Thread: Are electric cars green

All this talk about electric cars being so eco friendly is complete BS when you dig a little deeper or pull back the curtain on the Wizard if you will.Pollution Caused By Building a Hybrid Car

Building a hybrid car is almost exactly the same as building a conventional car, requiring high-tech and highly automated assembly lines. This type of manufacturing process requires tremendous inputs of energy, particularly the forging of materials like steel, aluminum, glass and plastic

. Interestingly, lightweight vehicles can sometimes be more energy-intensive to build

than heavier cars because lighter metals like aluminum are harder to forge than stainless steel [source: Moon]. Experts estimate that 10 to 20 percent of a vehicle's total lifetime greenhouse gas emissions are released during the manufacturing stage alone [source: California Energy Commission].

Toyota admits that the production of its lightweight Prius requires more energy and emits more carbon dioxide than the production of its gas-only models

[source: Williams]. The major reason is because hybrids like the Prius include more advanced components than a conventional car, including a second electric motor and heavy battery packs.
Batteries are an essential component of hybrids. Regenerative braking lets hybrids generate and store their own energy to power the vehicle at low speeds and while idling.

Unfortunately, both nickel-hydride batteries and the newer lithium-ion batteries rely on the mining of nickel, copper and so-called rare earth metals. The production of lithium-ion batteries account for 2 to 5 percent of total lifetime hybrid emissions and nickel-hydride batteries are responsible for higher sulfur oxide emissions, roughly 22 pounds (10 kilograms) per hybrid compared with 2.2 pounds (about 1 kilogram) for a conventional vehicle

[sources: Samaras and Burnham et al].
There are additional environmental concerns related to those rare earth metals, like those used in the magnets of hybrid batteries.

In recent years, rare earth metals like lithium have been imported almost exclusively from China, which was able to lower its prices enough to monopolize the industry [source: Strickland]. One of the reasons China could sell lithium so cheaply was because it widely ignored environmental safeguards during the mining process.

In the Bayan Obo region of China, for example, miners removed topsoil and extracted the gold-flecked metals using acids that entered the groundwater, destroying nearby agricultural land. Even the normally tight-lipped Chinese government admitted that rare earth mining has been abused in some places. A regulator at the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology in China went so far as to tell The New York Times, "

This has caused great harm to the ecology and environment"

HowStuffWorks "Pollution Caused By Building a Hybrid Car"


The Toyota Prius has become the flagship car for those in our society so environmentally conscious that they are willing to spend a premium to show the world how much they care. Unfortunately for them, their ultimate ‘green car’ is the source of some of the worst pollution in North America; it takes more combined energy per Prius to produce than a Hummer.
Before we delve into the seedy underworld of hybrids, you must first understand how a hybrid works. For this, we will use the most popular hybrid on the market, the Toyota Prius.

The Prius is powered by not one, but two engines: a standard 76 horsepower, 1.5-liter gas engine found in most cars today and a battery- powered engine that deals out 67 horsepower and a whooping 295ft/lbs of torque, below 2000 revolutions per minute. Essentially, the Toyota Synergy Drive system, as it is so called, propels the car from a dead stop to up to 30mph. This is where the largest percent of gas is consumed. As any physics major can tell you, it takes more energy to get an object moving than to keep it moving. The battery is recharged through the braking system, as well as when the gasoline engine takes over anywhere north of 30mph. It seems like a great energy efficient and environmentally sound car, right?

You would be right if you went by the old government EPA estimates, which netted the Prius an incredible 60 miles per gallon in the city and 51 miles per gallon on the highway. Unfortunately for Toyota, the government realized how unrealistic their EPA tests were, which consisted of highway speeds limited to 55mph and acceleration of only 3.3 mph per second. The new tests which affect all 2008 models give a much more realistic rating with highway speeds of 80mph and acceleration of 8mph per second. This has dropped the Prius’s EPA down by 25 percent to an average of 45mpg. This now puts the Toyota within spitting distance of cars like the Chevy Aveo, which costs less then half what the Prius costs.

However, if that was the only issue with the Prius, I wouldn’t be writing this article. It gets much worse.

Building a Toyota Prius causes more environmental damage than a Hummer that is on the road for three times longer than a Prius. As already noted, the Prius is partly driven by a battery which contains nickel. The nickel is mined and smelted at a plant in Sudbury, Ontario. This plant has caused so much environmental damage to the surrounding environment that NASA has used the ‘dead zone’ around the plant to test moon rovers. The area around the plant is devoid of any life for miles.

The plant is the source of all the nickel found in a Prius’ battery and Toyota purchases 1,000 tons annually. Dubbed the Superstack, the plague-factory has spread sulfur dioxide across northern Ontario, becoming every environmentalist’s nightmare.

“The acid rain around Sudbury was so bad it destroyed all the plants and the soil slid down off the hillside,” said Canadian Greenpeace energy-coordinator David Martin during an interview with Mail, a British-based newspaper.

All of this would be bad enough in and of itself; however, the journey to make a hybrid doesn’t end there. The nickel produced by this disastrous plant is shipped via massive container ship to the largest nickel refinery in Europe. From there, the nickel hops over to China to produce ‘nickel foam.’ From there, it goes to Japan. Finally, the completed batteries are shipped to the United States, finalizing the around-the-world trip required to produce a single Prius battery. Are these not sounding less and less like environmentally sound cars and more like a farce?

Wait, I haven’t even got to the best part yet.

When you pool together all the combined energy it takes to drive and build a Toyota Prius, the flagship car of energy fanatics, it takes almost 50 percent more energy than a Hummer - the Prius’s arch nemesis.

Through a study by CNW Marketing called “Dust to Dust,” the total combined energy is taken from all the electrical, fuel, transportation, materials (metal, plastic, etc) and hundreds of other factors over the expected lifetime of a vehicle. The Prius costs an average of $3.25 per mile driven over a lifetime of 100,000 miles - the expected lifespan of the Hybrid.

The Hummer, on the other hand, costs a more fiscal $1.95 per mile to put on the road over an expected lifetime of 300,000 miles. That means the Hummer will last three times longer than a Prius and use less combined energy doing it.

So, if you are really an environmentalist - ditch the Prius. Instead, buy one of the most economical cars available - a Toyota Scion xB. The Scion only costs a paltry $0.48 per mile to put on the road. If you are still obsessed over gas mileage - buy a Chevy Aveo and fix that lead foot.

One last fun fact for you: it takes five years to offset the premium price of a Prius. Meaning, you have to wait 60 months to save any money over a non-hybrid car because of lower gas expenses.

Read more: Prius Outdoes Hummer in Environmental Damage... So Go Buy an H2/H3 - Motor Trend The General Forum Forum

Another factor, hardly ever mentioned, is the WASTE designed into the "hybrid" concept itself. In the conventional IC mode it must haul the added dead cargo weight of the electric motors and batteries, in the electric mode it must haul the added dead cargo weight of the IC engine and the fossil fuel tank. A hybrid is basically designed to be more inefficient, more expensive and to have less usable cargo capacity than EITHER an electric only or an IC only vehicle; it is, in fact, the WORST of both worlds.

And from the warmer crowd

Cricket Sound - YouTube

Sometimes. Sometimes they are blue or red or black, or silver, or any other number of colors.

Originally Posted by Tucker Case

Sometimes. Sometimes they are blue or red or black, or silver, or any other number of colors.

What are you talking about, crickets?

Originally Posted by sawyerloggingon

What are you talking about, crickets?

Electric cars being green or not.

You're right, EVs suck, let's get back to the real thing:

250px-The_Flintstones.jpg

Originally Posted by Canell

You're right, EVs suck, let's get back to the real thing:

250px-The_Flintstones.jpg

Or this maybe


pedal car.jpg

Good info. I would also add that plug-in electric cars would only trade one fossil fuel (oil), for another one (coal), which is often burned to create electricity.

I'm not a fan of hybrids, but this article is garbage. First of all, the article you quoted is actually from a college newspaper op ed piece, not from any respected publication. The article is based on a paper (titled Dust to Dust) written by CNW, a marketing firm - not a science organization, that is partially funded by, you guessed it, automobile manufacturers. Gee, no conflict of interest there. The paper is 5 or 6 years old and its dodgy claims and methods have been debunked many times. In fact, in response to the paper's bs several independent firms have conducted their own independent analysis of the same comparison and have all reached the opposite conclusion.

"Even the most cursory look reveals serious biases and flaws: the average Hummer H1 is assumed to travel 379,000 miles and last for 35 years, while the average Prius is assumed to last only 109,000 miles over less than 12 years. These selective and unsupported assumptions distort the final results. A quick re-analysis with peer-reviewed data leads to completely opposite conclusions: the life-cycle energy requirements of hybrids and smaller cars are far lower than Hummers and other large SUVs"

Pacific Institute


But since these facts don't jive with your preconceived world view about "greenies" and "warmers", you'll simply ignore them.