Yahoo Tuning Groups Ultimate Backup metatuning Prius damages environment more than Hummer

From one of the Prius forums, posted by Bob Wilson:

--------------------------------
I sent the following:
Originally Posted by bwilson4web
Dear Editor,

Chris Demorro's opinion piece, "Prius Outdoes Hummer in Environmental
Damage" suffers from a lack of fact checking. He claims ". . . their
ultimate 'green car' is the source of some of the worst pollution in
North America" copied from a flawed _Daily_ _Mail_ article without at
least fact checking the environmental record of the Inco Sudbury
Canadian plant, http://wwww.inco-sudbury-airquality.com/.

Frank Javor, Superintendent, Health and Environment, CVRD Inco
Smelting Operations e-mailed their annual emissions data going back to
1974, 23 years before Toyota sold their first Prius. Since then, INCO
has made a 90% reduction in SO(2) and INCO emissions continue to go down.

Chris failed to check the amount of nickel used in hybrid batteries,
about 200 pounds per vehicle or 30 million pounds for 150,000 existing
Prius versus the annual Canadian nickel output, over 380 million
pounds. Nickel production is driven by the vastly larger market for
stainless steel and other high temperature metals.

Failure to fact check is compounded when the flawed CNW Marketing
report is cited while the "Institute for Lifecycle Environmental
Assessment", http://www.ilea.org/lcas/macleanlave1998.html, from
Carnegie Mellon University, reports 73% of the energy used comes from
operation, not manufacturing. Only CNW Marketing makes this false
claim and compounds the error by using dollars instead of Joules, an
energy unit. Those who have read the CNW Marketing report can confirm
a large number of false claims including assignment of shorter vehicle
lifetimes to hybrids, excessively development costs, false recycling
claims, and a claim that hybrids are "a style.' This last lie suggests
that if someone had a gas-only Camry and a hybrid Camry, they would
drive the gas Camry even with $3/gal gas because the hybrid is "a style."

An opinion piece that states the opposite of the facts and data is
deliberately misleading to the point of propaganda. Hybrids aren't for
everyone but in this case, Chris failed to fact check and at best, his
piece was misleading.

Robert J. Wilson
Sr. Network Engineer
9011 Randall Road
Huntsville, AL 35802

[end of rebuttal to editorial]

I received a note from Chris and he plans to go back and do some fact
checking. I forwarded the e-mail from Frank to Chris with the PDF
attachment showing annual INCO emissions. I also pointed out that I'd
over estimated the likely nickel content of a Prius battery and that
would further reduce the percentage of nickel used. Finally, I gave
him the contact information for Toyota North America, Inc. in New York
City so he could ask for official numbers and facts and data.

He is a student writing for a student newspaper. I'm treating this as
just another learning exercise . . . an introduction to 'real life.'
The real fault lies with his sources:

* A Daily Mail article - already sent a letter to their editor
* CNW Marketing's trash report - already sent them e-mail rebuttal

Today, I simply look for such nonsense to show up and with the facts
and data, contact the editorial board with a "letter to the editor."
My goal is to get everyone back to the facts and data. BTW, I don't
bother with anti-hybrid sites or forums . . . 'teaching a pig to sing.'

Bob Wilson
--------------

🔗Carl Lumma <clumma@...>

> Chris failed to check the amount of nickel used in hybrid
> batteries, about 200 pounds per vehicle or 30 million pounds
> for 150,000 existing Prius versus the annual Canadian nickel
> output, over 380 million pounds. Nickel production is driven
> by the vastly larger market for stainless steel and other
> high temperature metals.

That's probably true -- I didn't buy the Ni part of the story.
A friend of mine actually grew up near the Ontario plant, and
he says NASA used to test there because there's a huge meteor
impact site nearby.

> the flawed CNW Marketing
> report is cited while the "Institute for Lifecycle Environmental
> Assessment", http://www.ilea.org/lcas/macleanlave1998.html, from
> Carnegie Mellon University, reports 73% of the energy used comes
> from operation, not manufacturing.

I would have expected even more than 73%.

> Only CNW Marketing makes this false claim and compounds the
> error by using dollars instead of Joules, an energy unit.

I assumed they were converting to dollars at some constant
rate, like $0.10/KWhr.

> Those who have read the CNW Marketing report can confirm
> a large number of false claims

I tried to obtain the report, but unfortunately it costs
money.

> including assignment of shorter vehicle lifetimes to hybrids,

They're quite up-front about this. And the lifetime of
hybrids is almost certainly much shorter than that of
conventional automobiles. Jon, do you know if there's a
procedure in place to replace Prius batteries?

> excessively development costs,

Such as?

> false recycling claims,

Such as?

> and a claim that hybrids are "a style.' This last lie
> suggests

Lie?

-Carl

🔗Kraig Grady <kraiggrady@...>

there is a procedure but i understand that replacement batteries are quite high in price.

i have a friend who got one of the first ones and she tells me the mileage is not as good as when she first got it. maybe about 20% less.
she is still very happy with it
i love riding in it. they haul!
somehow when ever i see a hummer the word bazooka comes to mind!
maybe if this war continues, and it will, our bankrupt government will impound them all and ship them over there, including our governor (former venice slumlord with the elfman [yes as in danny] brothers BTW)

Carl Lumma wrote:
>
>
> They're quite up-front about this. And the lifetime of
> hybrids is almost certainly much shorter than that of
> conventional automobiles. Jon, do you know if there's a
> procedure in place to replace Prius batteries?
>
> >
>
> -- Kraig Grady
North American Embassy of Anaphoria Island <http://anaphoria.com/index.html>
The Wandering Medicine Show
KXLU <http://www.kxlu.com/main/index.asp> 88.9 FM Wed 8-9 pm Los Angeles

🔗Carl Lumma <clumma@...>

> > including assignment of shorter vehicle lifetimes to hybrids,
>
> They're quite up-front about this. And the lifetime of
> hybrids is almost certainly much shorter than that of
> conventional automobiles. Jon, do you know if there's a
> procedure in place to replace Prius batteries?

Finally found their report (one version, at least). They
don't disclose their exact method for determining the use
periods, saying only that it's based on industry averages
and "CNW estimates".
Further, it looks like they're going into some weird
details like demographics and characteristic driving habits,
which may reflect the average life of these vehicles,
but which aren't much good for informing individual buying
decisions.

-Carl

Prius damages environment more than Hummer

🔗Carl Lumma <clumma@...>

🔗Rozencrantz the Sane <rozencrantz@...>

🔗Jon Szanto <jszanto@...>

🔗Carl Lumma <clumma@...>

🔗Kraig Grady <kraiggrady@...>

🔗Carl Lumma <clumma@...>