KBB's Top Ten Greenest Cars Mostly Hybrids

[Guest]

Hybrids are not more green. Sure, if you ignore the manufacturing and only look at the fuel and oil consumed during operation they look good. The mining for battery raw materials, which are extremely toxic, transportation and manufacturing, not to mention no one is still quite sure what to do when all the batteries that will start going bad in about 5 years and needing replacement. I don't have the article anymore but had read about a year ago that a study concluded that the actual green cost for a prius, from the start of production process to end of life is worse than a Hummer. Wake up, think about things, demand better.

 

[wiyosaya]

[citation][nom]geodin[/nom]Hybrids are not more green. Sure, if you ignore the manufacturing and only look at the fuel and oil consumed during operation they look good. The mining for battery raw materials, which are extremely toxic, transportation and manufacturing, not to mention no one is still quite sure what to do when all the batteries that will start going bad in about 5 years and needing replacement. I don't have the article anymore but had read about a year ago that a study concluded that the actual green cost for a prius, from the start of production process to end of life is worse than a Hummer. Wake up, think about things, demand better.[/citation]
Might I suggest that you further research that article? If you do, you will find that it was written by an industry shill who was paid to produce dis-information that they substantiated with 20+ year old data.

I'll even help you out with this link.

What's that old adage? Believe only half of what you see and nothing of what you hear?

The article you are speaking of is emblematic of the problems that I spoke of in my comment. Personally, I think it unfortunate that people buy into garbage like that without further research.

 

[gm0n3y]

[citation][nom]Studly007[/nom]Additionally - using electricity to charge your battery is just sucking power from a fossil fuel based power plant (unless you jack in to Hoover Dam or San Onofre) and due to the laws of electrical transfer over a cable network, Efficiency is WAY lower than just running a conventional internal combustion engine. Q.E.D.[/citation]

This is wrong. Even with the loss of power do to transmission, full electric vehicles running off of coal power are more efficient per amount of energy produced. The losses in transmission of power are more than made up for in the efficiency of the electric motor (vs a traditional I.C.E.). Add the fact that coal plants are significantly less damaging to the environment per unit of energy produced than an internal combustion engine (due to economies of scale) and it starts to make sense. Of course the damage caused by producing / replacing batteries is a whole other story (as mentioned by a few people here).

I would have to say that most small cars (Fit, Yaris, Sentra, Civic, etc) are much less harmful to the environment than their hybrid brethren. This is even more true for the diesel models. The particulate emissions of modern diesels are only slightly higher than their gasoline powered equivalents, but their consumption is significantly lower.

 

[WheelsOfConfusion]

[citation][nom]ehenry818[/nom]What no smart car??? Ohh wait for being a tiny sized wanna be car that can only fit 2 people, it gets an amazing 36mpg. For something that small you would think it would get twice as much.[/citation]
The US version is seriously gimped in fuel economy. European versions out-frugal it by almost that much.

And I'm seconding all the talk about the lack of Yaris on the list.

 

[weirdguy99]

If you all watch topgear s12 e4 youll see that European cars are far more efficient than American cars. Dont know why...40 mpg is basically the lowest you can get in a European car and Americans struggle just to get near that.