Are Hybrid Cars rubbish?

[naturefirst]

I agree that hybrid cars are not the best thing, and hydrogen is the way to go. hopefully the sticker price will come down sooner rather than later, to make it available to a lot more people

[Boddie]

Having read all of the posts I still think they are rubbish

[Ted Pearson]

I found this site that has a carbon calculator HybridCars.com - Gas Calculator and only one car beats my Toyota corolla 1.8L automatic. The Honda civic 1.3L boasts a 42mpg, but my Toyota really gets 36mpg all highway which is not much worse than the Honda. This site shows the price to be about $10,000 more than I paid for the Toyota- 2009 Honda Civic Hybrid Detailed Pricing and Specifications - MSN Autos and the rated driving range stated for the Honda is 553.5 mi. The only down side other than price which will not be reclaimed from gas savings for about 25yrs., is the Honda only has a 3yr/36,00mi basic warranty. (That is probably when the charging system will have major problems and who knows how big that chunk of cash will be.
I give it a big thumbs down.

[eeyore]

Originally Posted by Ted Pearson

I found this site that has a carbon calculator HybridCars.com - Gas Calculator and only one car beats my Toyota corolla 1.8L automatic. The Honda civic 1.3L boasts a 42mpg, but my Toyota really gets 36mpg all highway which is not much worse than the Honda. This site shows the price to be about $10,000 more than I paid for the Toyota- 2009 Honda Civic Hybrid Detailed Pricing and Specifications - MSN Autos and the rated driving range stated for the Honda is 553.5 mi. The only down side other than price which will not be reclaimed from gas savings for about 25yrs., is the Honda only has a 3yr/36,00mi basic warranty. (That is probably when the charging system will have major problems and who knows how big that chunk of cash will be.
I give it a big thumbs down.

thing is its not just about carbon emmisions - regardless of what anyone might think about that subject (already done to death in other threads) , oil is definitely running out - and as soon as demand exceeds supply petrol prices will go bonkers.

therefore unless you like the idea of walking, or paying half your salary for petrol - giving hybrid or other alt technology the thumbs down is extremly short sighted in the long run.

[Ted Pearson]

Originally Posted by eeyore

thing is its not just about carbon emmisions - regardless of what anyone might think about that subject (already done to death in other threads) .

I agree this part of the conversation has been reiterated ad nauseam. It is, however, an issue that must be considered in all actions, (according to those who still believe it is an issue) so I left it in.

Originally Posted by eeyore

oil is definitely running out - and as soon as demand exceeds supply petrol prices will go bonkers.

Also true and in my case, a car will usually last about 6 years due to the distance I drive to work. When it is time for a new car or rebuild, I will re-evaluate all of the factors again.

Originally Posted by eeyore

therefore unless you like the idea of walking, or paying half your salary for petrol - giving hybrid or other alt technology the thumbs down is extremly short sighted in the long run.

Walking is not an option for this job and I already pay about 20% of my wages for fuel. Of course if fuel was cheaper, I could save up enough money to better insulate my home or add some solar cells as I said before. I had made some plans to rent a small flat next to work back when gas prices spiked over here last year, but either way carbon taxing, shortages or rationing will cause me to lose my job, house, land and quality of life.
After all, the answer to Hybrid cars like any other issue of this kind is not an absolute yes or no across the board. Consideration has to be made for different situations. I believe I made the best choice by giving a thumbs-down to Hybrids right now but when the technology matures and they become more economical to drive than a standard car, I will change my mind. To do it any other way would be short-sighted.

[Boddie]

10 months on and I still remain unconvinced

Hybrid cars are still rubbish

[richnfamous]

Electric cars (including hybrids) aren't as green as you think. They might not emit anything from the car itself, but electricity production - especially in the UK, where we're still very reliant on coal-fired power plants - is still a big problem in terms of CO2 and overall pollution, and on top of that, it's highly inefficient.

For example, with coal-fired: the net energy gain on producing coal is low to start with. It has to be dug up, and then transported to the power station, which uses energy. Even the most efficient coal plants only turn about 35-37% of the heat into electricity - the rest is lost to the atmosphere, along with loads of CO2 and other nasty stuff in the smoke.

Then it travels long distances via the national grid and there's an overall 'line loss' of about 7-8%. After that, it gets stored in your hybrid's battery, which isn't the efficient, and to add insult to inefficiency, your hybrid has to lug a lump of metal around (the internal combustion engine) whenever you use the electric motor.

As for hydrogen: at the moment, it costs more energy to produce than you get out of it. I agree that fuel cells have a future but as things stand there are some huge hurdles (not to mention infrastructure investments).

Cars also require large amounts of energy to construct and although we could make cars that last 100 years, they're designed to break so we buy another one.

Personally, I think it's good to see different solutions being tried, but none of them I've seen focuses on behaviour - cutting down our car use. Unfortunately, the last 30 years of the 'Great Car Economy' has meant that many of us are locked into high car usage due to external patterns like commuting and out-of-town shops, and a goods distribution system that relies on fossil-fueled transport. The car is a great liberator but somehow we've been trapped by them. Strange, eh?

Are hybrids rubbish? They're a transitional phenomenon. Of course if you're buying a car to make you feel good, you may like or dislike them as you please. I'm sure the 6' 5" toddler Clarkson hates them, but he's IMO a w*****, albeit a very funny one.

btw: I don't own or drive a car and rely on my bicycle, public transport and hitchhiking for my modest travel needs.

[ChrisR]

I agree with the general theme that hybrids like the Prius are pretty xexexexe - the mpg isn't significantly more than some of the newer petrol- or diesel-only cars and so doesn't warrant the additional costs, IMO.

The worry I have when we talk about electric, hydrogen or biofuel cars is that the basic laws of physics seem to be being overlooked slightly. You can't make energy from nothing - electricity & hydrogen might be non-polluting but how much energy do you have to put in to create it and transport it to where it is needed? If the generation-energy could come from natural, sustainable sources then that's great - but we are already having difficulty coming up with power sources to run our homes and businesses, so if we also require that cars also swap over to these new fuels now many more nuclear reactors of wind/solar farms will we need to build and how much energy is needed to create those?

Biofuels really worry me as, at the moment, huge swathes of agricultural land (once used for food crops or just boring old tropical rainforest) are being turned over to producing what I think are ethically rather dodgy biofuels. We have already seen the price of basic staples like rice soaring and I fear that yet more third-world countries will go for the biofuel cash-crop rather than grow the food their people need. Current biofuels seem destined to escalate the destruction of the rainforests and raise the price of basic foods. Only the recent research into algal biofuels seems to show a possible way forward.

Anyway, I'm not saying that fossil fuels are not a problem - but, as someone else said, the best thing we could do is to reduce our consumption of fuels while improving the efficiency of our homes, vehicles and power plants.