And when someone decides to skip a stop street and ride into you? At least with a car you have a body of metal around you to absorb most of the shock
My train has more body than your car
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Hybrid cars
- Thread starter dextertangocci
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My train has more body than your car
And yet the EPA is perfectly happy for a medium sized car to do 19mpg at 55mph. Seems to me the EPA is almost entirely dedicated to making sure the embarrassment that is the US auto-industry doesn't get shown up for what it is - lazy, out dated and frankly, criminally inept.
For marketing
Hydrogen (via combustion or fuel cells ) are the way forward. Highly efficient diesels are the stop gap until then.
FWIW - I quite liked my 19mpg tank that the rental firm gave me. It wasn't too scary thru NYC, and it was great up the freeway to Kingston. It was a bit wobbly thru the stunning driving roads of Catskill, but overall - I liked it. I just would have liked it 10x as much with, say, the V6 turbo diesel that Audi do. It would have returned more than double the MPG, and been more powerful.
Doug
And, with current diesel technology, there is a strong correlation between NOx levels and mileage. Generally, lower NOx levels makes for lower mileage.
The diesel emissions standards in the US will be getting much more strict in 2010 as well. So much so that CAT has announced that they are pulling out of the on-road diesel market in the US in 2010.
To make matters worse, there in less energy in Ultra Low Sulphur Diesel(15PPM) than there was in Low Sulphur Diesel(500 PPM, I think). ULSD in required in all '07 and newer US diesel engines.
Bully for you. As was mentioned in the second post in this thread, we can't buy that BMW in America. Why not? I have no idea. I would gladly buy a non-hybrid if it offered the same combination of space, comfort, and mileage as a Prius. But right now, I can't. So that's why I have a Prius.
I did a little more research on "carbon footprints" and found that most "carbon footprint" articles are actually discussing how much money you might save on gas. That's a very different thing, because it depends completely on the gas prices. A lot of the articles claiming Priuses aren't worth it were written in 2006-07, when gas was $2.50 a gallon. Now that it's $4.30, a Prius looks like a much better deal.
The real "carbon footprint" of a car is how much ENERGY it uses, not how much it costs to fill up the tank. By that measure, the Prius is the clear winner among cars available in America.
What's more, while you might be able to get better mileage in a Diesel, the trade-off is more pollution. Isn't that supposed to be what we're trying to avoid here?
The real "carbon footprint" of a car is how much ENERGY it uses, not how much it costs to fill up the tank. By that measure, the Prius is the clear winner among cars available in America.
What's more, while you might be able to get better mileage in a Diesel, the trade-off is more pollution. Isn't that supposed to be what we're trying to avoid here?
And how much energy it takes to manufacture and deliver to the customer as well as to scrap/recycle at then end of it's useful life. Also the energy cost of replacement parts during it's useful life. And then you have to factor in it's useful life: a car that takes twice as much energy to make, but lasts 3 times as long will be ahead on that score. The Prius falls very far behind on all these counts.
Edit: the article you linked to claims to cover some of this. It does claim both cars will last as long. This remains to be seen. It also ignores shipping. Buying a locally made car is going to save a load of energy. And whilst the nickel in batteries is no where near as bad as some claim to sidestep it totally is wrong: there is a definite environmental cost to it.
The BMW in The Times article I linked to has a particulate filter that actually reduced the pollution compared to a normal diesel. It's a very clean car...
But your battery's equal's more pollution, besides diesel can run on just about anything. Let's see diesel, propane, jet fuel, kerosene, cooking oil, and who knows what else.
Used cooking grease, and bio diesel.
And it STILL delivers 50mpg with a full-sized washing machine in the back and me driving like an @$$.
Oh yeah, I <3 my 02 Golf TDI.
And it STILL delivers 50mpg with a full-sized washing machine in the back and me driving like an @$$.
Oh yeah, I <3 my 02 Golf TDI.
See this article for a thorough debunking of the battery=pollution argument. Most of that pollution occurred over 30 years ago. Now Nickel mining is becoming much cleaner.
... and how much pollution does *that* cause?
These new diesels run far cleaner than you likely know. Lets pretend they are "dirty" - they still have about half the C02 emissions of a gasser gallon for gallon - and they use about HALF as much fuel to accomplish the equivalent work.
In Massachusetts - they didn't even test my TDI - because the emissions were so low - that their CARB emissions equipment can't even accurately register. (so I got a sticker w/o getting any dyno/monitoring equipment at all)
For better info I can provide myself: http://tdiclub.com/TDIFAQ/TDiFAQ-5.html
In Massachusetts - they didn't even test my TDI - because the emissions were so low - that their CARB emissions equipment can't even accurately register. (so I got a sticker w/o getting any dyno/monitoring equipment at all)
For better info I can provide myself: http://tdiclub.com/TDIFAQ/TDiFAQ-5.html
A couple of things:
1) Japanese companies are working on a modern version of exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) that will reduce diesel exhaust emissions with less need to use an expensive selective catalyst reduction (SCR) system such as urea gas injection or Honda's electrically reactive catalyst to reduce NOx gases to simple NO2, which is easy to remove with conventional catalytic converters. This may pave the way for easier compliance with standards as stringent as EPA Tier 2 Bin 4, the proposed 2010 standard for on-road diesel engines
2) The new EPA standard actually is essentially forcing all commercial diesel engines to meet at least the EPA Tier 2 standard for industrial diesel engines (heavy trucks, diesel-electric locomotives, power generators and marine engines). Fortunately, there has been a lot of work on exhaust emission control retrofits, and Union Pacific Railroad recently demonstrated an exhaust emission control system that can be retrofitted to older locomotives at around US$22,000 per locomotive, cheap compared having to buy an all-new Tier 2-compliant locmotive at around US$1 million per locomotive.
I have a friend who bought a hybrid Civic. Gets him about 42mpg. He loves it, but then, he's not very good at math. The hybrid civic is about $4-5k more than the standard version. So based on the mpg difference, it will take about 3 years for him to get his money back on fuel savings. And that's just based on straight cost. He financed it, so it will probably be more like 4-5 years. Then a couple years after that, he'll have to replace the battery. Anyone know how much they cost? I've heard over $5k, but I'm not positive on that.
So his hybrid Civic really isn't going to save him much money at all.
So his hybrid Civic really isn't going to save him much money at all.
This site has a pretty good comparison of the two, suggesting that over five years the hybrid is cheaper: $273 a month versus $303 a month for standard. This was based on $3 a gallon gas, so assuming gas stays at $4 per gallon, your friend will save more -- about $600 more. If the price of gas goes higher, your friend saves even more.
Well, first off, my friend only gets 42mpg (which has held pretty steady), and that site is basing it off 49-51mgp. It also isn't taking into account the battery replacement that will have to occur sometime beyond the 5 years.
To be fair, I didn't take into account the tax break, so there's a plus in the hybrid's favor.
If your friend only gets 42 MPG driving a Civic Hybrid, he's probably not going to get the EPA estimated 29 combined MPG driving the standard Civic.
Also the site comparison is for just five years -- the money's already in the bank at that point even if the battery has to be replaced.
As for the battery replacement concerns, consider this:
