Well, below is a story about a Prius taxi that went over 400,000km

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=8046

@Brent- I agree with your sentiments, however with your 60%/10km, 80%/20km guideline I believe it is more like 5%/10km and 50 km where I live. Plus for 4 months of the year when there is over a foot of snow and 5 degrees F (not C) bicycles would be useless.

Besides there’s more than enough oil if the government would let us drill for it.

Price needn’t be related to the energy used to make a product. A price premium may be there because the firm wants to make the product exclusive.

Actually the car connection article says that Toyota claims the hybrid production process requires more energy than an equivalent non-hybrid vehicle, but they feel that the cost is justified by the savings over the life of the vehicle. (This tends to support the idea that they are priced higher because of higher energy costs.)

If people can go 400,000km and still have the vehicle in good working order, then they are probably right. I haven’t heard of anyone getting those types of miles out of a hybrid, so thanks for the example. It will be very interesting to see if this is typical.

The article also says that Toyota is saying that the study was misleading because it was based on existing hybrids and future ones will be more efficient to manufacture and run longer. This kind of confirms that they may not be the best vehicle to buy right now (unless you just want to help encourage automakers to keep making them).

Some reading:
http://www.pacinst.org/topics/integrity_of_science/case_studies/hummer_vs_prius.pdf

http://www.truedelta.com/blog/?p=48

http://www.thecarconnection.com/Auto_News/Green_Car_News/Prius_Versus_HUMMER_Exploding_the_Myth.S196.A12220.html?pg=1

“On top of that, if a car costs more to purchase, it seems that the price should somehow be related to the energy that went into making it.”

Price needn’t be related to the energy used to make a product. A price premium may be there because the firm wants to make the product exclusive.

“If you are really concerned about the environment, your best bet is to keep your existing car (assuming it is an average vehicle and not a cement truck) running for as long as possible.”

Have you considered the effect that your old car on the second hand car market will have? On aggregate, all cars are used until they break down. Even if one person sells his car after 50,000 miles then someone else will buy that on the second-hand car market and then sell it, etc.

“I use to drive a 1994 Geo Metro. It only had three cylinders and got between 38 and 55 miles per gallon. The average for normal driving was around 47 or so. That is no worse than what my friends get on their hybrids.”

A Geo Metro is a subcompact, very small lightweight car compared to the more practical and safer and Prius, which is classified as a mid-sized car. When looking at costs versus benefits some may want to look at the benefits of space or the future expected health costs if the car doesn’t have a 5-star crash test rating.

Manufacturing engineers don’t like to admit it, but Lean Manufacturing relies on volume, volume and volume.

Just like anything (cd players, microwaves, MP3 players) when you start to see the volume of hybrid cars go UP you’ll see the costs go DOWN. Way down. They’ll start to dedicate an entire plant in Mexico to producing the hybrid’s steering wheel. They’ll bring in a line of 4 different hybrids, and use standard parts throughout them all: one reason why hybrids are costly to manufacture at the moment is simply that they’re an entirely new thing. Soon the tooling, plants, IP etc will be amortised and they’ll be able to poor more money into development.

Cost of manufacture shouldn’t be an issue: the more hybrids we buy, the cheaper they’ll be.

@Ariane

I know. You’re right, it doesn’t work for everyone.

However, I’m convinced that 60% of people live within 10km of where they work, and 80% live within 20km. I think that the roads are mostly congested by people making relatively short, regular, solitary trips. We don’t ALL have to drop off the kids on the way to work.

Bio Diesel may not be a perfect solution, but neither is expecting that everyone will live near where they work. It’s a great goal, just not realistic that it could happen soon enough…e.g., my husband engineers building automation and his clients are all over the place. Some bio-Diesel is made from waste, if we can harness that – I think it’s a good temporary alternative till we do find a better solution.