(admin (AT) ng2000 (DOT) com) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying
:

The C-Crosser/4007/Outlander isn't a hybrid.

Where is the environment saving from battery manufacture?

Now this realy interests me. Does anyone know the impact of the manufacture
and ultimately disposal of the batteries that say a Prius would use in it's
lifetime compared to a well maintained frugal diesel car ?.

I get the feeling that the diesel may well me more 'eco friendly' in the
long run ?.

"Martin" <spamspam (AT) spam (DOT) spam> wrote

"Fatboy40" <no.one (AT) here (DOT) com> wrote

It is. Except in town, where a prius scarcely makes a sound or smell and
can sit in a traffic jam for ages and only occasionally turn itself on to
run the air-conditioning.
The Prius is a very good effort and interesting to drive, but it is not he
total economic answer it should be, changing the batteries requires a
trained engineer and a biohazard suit. Original batteries should last the
full eight year guarantee period, and mostly cars are scrapped by about ten
years old, nowadays.

It is reckoned that the total carbon footprint of a Hummer is far less than
three Toyota Priuses, that is using the likely life of a hummer at 300k
miles compared to a prius 100k

Mrcheerful

"MrCheerful" <nbkm57 (AT) hotmail (DOT) com> wrote

All that seems to overlook the fact that if consumers were encouraged to
make cars last longer by repairing them, rather than buying a new one. Even
an extension of a year or two would probably have more effect on the ecology
than selling any number of so called eco friendly cars. Not to mention the
reduction made by scrapping less cars.

AIUI the amount of pollution caused by the manufacture of a car, is about as
much as it will create on the road over a life cycle of 10-12 years, so
increasing that life cycle makes more sense than scrapping it earlier than
is strictly necessary, and replacing it with a more eco friendly one.

And does the carbon footprint of eco friendly electric cars (not the Prius,
I know) include the pollution created by the power station supplying the
electricity to charge them?

IMO all the so called eco friendly cars are a bit of a con trick. The car
giants don't really want us to buy less cars, which I think is the only
solution that really makes sense.

Make more eco friendly cars by all means, but unless it is coupled with a
reduction in overall sales, I can't really see it making much difference
over the next 10-20 years.
Mike.

MrCheerful (nbkm57 (AT) hotmail (DOT) com) gurgled happily, sounding much like they
were saying :

Indeed, massively so.

It's true that local emissions in a low-speed environment are where a
hybrid can have a benefit. But to keep the ICE from kicking in, you have to
travel at a snail's pace - 30mph top, very low acceleration - and you have
a range of two miles _absolute_ tops, which will probably be more like a
mile in reality. Then the ICE has to kick in and run harder than needed for
motion, to recharge the battery.

Just like wot a normal car could do if the driver could be bothered. Or,
indeed, didn't have aircon on.

No, it isn't. It's insipid - at best - to drive, and downright poor in many
ways.

Take a look at
http://www.philly.com/inquirer/opini...g_a_Prius.html

(small extract, but much more in the article)

"The nickel for the battery, for instance, is mined in Sudbury, Ontario,
and smelted at nearby Nickel Centre, just north of the province's
massive Georgian Bay.

Toyota buys about 1,000 tons of nickel from the facility each year,
ships the nickel to Wales for refining, then to China, where it's
manufactured into nickel foam, and then onto Toyota's battery plant in
Japan.

That alone creates a globe-trotting trail of carbon emissions that ought
to seriously concern everyone involved in the fight against global
warming. All told, the start-to-finish journey travels more than 10,000
miles - mostly by container ship, but also by diesel locomotive.

But it's not just the clouds of greenhouse gases generated by all that
smelting, refining, manufacturing and transporting that worries green
activists. The 1,250-foot-tall smokestack that spews huge puffs of
sulphur dioxide at the Sudbury mine and smelter operation has left a
large swath of the surrounding area looking like a surrealistic scene
from the depths of hell.

On the perimeter of the area, skeletons of trees and bushes stand like
ghostly sentinels guarding a sprawling wasteland. Astronauts in training
for NASA actually have practiced driving moon buggies on the suburban
Sudbury tract because it's considered a duplicate of the Moon's landscape.

"The acid rain around Sudbury was so bad it destroyed all the plants,
and the soil slid down off the hillside," David Martin, Greenpeace's
energy coordinator in Canada, told the London Daily Mail.

"The solution they came up with was the Superstack. The idea was to
dilute pollution, but all it did was spread the fallout across northern
Ontario," Martin told the British newspaper, adding that Sudbury remains
"a major environmental and health problem. The environmental cost of
producing that car battery is pretty high." "


D

Fatboy40 wrote:

Mike G (metier (AT) lycos (DOT) co.uk) gurgled happily, sounding much like they
were saying :

I missed this bit.

The _average_ lifespan of the UK's car fleet is around 14.5 years. 10yr old
would now be R-reg. There's plenty of those about still - as well as older.

Of course not. It can't be, because there's no way to know how the
electricity's generated. You can take an average, based on the %age of
electricity supplied to the grid by different generation methods - IIRC the
UK still uses a lot of coal.

*ding*

Saying "Buy a new eco-friendly car" is a long way from being the right
answer.

The most green answer is to maintain an existing car properly, including
recycling used parts where required.
If you MUST buy a new car, THEN you should look at one with as small a
footprint as possible - which means something small and lightweight, as
well as economical - and the location of the factory has to be taken into
account, too.

It's gotta be hard to beat a Smart or C1/107/Aygo. Most of the rest of the
very small stuff is far eastern, so has a lot of transport to get here.

"Adrian" <toomany2cvs (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote

I found it quite OK to drive, nothing amazing, but it isn't meant to be, is
it? I was more interested from a technical POV, but certainly it drove in
an acceptable manner, far nicer than many current cars. just under 60mpg
has been the norm. since purchase, usually one occupant that drives quite
briskly on mainly country roads. Staggering depreciation (50 percent in
under two years) when he went to ask about a trade in, so he has decided to
keep it for a lot longer, he is considering the home rechargeable larger
battery pack option from some independent place.

Mrcheerful

In article <ixj4i.42152$Ch.11768 (AT) fe2 (DOT) news.blueyonder.co.uk>,
MrCheerful <nbkm57 (AT) hotmail (DOT) com> wrote:
I took an early one fully loaded to the north of Scotland and back driving
it pretty hard. Which you really had no option to if you wanted to keep
up. It used a deal more petrol than my BMW 528 auto would - and without
the performance. True it's good in heavy town traffic etc. But then it's
very expensive for a town car.

If it really is as cheap as everyone claims it is to run in town, why
don't all the car hire firms use them?

--
*When everything's coming your way, you're in the wrong lane *

Dave Plowman dave (AT) davenoise (DOT) co.uk London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.