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What’s an environmentalist to make of this report, which concludes that hybrid cars actually use more energy from design to disposal, because their components are more complex to design, manufacture, and recycle, than conventional, lower-fuel-economy cars?
Clark Williams-Derry is (I suspect rightly) skeptical.
I've heard this argument before. Wouldn't that be something, if we found hybrids actually accelerated our energy problems rather than helped solve them.
I'm a believer in the air cars they're manufacturing in Europe, which run on pressurized air.
Are you talking about the MiniCAT? Interesting. Not really a production idea yet, unless I've missed something.
What they do have a gazillion of in Europe already, and a network of fuel stations to supply them, is little tiny cars. Smart Car, Renault Twingo, Ford Ka, and many others. Pretty much every car maker has at least one and sometimes several mini models, smaller than a BMW Mini, that are extremely popular everywhere except the United States. Regular gas, or diesel, but not very much of it. If the US switched just a small percentage of our unnecessarily jumbo vehicles to a truly small car, we could stop buying oil from Saudi Arabia entirely.
Ironic don't ya think
Part of the problem is that hybrid technology is in its early stages. Right now there is a huge infrastructure built up to handle the creation and disposal of gasoline cars. It has had decades to evolve and become incredibly efficient.
As hybrids and electrics gain market share, creation and disposal will become more efficient, cost less and use less energy. When most cars on the road are hybrids, they won't use "specialized parts," as the article describes it, they will use commodity parts.
I think the issue is that they are cleaner, who cares what it takes to make them initially... it's cleaner.
They're only a tiny bit cleaner than a plain gas ULEV vehicle. And if they're not cleaner to MAKE, you could end up losing ground overall. It's more complicated than it looks. But the difference in emissions efficiency going from a regular gas ULEV car to a hybrid is trivial compared to going from a belching SUV or truck, and/or one of the many really old vehicles on the road, to just about anything. It's nice to have fun at the one end of the scale, but the big gains are at the other end.
If I have read the literature right, then people who buy will have to be better educated about the hybrids that they might want to buy.
Some hybrid designs are being used not to expand fuel economy, but rather to add pick up at the same or marginal fuel costs. Therefore, while a Prius might be an environmental winner, a Ford Escape might just be neutral. Now an Escape might prove in the long haul to be better for emissions, but it also won't help with oil extraction and other issues.
Like someone above said, the issue is buying smaller and more efficient vehicles.
The New York Times had a great article around a month ago about how hybrids pointed to the ineffectiveness of the federal fuel-efficiency standards. By manufacturing fuel-efficient hybrids, automakers could give themselves license to build worse gas guzzlers.
Well, this isn't necessarily an argument against hybrids, and I'm not against hybrids myself. But I am against this perception of hybrids as a panacea for assorted environmental problems.
If I recall correctly, last year's big federal transportation bill allowed California to allow hybrid cars on its high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes. The fact that this change received support from California environmentalists is enough evidence to me that the term "California environmentalist" has been rendered meaningless.
For one thing, a Prius contributes virtually as much as a Hummer does to traffic congestion -- which only happens to be the primary problem that HOV lanes exist to combat. I could make more arguments about the incentives HOV lanes are supposed to provide, but I would be digressing.
The fundamental problem is that hybrids are still automobiles; they don't make us any less dependent on automobiles.
And however good their gas mileage, imagine if every automobile in the central Puget Sound magically became a hybrid. We would still have just the same horrible traffic jams. And we would still be consuming vastly more gas than in a place where you didn't have to drive so much to get around in the first place.
FARNF Wrote:
"but the typical person who just pilots around town isn't taking anywhere near full advantage of the gas-sipping possibilities of the hybrid."
The way to maximize mileage is to never brake.
---Jensen
1986 Jaguar XJ6
From what I've read, SUVs were also designed by, basically, placing a roomier body on a classic pick-up truck bed. The energy expended on design would therefore be lower for SUVs because a novel infrastructure wasn't necessary. The longer hybrids are on the market, the lower their average design costs will become. (I haven't looked at the stats, this is just a hypothesis.)
Originally SUVs were made that way, but now a lot of the smaller ones are on a car frame. Your RAV4's and stuff. Also, some car makers classify their vehicles as "trucks" in order to avoid the car-only fuel-efficiency, emissions, and crash standards. Subaru did this last year with their Outbacks and Foresters, which used to be "cars" but are now trucks.
I don't know that design is a huge energy cost; it's actually manufacturing steel and plastic and other bits and forming it into car shapes. Bigger vehicles = more steel = more energy.
I kinda like hybrids, but I agree that they are not the ultimate solution. I used to have a Honda CRX in the late 1980s that got almost as good gas mileage as a brand new Prius today. And FNARF is right, there are all sorts of small cars in Europe and Asia that get better mileage than a Prius, just running on regular gas or diesel. They are just small and light and have little engines. No hi tech components required, and no trunk load of batteries to dispose of after 5 years.
In the Netherlands, if I recall, car owners are taxed based on the gross vehicle weight (which goes up dramatically on heavier vehicles), which gives people a huge incentive to drive smaller vehicles. We should definitely look into that here (perhaps with an exemption for legitimate commercial vehicles).
Getting a few people out of their Hummers and into smaller vehicles will make far more difference than people switching from a gas powered Civic to a hybrid Civic.
SDA in Sea wrote: "Getting a few people out of their Hummers and into smaller vehicles will make far more difference than people switching from a gas powered Civic to a hybrid Civic."
Sigh. What about getting people out of their cars? Smaller cars deserve to be part of the discussion, but so do alternatives to auto travel.
We already settled that question when we as a city and as a region decided we don't care about mass transit. Seattle's bus system is a joke and light rail will soon be. Monorail? What monorail?
Moving ten percent of SUV drivers into mini cars would save more fuel and emissions than moving ten percent of hybrid drivers onto transit.
The way to maximize mileage is to never brake.
---Jensen
1986 Jaguar XJ6
Jensen, you are quite correct and I
think I understand your point, so what the hell are you doing driving a 4000 pound plus, 20 year old car?
He didn't say he was DRIVING it. An '86 Jag? It's in the shop.
I was just in Europe (Amsterdam and Paris) and saw lots of tiny cars in both cities. The really small ones sound like golf carts or lawnmowers, and can't weigh much more than 750 pounds or so from the look of them, and there are also a lot of sporty looking smart cars that are styled more like the new minis. Amsterdam, in particular, has very narrow streets with tons of multimodal (trams, bikes, peds) traffic, so a smaller car would be pretty useful.
I don't know what makes them illegal here - probably the bumpers or something, but I bet they'd sell well on the West Coast if people could get them.
Of course, it would suck to be driving here and get clobbered by a Chevy Suburban (truly the classic SUV, and definitely built like a truck with a solid frame), but you essentially take the same chance in most compacts anyway.
You can't sell a new car in the US until you get two certificates: one from the EPA and one from the DOT. The first certifies that they've run all the exhaustive emissions and mileage tests, and the second certifies that they've done all the crash testing. These tests are expensive and complicated to administer; for starters, you're talking about crushing at least three of the them. The fact that the car may well have passed equally or even more rigorous European or Japanese tests already means nothing.
Crash safety is only partly about surviving impacts; even more important is AVOIDING them. In this regard giant SUVs and trucks perform horribly. You are more likely to survive a crash in a Suburban but much more likely to get into one, and thus the overall death rate is worse. The most dangerous vehicle on the road by far is the Ford F-100 pickup, which is also the most popular (I think).
And a well-designed small car can survive crashes better than a lot of poorly-designed medium-sized cars. The BMW Mini, for instance, rates in the middle of the pack, better than lots of much bigger vehicles.
Like most issues in the US, the discussion has been both politicized and mythologized, so that any discussion of cars on the road devolves into coded messages about toughness and masculinity -- and vehicular masculinity has little to do with gender. Go down to Bellevue Square or U Village and watch the 110 pound chicks climbing out of their Escalades....
OK, I can understand a Suburban I suppose (heck, there's a borrowed one parked in my back yard right now), but who the hell needs a giant luxury truck/status symbol like an Escalade? Hell, I'd tear the leather upholstery in a week moving a Marshall stack in and out of one of em - and have you EVER seen dirt on an Escalade from going out 4-wheeling? Thought not...
I think the issue is that they are cleaner, who cares what it takes to make them initially... it's cleaner.
The net impact is worse is what they are saying. And yes, cleaner where you're driving. But not cleaner where they're made.
You can make the same argument about a car buring oil and guzzling gas. You're leaving the stink behind you at 40 MPH - what do you care?
You care because you're aware that a mess in one part of town is staill a mess. Likewise a mess at the manufacturing site is still a mess you should care about.
Fnarf wrote (in response to my observation about getting people out of their cars): "We already settled that question when we as a city and as a region decided we don't care about mass transit. Seattle's bus system is a joke and light rail will soon be. Monorail? What monorail?"
Fnarf, like you, I am/was a monorail supporter. Like you, I think the bus system is a joke, even though I rely on it to get to work downtown. I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss light rail though. Portland made the worst possible decision with their light rail system: they made it run at-grade through their downtown. And yet, even Portland's light rail system has managed to make a difference. Seattle's initial light-rail line can only be better because it runs grade-separated through downtown. And almost the entire planned Eastside line will run grade-separated or in its own right of way (across the I-90 bridge). Sure doesn't sound like a joke to me.
As for your statement: "Moving ten percent of SUV drivers into mini cars would save more fuel and emissions than moving ten percent of hybrid drivers onto transit."
I suppose at face level, this is true, provided we're pretty generous about the fuel economy of mini cars. Suppose an SUV gets 15 MPG, and both a mini car and a hybrid get 45 MPG. Suppose mass transit (as opposed to buses) doesn't use any gas. So we have the following consumption rates:
Going from the 3 to the 1 (SUV --> mini) saves 2 units. Going from the 1 to the 0 (hybrid --> transit) saves only 1 unit. So yes, you're right at face level.
But building true mass/rapid transit never has just a linear effect. It changes where people live and where people work. It promotes density, so that even when people do drive, they don't have to drive as far. We've seen this happen historically whenever cities build robust mass transit systems. It changes the equation. Fnarf, you as a mass transit supporter shouldn't be so quick to dismiss the "virtuous cycle" it has the power to set in motion.
P.S. Let's also not dismiss the importance of smart land use (density), with or without transit. I live in a neighborhood where all sorts of amenities are within walking distance. I manage to consume a lot less gas than someone who lives in a suburban-style, auto-dependent neighborhood. And even when I do drive somewhere, I don't drive as far. This has nothing to do with what kind of car I'm driving.
I understand your argument, Cressona, really, I do. It's a nice ideal, and a target to aim for. But it doesn't reflect reality in most of America, or even most of the greater Seattle area. Seattle's making some strides in the area of density, certainly, but the accompanying transit isn't happening.
Well, it sort of is, in a few areas. But those areas are ALREADY DENSE. Not a ton of people in Capitol Hill are going to give up their cars for ST, because they've ALREADY given them up. You can get places from Cap Hill on the bus now. It's a mild pain in the ass, but it's there. But other large parts of the city are much worse off in that regard. Bus service where I live, sort of Phinney-ish, only works if you're going to downtown or Northgate, and even then only if I don't mind waiting a half hour for it to come and an hour for it to get there. And back. And I don't go to either of those places very often.
And my situation is pretty good. Most people in America live in suburbs, not cities, and most of the people who live in cities live in very suburban-like neighborhoods, not dense blocks of apartments. It's nice to think that everybody's going to move to dense neighborhoods, but they're mostly not. For every 100 units of condo or apartment built in Seattle, there's a thousand shitty homes up on a hillside in Marysville or somewhere. This weekend, take a drive out Highway 530 from Arlington to Darrington -- it's beautiful -- and notice the outcroppings of fucked new houses -- in protected growth boundary areas!
The calculation is not as simple as one-to-three like you make it out to be; ten percent of SUV drivers is a much, much bigger number than ten percent of hybrid drivers. It's more like 100,000 to one than three to one. That's where the difference comes. And it's a huge difference.
BTW, transit's fuel usage and emissions aren't zero, either. Lower per rider than a car, but hardly zero. And remember electricity has its impact too, just not in your face.
And I'll believe Sound Transit on the Eastside when I see the trains running. I don't think they'll ever get there.
In addition, the equation for REAL mini cars and REAL SUVs is closer to 60 MPG versus 6 MPG.
It strikes me how bicycles are rarely if ever part of the equation when people talking about transportation solutions in this country. And that is a shame because the bike is the most perfect form of urban transportation. In Copenhagen, they made a committment to bicycling decades ago, and have true infrastructure now (not shitty "bike lanes" on the sides of the car roads). Fully one third of commuting in the Copenhagen area is done by bike. Another third is public transportation, and the final third is by car. It has the least problem with congestion of any city in Europe (if not the world).
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Interesting. I'm not sure Gristmill's got it, either. All those batteries are in fact a significant problem. And the sad fact is, most hybrid drivers don't get that great gas mileage. It's possible to get good mileage if you're a freak about the way you drive, but the typical person who just pilots around town isn't taking anywhere near full advantage of the gas-sipping possibilities of the hybrid. I'll bet most hybrid drivers in Seattle get worse mileage than some of the most efficient new regular gas and diesel cars.
I hear the revised EPA mileage figures that are supposed to be released soon are going to be a bit shocking. On the low end, too; a lot of those Hummers and Tahoes out there aren't getting the claimed 11 MPG or whatever it is in the real world; more like 5 or 6.
The real answer isn't figuring out how to make giant SUV hybrids; it's driving small cars. REALLY small cars, the kind that get 50-60-70 MPG. The kind that are illegal in the US.