Awkward questions about hybrid cars
Hybrid cars are being toted as the savior of the transportation industry in the US but there are a number of issues that The Dappled Planet feels are not being as people rush to bang the drum of converting to hybrid cars. So before you rush out and try to buy one of these cars, can someone please answer these questions????
Where are they?
America apparently churned out 5.5 million cars/year in 1998, Japan churned out 8 million cars and Germany 5.3 million cars. Numbers might have increased slightly in Japan and decreased in the US (at least, according to all those people who have been laid off near Detroit) so lets say a cosy 20 million cars are being produced a year. That means it would take 30 years to replace all the ‘old cars’ on the road!
True, you can argue production is ramping up in China and India, but even so, is it likely manufacturers globally will exceed 50 million cars a year (which would bring the replacement time down to 6 years). But… That would only be assuming tomorrow, every car manufacturer in the world switched to producing hybrid-only cars - anyone see that happening?
In actuality, ever since the Toyota Pruis grabbed celebrity Hollywood’s attention and hybrid cars became a recognised ‘name,’ it had only produced a million cars by May 2008 and in March this year, announced it was planning to ramp up production of the Prius to 1 million cars/year in the next 2-3 years!!! 1 million cars per year??? That’s not much when there are 600 million cars needing to be ‘replaced!’
(Editors note: Computer crashed… Can’t find Toyota Press Release 2nd time around - so not sure if this figure is US only or global).
So the reality is, the ordinary pre-hybrid car is around for quite a while, even with other manufacturers (Honda… Ford… Chevrolet…) also starting - starting - to introduce hybrid cars.It’s going to be a long time before they usurp the ordinary car - both on the road and in production!
Recyling At present, there are 600 million cars on the road (and probably a whole lot more rotting by roadsides and in scrapyards etc…). If we were to all jump on the US publicity bandwagon and blindly dash out and buy a hybrid car, where are we going to put all those old nasty, CO2-emitting cars? Larger scrapyards??? Big holes in the ground? Will efforts be made to recycle the steel, electrical and battery components (yes, even the petrol-driven cars have a battery in them to get them going…)? If we dig pits and bury them, what about chemicals etc leaking out of them and leaking into our water supply as they decay? Does that not make finding a burial place for ‘old’ cars the same exercise as carbon sequestrian and nuclear waste? If nothing else, there is a budding entreprenuerial opportunity here for someone to offer to recycle cars - for a price!
Affordability On average, fuel efficient cars cost about $10,000 more than the average car. The average compact car in the US costs about $15,000. The average Toyota Prius Hybrid costs around $45,000. You can easily add another $10,000 for all the other fuel (and carbon) efficient European models for sale in Europe. The average person in Asia makes, well, a whole lot less! Can the afford these hybrids???
So, even if everyone in the developed world was able to obtain a hybrid car, it will be a lot longer before people in the developing world will be available to afford these cars. Also, sadly, this pushes the bar that little bit higher as they struggle to gain a comfotable existance.
Footprint Most interestingly… It turns out it takes a lot of unsual metals and thus more energy to make the hybrid cars, and the net result is by the time you ‘pay off’ all the fossil fuel used to make these cars, you might be better off buying a 2nd hand car or even the Californian arch-enemy, the Hummer! So the fuel efficiency may dazzle you in a hybrid car (after you paid $10,000 more for a mid-sized car) but for the first 100,000km, you will be still paying back the extra damage you did to the environment and energy consumed making the vehicle…
Upgrading Does anyone aside from us get the impression if you just wait for the next model car, it will have even better technology and be even more fuel efficient? Does this sound familiar??? Let’s see… Oh yes! Computers! Goodness, how tiring to have another product thrust upon which costs us a years wages and will be even bigger and better in 6 months or 2 years time!
Worse… We can sense a ‘beta vs VHS war looming.’ The hybrid technology still uses petrol at the end of the day and at the same end of the day, the world is running out of petrol. Cars need to be developed which do NOT run on petrol and they are being developed as we speak. So by the time your hybrid car reaches the end of its life in (say) 7 years time (or when you are up for some very expensive new batteries!), the odds are there will be cars out there with far superiour fuel efficiency, maybe using a different technology and no one will want your pathetic 45mpg car (See Tata motors and their 100mpg car)?
Let’s hope this does not lead to a similar situation with garbage dumps filling up with cars leaking lethal chemicals in much the same way no one knows what to do with an old computer… (see recycling above)!
About those old cars… Turns out some people are rather partial to their classic old cars… They’d love to be able to convert it to something more fuel efficient. But at present, just converting it to a hybrid will cost $7,000 and probably only improve efficiency by 3mpg. At that saving, it would take about 7 years to pay off your $7,000 investment.
Other companies are starting to come out of the woodwork and say in the future they may have the technology to convert your car to something fuel efficient - but its still a few years off. And if that technology comes at a price beyond the salary of the average Asian or African taxi driver, We’d say its going to be a difficult sell globally. It could be very lucrative though if the option was to sell wide and charge low, as opposed to charge high and sell small…. Not a business model that seems to be in favour right now though!
Energy source And lets not forget that to plug in and charge a car battery merely defers the point source of the energy, and if the energy coming out of your power plug originated in a coal power plant, then you haven’t really cut your CO2 emissions - you just don’t have it coming out of the exhaust pipe on your car anymore -it’s coming out of a power station stack some distance elsewhere….
This is just the result of a first pass on ruminating on the hybrid cars. We’re not against them and also love the fact you can get 45mpg (but feel like holding off until the India’s Tata Motors comes out with its 100mpg car in 2010…).
So do you feel the pressure to go out and buy a hybrid car? And if so, do some of the points raised in this article give you pause to think? We’d be intrigued to hear of other people’s thoughts about hybrid cars!
