so many jobs and divisions down? And have not made profit for years? How about that GM strike that went down in Canada 15 or so years ago. GM was changing the contract so that instead of guaranteed pay increase each year assembly line workers got GM shares in the company. The US employees took it in the ass and agreed to the contract.

The employees in Canada however weren’t having it. Their union fought long and hard to keep most of their guaranteed pay increase each year, and they made the right choice (given the trend in GM’s finances). Of course the employees do get good pay and benefits. That is the only way you can keep assembly line workers. It was very well stated by Adam Smith (the inventor of the assembly line process theory) , in that an assembly line is a very efficient way to produce a product, you will however, be successful in created the dumbest most brain dead person by making them perform a tedious repetitive task day in day out! The only way to keep them there is money children.

Someone mentioned the hybrids are a transition tool until we develop hydrogen vehicles.
The trick is, it doesn’t have to be electric. Passing it through a membrane with oxygen to move the electrons and create current is one way of using hydrogen for energy. But hydrogen can also be burned in a combustion engine. This will more plausibly be the first transition to hydrogen, then hydrogen fuel celled vehicles. Don’t worry though. When I say burned, I simply mean oxidized, a reaction undergoing oxidation with ‘tada’ oxygen molecules. Hydrogen is not a hydrocarbon like petrol. It is simply elementary H2. It produces a large amount of energy when it undergoes combustion with oxygen, but the reaction rearranges atomically to produce water and lots of energy. So it will be similar to the fuel we use today, except no emissions. BMW is now the first to have a production (not available to the public yet, but will be given out to several influential people) hydrogen/petrol car. It is based on the 7 series and holds a regular gas tank, and a tank for Hydrogen. Like anything, technology has to be developed over time. It will! It will take time to construct hydrogen stations throughout. I don’t have time to go over the specs, but would he happy to guide you if you’d like to read more.

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Reading this blog/article, it is clear as to why the general public are so easily fooled into believing what they wish to believe. The writer does not demonstrate the ability to think critically, or provide basic analysis.

Statements appear in a vaccuum:
"The CNW study makes several assumptions which undermine the conclusions arrived at."

Our esteemed author makes no attemt, at all, to indicate what any of those assumptions are, let alone illuminate the problems with the assumptions.

In other words: talk, no substance.

The author goes on to say that the conclusions of the CNW study differ with conclusions of other studies, and pretends to give three examples. In fact, only the first example indicates a different conclusion, but this author makes no attempt to help us know which one to believe.

The second "example" is merely an expression of surprise at a result.

The thrid "example" is merely a statement by Toyota that says it disagrees with a point in the study.

This hodge-podge of nearly random exclamations does not really help the reader see any specific flaws in the CNW, let alone flaws of the kind and degree that would invert the basic conclusion of that study.

Certainly nothing in this piece supports the claim made in it's title.

What this appears to be, as a half hearted attempt to somehow damage the CNW study by asserting some non specific charges against it, and then in it's final assertion, claim that the study is simply wrong all round.

This inability (or perhaps reluctance) to think, to reason, to carefully tend to the facts is one of the reasons why shake oil salesmen have always been able to turn a profit.

It's all about emoting... someone else is wrong if I "feel" they are. I am right if I "feel" I am right.

"I need hybrid cars to use less energy than Hummers, therefore they do."

Science and engineering is all about finding fact despite our beliefs, or fears and our personal religion.

If someone spends a couple years researching something, and finds by a wide margin that your beliefs are unsupported... well, that is hard to take, isn't it?

Is the research flawless? No. No research ever is. That is the way of human endevour.

What is required to unseat the final conclusions of a report like the CNW report (the latest report still comes to the same basic conclusion BTW), is that the CNW report has *fatal flaws* significant enough to reverse the final conclusion.

Let's not pretend that this blog even comes close to doing that.

Since even automakers tell us that it uses more energy to design, produce, and dispose of hybrids when compared to other cars, then we have to say that hybrids are off to a very difficult start, and nobody seems to disagree with this.

The fact seems to be, that showing hybrids as actually greener than comparable vehicles is difficult and suspect to say the least.

And as people that supposedly care about actual consequences to the planet due to their purchasing choices, it is very possible that the move to hybrids is doing the exact kind of damage to the environment that such customers would wish to avoid.

Regards,

Mike

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Could someone please publish a couple of links referencing the actual studies (the original one from CNW and the one refuting it from the Argonne National Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology...)

Thank you !

Pedro

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Pedro Corre, the following link provides references to the Argonne, MIT, and other reports, and is the best single refutation of the CNW study I have yet seen:

http://www.pacinst.org/topics/integrity_of_science/case_studies/hummer_vs_prius.pdf

MrFurious, who has been forcing you to buy a Prius? Have you contacted the police? I can see why you are so furious if liberals are chasing you around forcing you to buy a hybrid. Shocking. As repentence for the error of all liberals everywhere, I myself will gladly call for the flaws in "An Inconvenient Truth" to be thoroughly analyzed and broadly publicized. Oops, looks like right-leaning media outlets already took care of that for us, so we're good there. The only annoying thing, though, is that despite any specific flaws in Mr. Gore's popular media presentation of the science of global warming, the vast majority of scientists still essentially agree with his conclusions. What are we to do about that? Ah, got it: let's create our *own* science that says what we want it to say! But again, the Heritage Foundation is already busy at work on that one, so we can just relax, kick on back, and keep on smirking at those smug liberals.

Mike, the link above should satisfy your need for greater detail on precisely why this report is, indeed, *fatally* flawed. As an aside, please note that your own summation of the topic is no more sufficient to justify your conclusion than this blog article's summation is sufficient to justify its conclusion. You are making the very same errors you declaim -- though you have upped the arrogance ante a good bit.

Here's one of my favorite examples of why I am skeptical of this report. When first released, Art Spinella said that the 100k lifespan for the Prius came from Toyota itself, a claim that mystified many people (including Toyota). In his most recent statements, Art now says this figure is the mileage a driver is *likely* to put on a Prius during its lifetime, which I'm sure we'll all agree is a radically different metric (How miles it could be driven v. how many miles it is "likely" to be driven, whatever that means). So the basis for the number has changed completely, but ***the number itself has not changed at all***. Hmmm. Regardless of your personal ideological leanings, doesn't that strike you as just a wee bit peculiar? If one were uncharitable, one might even suggest that the report is arguing backwards from a desired conclusion.

There may be other such shifting and dubiously founded assumptions in CNW's report, but you will never know because they will not publish their methodology. Their analysis *cannot be replicated*. As a basis for informed discussion, the report is therefore worthless. Its only value is as a cudgel to be wielded by people who appreciate its conclusions regardless of their worth.

It's a pity, too, because the subject itself is a valuable one to explore. But I wonder, if a reliable entity were to study the issue and publish all its assumptions and methodology according to standard practices, encouraging peer review, etc., etc., and if that report were to come to the opposite conclusion -- that a hybrid is in fact better for the environment than a Hummer -- would anyone ever see it or read it or care? Say, if MIT or Argonne or some other reputable group of scientists were to study the issue . . .

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I am a surgeon, and while I am not an environmentalist I care a lot about the environment and the planet as a whole. I try to be open minded. Unfortunately the business of health care is an environmental disaster in my opinion. We use immense amounts of plastic, and due to biohazard, tends not to be recycled. Most of what I use in my day to day work is considered 'disposable' and most of it is incinerated. For the record I do not feel good about this.

My parents have a business that they have spent a LOT of money making carbon neutral. The environmental push they have made has won them awards. And their business has prospered. They have recently bought a prius for a number of reasons, not the least of which is its percieved lower environmental impact. Whatever your stance on this issue, their business now makes a less negative impact on the environment than it did 2 years ago, and that is a good thing.

I drive a subaru legacy/liberty. It is a great car, has the versatility I want so I can make the most of my time off, and has a great safety rating. It gets about 12-14L/100km. I have driven the prius, and have to admit it's not a bad car to drive. Not great, but not bad either. I'd rather drive my subaru.

While I think the CNW study is fundamentally flawed, I can see both sides of the argument. I think the oil companies have done a lot of lobbying. I think toyota has too.

The fact of the matter, however, is that someday in the alarmingly near future, we will run out of oil. (I admit we will probably never actually run out with not a drop ever to be found again, but oil will become so expensive that we simply won't have access to it).

At that point, my car will become a lot less versatile. While the prius won't be too crash hot either, people such as my parents will argue (with considerable merit) that the technology that they supported, developed for the prius (and no doubt subsequent hybrids and hopefully non fossil fuel burning cars) is what will allow us to continue not just our love affair with the car, but to continue any form of powered transportation in the absence of accessible oil.

I know it's not really the topic here, but excessive oil usage in our society is ultimately likely to be more to our detriment than developing non-fossil fuel transportation or recycling prius batteries.

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its all fun and games until someone in a hummer plows into you in your prius..then they break out the jaws of life.

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