Toyota Prius: Deadlier and costlier than the Hummer

The gas-electric hybrid Toyota Prius doesn't do what its eager buyers want it to, which is to save money on gasoline while being friendly to the environment. A moment's thought about those batteries and the cost of replacing them would convince anyone who can do fourth grade math that something is amiss with the Prius. Around my neighborhood, the Prius has become the car of choice; you can impress your neighbors with your moral superiority (but not your math skills) on the way to pick up groceries at Whole Foods (which is another expensive alternative for liberals).

Now cut to a wonderful, laugh-out-loud article on the Prius phenomenon: Prius Outdoes Hummer in Environmental Damage. (Hat tip: Malcolm Pollack.) First, the environmental damage:

As already noted, the Prius is partly driven by a battery which contains nickel. The nickel is mined and smelted at a plant in Sudbury, Ontario. This plant has caused so much environmental damage to the surrounding environment that NASA has used the ‘dead zone’ around the plant to test moon rovers. The area around the plant is devoid of any life for miles.

The plant is the source of all the nickel found in a Prius’ battery and Toyota purchases 1,000 tons annually. Dubbed the Superstack, the plague-factory has spread sulfur dioxide across northern Ontario, becoming every environmentalist’s nightmare.

“The acid rain around Sudbury was so bad it destroyed all the plants and the soil slid down off the hillside,” said Canadian Greenpeace energy-coordinator David Martin during an interview with Mail, a British-based newspaper.

All of this would be bad enough in and of itself; however, the journey to make a hybrid doesn’t end there. The nickel produced by this disastrous plant is shipped via massive container ship to the largest nickel refinery in Europe. From there, the nickel hops over to China to produce ‘nickel foam.’ From there, it goes to Japan. Finally, the completed batteries are shipped to the United States, finalizing the around-the-world trip required to produce a single Prius battery. Are these not sounding less and less like environmentally sound cars and more like a farce?

A farce? Like Al Gore's electric bill? No, couldn't be.

Then, the cost:

When you pool together all the combined energy it takes to drive and build a Toyota Prius, the flagship car of energy fanatics, it takes almost 50 percent more energy than a Hummer - the Prius’s arch nemesis.

Through a study by CNW Marketing called “Dust to Dust,” the total combined energy is taken from all the electrical, fuel, transportation, materials (metal, plastic, etc) and hundreds of other factors over the expected lifetime of a vehicle. The Prius costs an average of $3.25 per mile driven over a lifetime of 100,000 miles - the expected lifespan of the Hybrid.

The Hummer, on the other hand, costs a more fiscal $1.95 per mile to put on the road over an expected lifetime of 300,000 miles. That means the Hummer will last three times longer than a Prius and use less combined energy doing it.

Though I'd never buy one, I've always had a soft spot for the Hummer, if only for its nose-thumbing-at-environmentalists attitude. I guess to really thumb one's nose at them, you'll have to get a Prius.