All those Prius drivers out there might find this to be an eye opening article. I'm not against the Toyota Prius itself (it's a pretty good car for long commuters), but if you're buying it because it's envirornmentally safe, you might want to reconsider that thought after you read this...
Over the past year, there has been an explosion of stories raising questions about the real environmental cost of hybrids.
Here are two sides to the story:
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.
MORE...
the other side...
One of the most misleading ones, which has been spread by countless blogs over the past several weeks, and cited without verification by several sources that appear reputable, looks to have originated in a story last November in England's Daily Mail, a right-leaning, British tabloid paper, which bore the gleefully spiteful title 'Toyota factory turns landscape to arid wilderness.' An editorial, published last month in a newspaper for a small state university on the East Coast, helped bring this misleading report a new life.
But it isn't a Toyota factory at all. The automaker has, in fact, only been purchasing significant amounts of nickel from the Sudbury , Ontario , Inco mine for its batteries in recent years, while the environmental disaster the headline is referring to largely occurred more than thirty years ago.
And that ore is at the core of a semi-urban legend that leads to dumb headlines like "HUMMER Greener than Prius," and others we've seen recently.
Here's where to find the "Dust to Dust" report from CNW
You decide...
Why not blame the Prius for its use of nickel? Prius drivers are happy to blame petroleum for this and that, sticking their noses in the air. A technology is the sum of its parts, and the Prius contains some nasty, nasty parts.
ReplyDeleteComparing these 2 cars, of course Hummer is more eco, even if we compare Hummer limo vs Prius.
If you replace your battery and keep driving your Prius, you're just causing more nickel to be smelted, more acid to be recycled, etc. Wake up.