Week 11 (Blog)

Here's an interesting subject... (along the lines of several of my other posts, sorry)

April 16, 2006

A Little More Rain on the Hybrid Parade

Seems like others are starting to figure out what I pointed out last year (A Little Rain on the Prius Parade look down), that hybrids aren't necessarily all they're cracked up to be...

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/16/opinion/16kitman.html Below

J.S.

Wednesday, May 04, 2005

A Little Rain on the Prius Parade

As an ardent environmentalist, it may surprise you that I am not entirely sold on the hybrid revolution that has been initiated by the wildly popular Toyota Prius. Before I explain why, let me be clear that I think the Prius is a great car and there are many reasons to buy it independent of its fuel efficiency (e.g. it’s very quiet, it drives well, and who can’t appreciate the button instead of the key ignition?). The fact that the Prius is now somewhat of a status symbol while sales of Hummers have dropped precipitously is an unambiguously great thing.

The Prius (and other recent hybrids) are being touted as extremely fuel efficient and therefore, as an effective means of decreasing our dependence on oil and our CO2 emissions. Sales are way up and a wide variety of government-sponsored rebates for the purchase of “green” cars are currently in the works. The fact is, however, that hybrids are not really much more efficient than many conventional gas cars that have been around for decades. At this point, from a strictly environmental standpoint it’s likely that the added cost is not justified.

The Prius is listed at 60mpg city and 51mpg highway, but these numbers are for “ideal” conditions and are not realized in practice. I know two people who own a Prius and they get low 40s on the highway and mid-high 40s in the city (I’ve been told that the Honda Civics hybrids get slightly better mileage). While very good numbers, particularly when compared to SUVs, this mileage is not much better than for conventional compacts. Many Hondas and Toyotas get close to 40mpg and even a number of American brands get in the mid-30s. So for a Prius we’re only really talking about a 10-20% increase in efficiency over many other less expensive models when driving on the highway. While the city mileage is certainly better, people drive far fewer city miles, and there are many more public transportation options in cities. So the improvement in city mileage doesn’t cut into the bulk of gasoline demand, which is for highway commuting.

Let’s look at an average commuter who drives 12,000 miles per year. If we’re comparing a Honda Accord to a Prius the savings in gasoline is in the range of 30-60 gallons a year. A gallon of gasoline emits about 5-6 pounds of carbon and I’ll round that off to 10 since there’s also energy used in gasoline production. So that’s 300-600 pounds of extra carbon a year.

(Note: I am ignoring the possibility that once consumers purchase a highly fuel efficient car they may actually increase their amount of driving since it has now become cheaper, and therefore, cut into some of the CO2 reductions brought about by the higher mileage. Also, I am not taking into account the extra energy that goes into producing the lithium battery for the Prius and the CO2 that results.)

Now the question is: With the sticker price of a Prius roughly $4,000 more than a standard Accord with similar features is this a good deal for 600 pounds less carbon? (I’ll go with the high number)

(Note: while hybrid owners save money in gas they also have to pay a lot for battery replacements so I’m going to assume these costs and benefits cancel each other out.)

The way to answer this question is to determine how much it would cost to decrease CO2 emissions by an equivalent amount in some other fashion. One excellent way to accomplish this is by planting trees. Although estimating the precise amount of CO2 sequestration from trees is extremely complex, the amount of trees needed to annually absorb 600 pounds of carbon is very small; a tiny fraction of an acre.

So here’s my conclusion: If decreasing CO2 in the atmosphere is your primary motive it’s much more efficient to forego the Prius (and buy an Accord, Civic, or Corolla- perhaps even a used one) and spend the extra money on tree planting and the general preservation of open space.

This takes us to a general point on the issue of CO2 emissions that seems to have gotten lost in the larger debate these days. With such a focus on hybrids and the complete lack of political will to increase mileage standards (which is the most important thing we should be doing on this front) the role of forests in carbon sequestration is no longer at the forefront in the public’s consciousness (when was last time we heard about preserving the Amazon Rainforest?). This is unfortunate because not only do forests and open space decrease CO2 in the atmosphere, but they also provide a host of other environmental benefits (such as biodiversity preservation and watershed protection), and payment for these services can be an excellent way to help the poor in developing countries (although of course we can also plant trees here as well). Some amount of global warming is now inevitable and many species are going to need large areas to roam in order to adapt to the shifting climate; therefore, habitat preservation and expansion should be a top priority. what would this policy look like?? Instead of extra highways and wider streets, more parks and landscaping in our cities... Sounds rather nice to me...

In addition, there are literally dozens of home energy conservation options (retrofitting windows, purchasing more efficient appliances, better insulation) that would cut down CO2 by as much as driving hybrids for a fraction of the cost. Unfortunately, much of the resistance to implementing these commonsense and relatively simple fixes is due to the shortcomings of human psychology; it’s much more sexy and feels more substantive to buy a hybrid car than to make basic home improvements. I like this option because it doesn't make me feel like a dick for not being able to sell my car and purchase a new one.

None of this is to suggest that fuel efficiency and hybrid technology are not important; they are. People who are investing now in hybrid cars are fueling the demand, which will hopefully lead to successive generations of new technology that will have much higher mileage, perhaps even approaching 100mpg. When this happens hybrid cars will clearly be worth the added cost on every dimension. In the meantime, I recognize that what’s optimum from an economic standpoint is not always what’s politically or socially most practical; consumer trends and human psychology are powerful forces. That said, I think the money being spent on consumer rebates for hybrids would be better spent on direct public investments in R&D for hybrid technology, the protection and expansion of the world’s forests and critical habitats, and paying people to make energy conserving home improvements. Here's some room for improvement: hybrid SUVs that get lower mpg than my mom's forester... Can we say "pointless?" I think we can!! Any company that is proud of the fact that it has made a hybrid with an mpg of 12 needs to have a long think about the purpose of hybrids. As for a vehicle with an mpg approaching 100, check out this baby: 157 mpg and still achieves 0-63 in 20 seconds... Yes, it utilizes diesel fuel which is dirtier than gasoline fuel, but look at how little of it you would use... Break it down by looking at my truck and my normal driving activities... My truck gets 23 mpg, I get just about 320 miles. If my truck got 157 mpg, that means I could go almost 2200 miles on one fill up... I consider my family to be light drivers... We drive about 300 miles in a typical month, which means we fill up once a month (14 gallons). If the truck got 157 mpg, we'd have to fill up every six months... Sure, we may drive an extra time to Louisville, but I do not think that it would significantly affect our driving frequency or distance. That's a lot of fuel saved. Therefore (to address the dirtiness issue I brought up earlier), even though the fuel used is "dirtier," I do not think that we would be polluting more based on the miles driven and amount of pollutant released. Diesel fuel would have to be a whopping six times dirtier...

J.S.

*Thanks a lot to James Manley, Duncan Callaway, and Meredith Fowlie for their insightful comments and to Molly Norton for reminding me to write about this issue.

P.S. For a really good use of hybrids check out this article on NYC taxis.

Posted 07/08/2005 @ 12:29am

Sweet Victory: NYC Makes Way for Hybrids

Frustrated by exorbitant gas prices, Kwame Corsi, a taxi driver from the Bronx, had been waiting years for the chance to drive a hybrid car. In New York, where 93 percent of the city's cabs are Crown Victorias (large Ford models that guzzle a gallon every twelve miles), drivers like Corsi often pay up to $100 dollars a day on fuel. Up until last week, New York City's Taxi and Limousine Commission had refused to grant medallions for hybrid taxis.

Now, thanks to the City Council's unanimous decision to approve the "Clean Air Taxis Act ," Corsi will get his wish and New Yorkers will literally breathe easier. New York, which was ranked by the American Lung Association as one of America's most polluted cities in 2004, suffers from the highest asthma mortality rate in the country. But under the new law, which will put hybrids on the street by this fall, the harmful emissions spewed out by New York's fleet of 13,000 cabs will be dramatically reduced. According to the Sierra Club, hybrids are particularly well-suited for New York City, because the greatest difference in emissions from hybrids comes under conditions of slow traffic and idling. Way to utilize available technologies!! This makes much more sense than commuters who buy Priuses.

"The New York yellow taxi is an American icon. What better way to showcase a great solution to our air pollution and oil dependence problems?" said Mark Izeman of the NRDC in a press release from the Coalition Advocating for Smart Transportation (CAST), a group that has been at the forefront of the fight for green cabs in New York City. Lets not get carried away, there are non-hybrid vehciles that get 36-38 mpg.

New York's high profile win is the latest in a string of victories for the "Green Fleets" movement. A few weeks ago, legislators in Charlotte, NC voted to hybridize the city's municipal fleet, and Denver, Seattle, and Madison have also made strides in converting their fleets to green.

As is increasingly the case, cities across the country are making progressive strides in the face of an obstinate administration that refuses to declare its independence from oil. It's time to tell Congress to seriously invest in a clean energy plan. Take action by supporting the Apollo Alliance and clicking here to send a letter to your Senators and Congressmen.

Life in the Green Lane

IF you make your way over to the Javits Convention Center for the New York International Automobile Show — or if you've gone to any auto show in the last year or so — you'll know that hybrid cars are the hippest automotive fashion statement to come along in years. They've become synonymous with the worthy goal of reducing gasoline consumption and dependence on foreign oil and all that this means for a better environment and more stable geopolitics.

And yet like fat-free desserts, which sound healthy but can still make you fat, the hybrid car can make people feel as if they're doing something good, even when they're doing nothing special at all. As consumers and governments at every level climb onto the hybrid bandwagon, there is the very real danger of elevating the technology at the expense of the intended outcome — saving gas.

Few things these days say "environmentally aware consumer" so loudly as the fuel-sipping Toyota Prius. With its two power sources — one a gasoline-powered internal combustion engine, the other a battery-driven electric motor — the best-selling Prius (and other hybrids sold by Honda and Ford and due soon from several other car makers) can go further on a gallon and emit fewer pollutants in around-town use than most conventional automobiles because under certain circumstances they run on battery power and consume less fuel. For this reason, federal, state and local governments have been bending over backward to encourage the sale of hybrids, with a bewildering array of tax breaks, traffic lanes and parking spaces dedicated to hybrid owners.

But just because a car has so-called hybrid technology doesn't mean it's doing more to help the environment or to reduce the country's dependence on imported oil any more than a nonhybrid car. The truth is, it depends on the hybrid and the nonhybrid cars you are comparing, as well as on how you use the vehicles. There are good hybrids and bad ones. Fuel-efficient conventional cars are often better than hybrid S.U.V.'s — just look at how many miles per gallon the vehicle gets.

Being a professional car-tester, which is to say a person who gets asked for unpaid car-buying advice practically every day, I know these distinctions have already been lost on many car buyers. And I fear they're well on their way to being lost on our governments, too.

Lately, right-minded people have been calling me and telling me they're thinking about buying the Lexus 400H, a new hybrid S.U.V. When I tell them that they'd get better mileage in some conventional S.U.V.'s, and even better mileage with a passenger car, they protest, "But it's a hybrid!" I remind them that the 21 miles per gallon I saw while driving the Lexus is not particularly brilliant, efficiency-wise — hybrid or not. Because the Lexus 400H is a relatively heavy car and because its electric motor is deployed to provide speed more than efficiency, it will never be a mileage champ.

The car that started the hybrid craze, the Toyota Prius, is lauded for squeezing 40 or more miles out of a gallon of gas, and it really can. But only when it's being driven around town, where its electric motor does its best and most active work. On a cross-country excursion in a Prius, the staff of Automobile Magazine discovered mileage plummeted on the Interstate. In fact, the car's computer, which controls the engine and the motor, allowing them to run together or separately, was programmed to direct the Prius to spend most of its highway time running on gasoline because at higher speeds the batteries quickly get exhausted. Indeed, the gasoline engine worked so hard that we calculated we might have used less fuel on our journey if we had been driving Toyota's conventionally powered, similarly sized Corolla — which costs thousands less. For the owner who does the majority of her driving on the highway, the Prius's potential for fuel economy will never be realized and its price premium never recovered.

For years, most of the world's big car makers have shied away from building hybrids because while they are technologically intriguing, they are also an inelegant engineering solution — the use of two energy sources assures extra weight, extra complexity and extra expense (as much as $6,000 more per car.) The hybrid car's electric battery packs rob space from passengers and cargo and although they can be recycled, not every owner can be counted on to do the right thing at the end of their vehicle's service life. And an unrecycled hybrid battery pack, which weighs more than 100 pounds, poses a major environmental hazard.

Just because a car has so-called hybrid technology doesn't mean it's doing more to help the environment or to reduce the country's dependence on oil.