Toyota says that they've never had to replace a Prius battery due to wear and tear, and many are now over 300K miles.
I agree though, if you can use a smaller car, there's no reason to pay the hybrid premium. Go even smaller and save more, with a Chevy Aveo, Honda Fitt, Toyota Yaris, or Scion xA.
According to the EPA's shared (real-world) mileage database, the Yaris does the best with 37.7 mpg:
I have a 2004 4dr toyota echo (read: yaris) that I've had for a bit over 3 months now. I use it to commute a 75km round trip (we're planning to move closer soon needless to say, but we're having issues with banks), and couldn't be much happier with it. It handles well, is dependable and fairly comfortable. Even better, since I have very little stop and go traffic I average 18.5 kpl when I have the AC on, and 19.5 kpl when it's cool enough to just use the fans. That's 43-45 mpg; I've one of the lucky few to actually get better than the claimed mileage. Of course, if I do a lot of weekend driving (read short trips in stop and go traffic), I can end up as low as 16.5kpl (39mpg). Oh, this is with an automatic transmission to boot. I'd definitely recommend the Echo/Yaris.
The only regret I have with my car is it's a fucking sedan. I really wanted a hatchback, but I was on a time/price crunch and couldn't find any used hatchbacks in my area. There's been a few times where I've had trouble fitting large irregularly shaped objects into the back.
Onto a more general question. If the US were to overhaul its existing fleet of cars and trucks,(hypothetically of course) and convert to hybrids, how much would this affect the cost per liter and do we have the resources to allow such a shift?
There are still a lot of people who buy SUVs and then use them as if they were Corollas/Civics. That swap would save money all around ... at some cost in "ego." Even a Prius (at $22K) is less than the average car sold in the US ($27K).
You say "do we have resources" when it's pretty clear we overspend. Do we have resources for a new line of Chrysler Hemis? Apparently so.
I am more concerned about the energy and materials needed to replace a significant portion of our automobile fleet. Beyond that, I think it makes more sense to spend it on electric rail.
Spending "it" implies a pretty monolithic approach. There's a lot of room between here and there, including fuel taxes to fund both light rail and electric cars.
A lot depentptn how battery tech evolves in the next few years though.
"The construction of an average car consumes the energy equivalent of approximately 20 barrels of oil, which equates to 840 gallons, of oil. Ultimately, the construction of a car will consume an amount of fossil fuels equivalent to twice the car's final weight."
So, to replace the 225 million or so automobiles in the U.S., it would require approximately 225M*20bbl = 4.5 billion barrels of oil to replace all the existing cars, or about a half-year's-worth of consumption in the U.S.
Of course, to replace all the cars in the world, it would take even more oil...
And I'm sure I'm missing some energy inputs in this calculation.
At $20,000 a piece, all these new cars would cost people in the US about $4.5 trillion. I'm sure the auto manufacturers would be into this plan...
There was a link on TOD or some other forum that indicated that hybrids used, IIRC, 154% more energy then a regular car. Sorry, I don't have a link at my finger tips to support this. In any case, it isn't a 1:1 situation.
I'm sorry you only heard the (marketing) survey, and not the rebuttal!!!
Those hybrid critics stacked the deck. They claimed, quite arbitrarily I thought, that a "car" lasts 100,000 miles while a "truck" lasts 250,000 miles. Those convenient assumptions lead to calculations showing a lower per-mile energy costs for a Hummer H3 than for a Toyota Prius.
The improvements are helping cars' longevity. In 1977, half of all U.S. passenger cars lasted until they were 10.5 years old, according to National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates. Their travel lifetime was 107,000 miles. By 2001 -- the latest year tallied -- median longevity was 13 years for passenger cars and their travel lifetime was up to 152,000 miles.
For light trucks, the mileage rose from 128,000 to 180,000, reports NHTSA, but longevity remained 14 years, largely because more trucks were being used like cars.
For more on the way they worked that number, look here.
To name just one other funny numeric business:
The study includes the energy put into research and development, which Art said is much higher for the hybrid than it is for the ICE. I'd like to see these numbers though. There is still research and development work going into the ICE.
So, you've got a few hundred million conventional cars on the road, their R&D all amortized ... what happens when you force an R&D accounting on any new technology? Fewer units to divide by, and higher "costs" ... even if they'd really be paid over time by higher production.
When we've only got a 4% per year auto retirement rate, I don't think we need to worry about anybody putting forward a serious plan to increase that to 100%. I agree that no one is going to expand the auto production by 20x, just to abandon it a year later.
So the 4% is good news and bad news. It makes "electric cars" (as some fraction of the replacement fleet) more possible, but it also makes them one of the "silver bbs" and not the "silver bullet"
4% retirement rate for the cars??? That would mean over 20 years for a car's average lifespan! I sure don't think so. You will be awful lucky to get 20 years of a lifespan out of a car. Even ships and planes are pushing the envelope at 20 years old. ValuJet bought up old Boeing 737s which were 30 years old. And we all know about what crocodiles in Florida call "airline food". Not good!
Given how I like to affect an Aussie accent, I liked this variation of the old ValuJet joke:
Q: "A ValuJet plane tried to make a mission to Sydney (Australia) but they missed! What did one croc say to the other?"
I don't know man, follow the link and see what you thing.
I do know that the older a car is, the fewer miles it is driven. There is an inverse age/VMT correlation. I suppose old cars tend to sit there in a multi-car family, or in the garage of retirees. They become the "extra cars" but aren't scrapped as long as they keep up registration.
Probably the best thing that we can hope for here in the U.S. for the time being is to do what is possible to encourage those who drive large, fuel inefficient vehicles is to a) drive them less, and/or b) increase the number of people or amount of cargo in the vehicle when it is being driven.
My recollection of the '70s is that the number of passengers per vehicle increased with more carpooling, ride sharing and hitchiking. However, my perspective could be warped by the fact that I was a student throughout that period.
Seriously, though, a medium-sized SUV usually sits 4 comfortably. With one person driving, the vehicle may get something like 18 mpg and 18 passenger mpg. Put 4 people in the vehicle, and you have 72 passenger mpg or about the same as two people each driving his or her own Corolla.
If we couls utilize our present SUV and mini-van fleet similarly, we'd save quite a bit of embodied energy. However, I think that gasoline prices would have to go much higher before too many folks would be all that interested.
I've commented on this before, but it's good to do again. Think about the likelyhood of finding 4 people going to the same place at the same time. Then think about the likelyhood of finding 2 people going to the same place at the same time. It's probably exponentially more likely to find 2 people going in the same direction at the same time than it is for 4 people.
Note that it's the energy equivalent of approximately 20 bareels of oil. A lot of that energy will come from coal used in smelting the metals used in the car and to produce the electricity used to drive the manufacturing process. It's not all oil.
I would even suggest that most of it is not oil. I can imagine some amounts of oil going into transporting the vehicle and the parts, but too far from the 4 barrels mention.
That part of the Matt Savinars representation of PO I found a little bit biased.
Dear all
During the last 10 years, a number of Life cycle analysis (LCA)"cradle to grave" have been made on different aspects on transport. The best of these take into account most of the objections I have seen on the Drum. So no need to guess- but rather critizise.
One of the better LCA's is this , made by the VW. It is in german- but the numbers are self explaining. http://www.volkswagen-umwelt.de/_download/sachbilanz_golf_a4_deutsch.pdf
The Functional unit (the is 1 car driven 150.000 km (93.300 miles) The Primary energy ( energy at the source- oil well, coal mine, iron extraction- including end- of life- that is scrapping and recycling)- cost for 150.000 km is between 70 to 150 MWh. This value is cradle to grave- that is raw material extractiuon and production, production of the vehicle, use + maintenance of the vehichle 150.000 km and scrapping and recycling. As a rule of thumb 1 kilo car cost presently 4 kilo +/- 0.5 kilo oil to produce.
Are you all ready for a very contreversial proposal to cut population? There is after all a way to cut oil use, being to cull off some population, an obviously ugly topic.
What you do is you pass needed laws that both allow for suicide facilitation and allowing suicide kits to be sold in drugstores. That way, as people finally give up during the "powerdown" they have an "out". If Cuba means anything, a powerdown will be nasty at best. North Korea is a powerdown at an approximate worst.
Of course, you want to discourage childbirth. Any powerdown scenario is going to be some ugly stuff.
Oh Max, don't be so morbid: I've already posted a couple of weeks or so ago the obvious solution--just convince everybody that oral sex is better than the kind that leads to babies. Combine that innovation with new technology that allows couples to determine the sex of their offspring, and Bingo! Now the problem becomes long-term population decline, rather than the reverse.
No need to kill off billions--though Malthus was right, in the long run.
But wait a minute . . . in the long run, we're all dead, as John Maynard Keynes pointed out.
Note that the Roman Empire did not fall due to overpopulation--just the reverse!
Don, I sorry I missed your original post. As Im sure youre aware, the neurotransmitter cocktail brought about by the symphony of traditional sex, at least from the female perspective, is much deeper and richer, and therefore more satisfying than the oral variety. Not a bad idea though...
I agree; while we should focus on replacing our auto fleet with much more efficient models, those of us in "developed" countries (especially the US) should also start strategizing now on how to live with fewer cars overall.
Spending more on electrified rail systems, and urbane, mixed-use neighborhoods around rail stations, could eliminate the need for a lot of replacement cars in metropolitan areas -- and preserve a lot of greenbelt land that we will need for local food production.
Car-sharing is another option that is finally catching on in US cities. It is a membership service, where one can use a car from a nearby "pod" and pay only for the miles you drive. Each car serves a lot more people, and our local nonprofit car share organization found that a third of their members' households get rid of a car -- sometimes their only car, and sometimes an infrequently-used second car. Car share organizations also have pickup trucks and vans in the fleet, so folks who can usually get by with a small car but occasionally need to haul something big can use the larger vehicle only when they need the extra capacity.
I know, I know -- alternatives like these won't work for everyone or in every setting, but as we accelerate into peak oil and global climate change, we need to simultaneously embrace a broad range of effective strategies for sustainability.
Well said. These alternatives transport methods will obviously help, but the headwinds created by the desire of personal convenience and time savings of one-two person transport will oppose this shift. To what degree is hard to determine as fuel prices increase, but I expect to see an future explosion of bicycles, scooters, street-legalized quad ATVs, and motorcyles in places of urban sprawl [like my Asphalt Wonderland].
I have posted before about keeping your used pickup or SUV for the occasional hauling of large loads or 3 or more people [or when the weather is simply atrocious], but buying a used small scooter/ATV for one-two person commutes or errands. Bicycles best of all, of course. I presently feel this is the most cost-effective way to be prepared if gasoline suddenly spikes out of sight.
My eleven year old pickup is only worth maybe $2000-2500, but only has 115,000 miles on it-- many years of life left on it. My recently bought used 2004 scooter: only 1600 miles [yes, only sixteen hundred!]-- estimated lifetime virtually unlimited until gas prices rise so high that some punk shoots me while I wait at an intersection to then steal my little scoot.
As a plus, sparetime hauling stuff for cash has easily paid for all the pickup's running expenses, and provided me with beer money. A lot of people would rather pay someone than rent a U-Haul pickup to do it themselves. Phx has a lot of 'bling-bling' pickups and SUVs with very expensive aftermarket accessories; I call them an ornate 'chrome penis'-- the last thing they want to do is fill the storage area with manure or crushed desert rocks for landscaping.
Most of the use that people put their automobile to can be covered by a small electric 2 or 3 wheeler. This will use many fewer resources, than a big car for every person in the family. For examples see http://www.evtamerica.com/
That might be true in many places where it doesn't snow but that is only a small portion of the US. Not only do I have to often put chains on all the wheels of my (small) 4x4 truck but we still do get snowed in for a few days and up to a couple of weeks every year. We had friends that got snowed in for 4 to 6 weeks this past winter.
Yes winter conditions are a concern. But I am sure that chains would work on small vehicles just as well as they do on large ones. And yes the batteries in these vehicles would have to last in winter conditions, and these vehicles could be made more comfortable for winter riding. But people do go out on snow-mobiles! Also, EVT also happens to be a Canadian company!
Interesting. Living in Florida I never thought about the problems of using a 2-wheeler in the Winter. Should be no problem until it snows. I own an Ego (see egovehicles.com) and have been quite impressed with its abilities to get me around. Much faster than an electric bike, but you don't get any exercise. Many times it is faster than taking the car for short trips. Once the price of the new li-ion batteries comes down to reasonable they will be great short hop transportation (up to 30 miles round trip at 25 mph). No gas, insurance, noise, fumes and can go on the street or sidewalk.
We are a 2 person, 2 veh. household in Ontario. As with "Coffee17" we have an Echo (4 door 2002 with automatic) and get similar performance to him. My wife does a 4 day a week cross town work commute with it for $10 CDN a week (2 bus tickets would cost her $4.50 for 1 day of transit use for the same trip) reg gas selling here today for $1.04 CDN / liter. We paid $15,000 for the car, tax in, 1 year used with 19,000 km on the odometer
I drive a 250cc scooter (Honda Big Ruckus) I feed it 89 octane (1 up from regular) since it has a 10.25 /1 compression ratio and I get a little knock on steep hills on regular. This juice sells today for $1.10 CDN / L
I just did 475 km of highway driving over 3 days with a passenger riding all the time for $21 in fuel. Top speed is 115 km/hr which is as fast as I need to go IMO.
I won't say we don't care at all about gas price rises, but I think we are far from feeling a pinch considering our use pattern.
GLOBAL GREEN USA AND BRAD PITT ANNOUNCE FINAL DETAILS OF DESIGN COMPETITION IN NEW ORLEANS; PITT TO SPONSOR AND LEAD DESIGN JURY
SUSTAINABLE DESIGN COMPETITION TO ACT AS CATALYST FOR GREEN, HEALTHY DESIGN AND REBUILDING OF NEW ORLEANS
UPDATE:OVER 2900 PRE-REGISTRATIONS RECEIVED
NEW ORLEANS , LA, MAY 24, 2006 - Global Green USA and design jury chairman Brad Pitt announced today the final details for The Sustainable Design Competition for New Orleans. The historic Holy Cross Neighborhood in the Lower Ninth Ward is the focus of Stage 1 of the competition. Global Green and Pitt announced on April 20 th they are teaming up to sponsor the competition to provide an opportunity for talented architects, urban planners, designers, ecologists and students to put forward a creative yet practical vision for New Orleans http://www.globalgreen.org/press/releases/2006_05_24_orleans.htm
I agree though, if you can use a smaller car, there's no reason to pay the hybrid premium. Go even smaller and save more, with a Chevy Aveo, Honda Fitt, Toyota Yaris, or Scion xA.
According to the EPA's shared (real-world) mileage database, the Yaris does the best with 37.7 mpg:
http://www.fueleconomy.gov/mpg/MPG.do?action=browseList
The only regret I have with my car is it's a fucking sedan. I really wanted a hatchback, but I was on a time/price crunch and couldn't find any used hatchbacks in my area. There's been a few times where I've had trouble fitting large irregularly shaped objects into the back.
How much does a liter cost you?
Onto a more general question. If the US were to overhaul its existing fleet of cars and trucks,(hypothetically of course) and convert to hybrids, how much would this affect the cost per liter and do we have the resources to allow such a shift?
You say "do we have resources" when it's pretty clear we overspend. Do we have resources for a new line of Chrysler Hemis? Apparently so.
Sorry for not being clear enough. What I meant by resources is the electricty used to charge the battery.
But to figure it, we'd need to know:
- adoption rate
- charge capacity
then we could calc out how many MW would need to be available each year.A lot depentptn how battery tech evolves in the next few years though.
"The construction of an average car consumes the energy equivalent of approximately 20 barrels of oil, which equates to 840 gallons, of oil. Ultimately, the construction of a car will consume an amount of fossil fuels equivalent to twice the car's final weight."
So, to replace the 225 million or so automobiles in the U.S., it would require approximately 225M*20bbl = 4.5 billion barrels of oil to replace all the existing cars, or about a half-year's-worth of consumption in the U.S.
Of course, to replace all the cars in the world, it would take even more oil...
And I'm sure I'm missing some energy inputs in this calculation.
At $20,000 a piece, all these new cars would cost people in the US about $4.5 trillion. I'm sure the auto manufacturers would be into this plan...
Those hybrid critics stacked the deck. They claimed, quite arbitrarily I thought, that a "car" lasts 100,000 miles while a "truck" lasts 250,000 miles. Those convenient assumptions lead to calculations showing a lower per-mile energy costs for a Hummer H3 than for a Toyota Prius.
Someone happened to report the real numbers:
To name just one other funny numeric business:
So, you've got a few hundred million conventional cars on the road, their R&D all amortized ... what happens when you force an R&D accounting on any new technology? Fewer units to divide by, and higher "costs" ... even if they'd really be paid over time by higher production.
If we weren't avoiding bad words today ....
So the 4% is good news and bad news. It makes "electric cars" (as some fraction of the replacement fleet) more possible, but it also makes them one of the "silver bbs" and not the "silver bullet"
Does this mean cars on U.S. roads average 25 years before going to the great death assembleges of vehicles known as junkyards?
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2006/02/us_vehicle_flee.html
Given how I like to affect an Aussie accent, I liked this variation of the old ValuJet joke:
Q: "A ValuJet plane tried to make a mission to Sydney (Australia) but they missed! What did one croc say to the other?"
A: "Put another Yank on the barbie, mate!"
I do know that the older a car is, the fewer miles it is driven. There is an inverse age/VMT correlation. I suppose old cars tend to sit there in a multi-car family, or in the garage of retirees. They become the "extra cars" but aren't scrapped as long as they keep up registration.
My recollection of the '70s is that the number of passengers per vehicle increased with more carpooling, ride sharing and hitchiking. However, my perspective could be warped by the fact that I was a student throughout that period.
Seriously, though, a medium-sized SUV usually sits 4 comfortably. With one person driving, the vehicle may get something like 18 mpg and 18 passenger mpg. Put 4 people in the vehicle, and you have 72 passenger mpg or about the same as two people each driving his or her own Corolla.
If we couls utilize our present SUV and mini-van fleet similarly, we'd save quite a bit of embodied energy. However, I think that gasoline prices would have to go much higher before too many folks would be all that interested.
That part of the Matt Savinars representation of PO I found a little bit biased.
During the last 10 years, a number of Life cycle analysis (LCA)"cradle to grave" have been made on different aspects on transport. The best of these take into account most of the objections I have seen on the Drum. So no need to guess- but rather critizise.
One of the better LCA's is this , made by the VW. It is in german- but the numbers are self explaining.
http://www.volkswagen-umwelt.de/_download/sachbilanz_golf_a4_deutsch.pdf
The Functional unit (the is 1 car driven 150.000 km (93.300 miles) The Primary energy ( energy at the source- oil well, coal mine, iron extraction- including end- of life- that is scrapping and recycling)- cost for 150.000 km is between 70 to 150 MWh. This value is cradle to grave- that is raw material extractiuon and production, production of the vehicle, use + maintenance of the vehichle 150.000 km and scrapping and recycling. As a rule of thumb 1 kilo car cost presently 4 kilo +/- 0.5 kilo oil to produce.
What you do is you pass needed laws that both allow for suicide facilitation and allowing suicide kits to be sold in drugstores. That way, as people finally give up during the "powerdown" they have an "out". If Cuba means anything, a powerdown will be nasty at best. North Korea is a powerdown at an approximate worst.
Of course, you want to discourage childbirth. Any powerdown scenario is going to be some ugly stuff.
No need to kill off billions--though Malthus was right, in the long run.
But wait a minute . . . in the long run, we're all dead, as John Maynard Keynes pointed out.
Note that the Roman Empire did not fall due to overpopulation--just the reverse!
Spending more on electrified rail systems, and urbane, mixed-use neighborhoods around rail stations, could eliminate the need for a lot of replacement cars in metropolitan areas -- and preserve a lot of greenbelt land that we will need for local food production.
Car-sharing is another option that is finally catching on in US cities. It is a membership service, where one can use a car from a nearby "pod" and pay only for the miles you drive. Each car serves a lot more people, and our local nonprofit car share organization found that a third of their members' households get rid of a car -- sometimes their only car, and sometimes an infrequently-used second car. Car share organizations also have pickup trucks and vans in the fleet, so folks who can usually get by with a small car but occasionally need to haul something big can use the larger vehicle only when they need the extra capacity.
I know, I know -- alternatives like these won't work for everyone or in every setting, but as we accelerate into peak oil and global climate change, we need to simultaneously embrace a broad range of effective strategies for sustainability.
Well said. These alternatives transport methods will obviously help, but the headwinds created by the desire of personal convenience and time savings of one-two person transport will oppose this shift. To what degree is hard to determine as fuel prices increase, but I expect to see an future explosion of bicycles, scooters, street-legalized quad ATVs, and motorcyles in places of urban sprawl [like my Asphalt Wonderland].
I have posted before about keeping your used pickup or SUV for the occasional hauling of large loads or 3 or more people [or when the weather is simply atrocious], but buying a used small scooter/ATV for one-two person commutes or errands. Bicycles best of all, of course. I presently feel this is the most cost-effective way to be prepared if gasoline suddenly spikes out of sight.
My eleven year old pickup is only worth maybe $2000-2500, but only has 115,000 miles on it-- many years of life left on it. My recently bought used 2004 scooter: only 1600 miles [yes, only sixteen hundred!]-- estimated lifetime virtually unlimited until gas prices rise so high that some punk shoots me while I wait at an intersection to then steal my little scoot.
As a plus, sparetime hauling stuff for cash has easily paid for all the pickup's running expenses, and provided me with beer money. A lot of people would rather pay someone than rent a U-Haul pickup to do it themselves. Phx has a lot of 'bling-bling' pickups and SUVs with very expensive aftermarket accessories; I call them an ornate 'chrome penis'-- the last thing they want to do is fill the storage area with manure or crushed desert rocks for landscaping.
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
That might be true in many places where it doesn't snow but that is only a small portion of the US. Not only do I have to often put chains on all the wheels of my (small) 4x4 truck but we still do get snowed in for a few days and up to a couple of weeks every year. We had friends that got snowed in for 4 to 6 weeks this past winter.
Todd
I've been tracking my mileage, and generally get 5L/100KM... or about 54-55MPG.
I'm on holidays now... so we've been city driving... but I haven't filled my tank yet in the past 3 weeks, so I don't know my mileage yet. ;+)
gas is 113.9c/L here in my neck-o-the-woods (about $US3.50/Gal) Port Alberni, BC... on Vancouver Island
I drive a 250cc scooter (Honda Big Ruckus) I feed it 89 octane (1 up from regular) since it has a 10.25 /1 compression ratio and I get a little knock on steep hills on regular. This juice sells today for $1.10 CDN / L
I just did 475 km of highway driving over 3 days with a passenger riding all the time for $21 in fuel. Top speed is 115 km/hr which is as fast as I need to go IMO.
I won't say we don't care at all about gas price rises, but I think we are far from feeling a pinch considering our use pattern.
Does C$10/week include depreciation and wear and tear on your car ? Could you get lower insurance if you drove less (I do) ?
Would your bus costs be less with a monthly pass ?
Please consider using the bus "occasionally". Increased demand will ensure that the service is there when you need it.
Think "Islamic Republic of Arabia", among other future possibilities.
SUSTAINABLE DESIGN COMPETITION TO ACT AS CATALYST FOR GREEN, HEALTHY DESIGN AND REBUILDING OF NEW ORLEANS
UPDATE:OVER 2900 PRE-REGISTRATIONS RECEIVED
NEW ORLEANS , LA, MAY 24, 2006 - Global Green USA and design jury chairman Brad Pitt announced today the final details for The Sustainable Design Competition for New Orleans. The historic Holy Cross Neighborhood in the Lower Ninth Ward is the focus of Stage 1 of the competition. Global Green and Pitt announced on April 20 th they are teaming up to sponsor the competition to provide an opportunity for talented architects, urban planners, designers, ecologists and students to put forward a creative yet practical vision for New Orleans
http://www.globalgreen.org/press/releases/2006_05_24_orleans.htm