Hybrid not so friendly

From the day of its first conception on a drawing board right through to rolling off the showroom floor, Hybrids are not as environmentally friendly as the tree huggers will tell you. It all starts with the complex mechanical and electrical technology that is in today's Hybrids. Building the car generates the use of more energy than any other car on the market, creating those fuming green house gases. Then there is the batteries that are mined, leaving gaping holes in the ground and creating a lot of pollution along the way. The only good thing about these nickel-metal hydride batteries is that they can be recycled and are not toxic, however it does create a need for a specialist recycling plant, which generates more pollutants, along with the trucks that will haul these batteries to the plant.

With the Hybrid vehicles new technology is a lot of electrical copper cabling, which is mined and in short supply. The Hybrid models are up to 10% heavier than the vehicles they are based on. Which means more of their power is just getting them going rather than saving fuel. They are typically 10-15% more expensive as well, which makes re-couping the costs of fuel economy harder. But they sell you the higher cost is the cost of saving the environment, of course they say that!

Lets look at the Toyota Prius, which gets most of the Hybrid attention worldwide. It is a completely new model, which means instead of cutting down on production costs by utilising pre-existing parts from similar models, they went about creating a whole new system. Then there is the batteries which are claimed to live out the life of the car. Which these days is generally only 100'000km for the first owner, then by the time the third owner has the car in the mid 200'000km range, they will be facing a huge bill for electrical repairs on the new components that should never be replaced, because they would be reducing the reason the car is an environmentally friendly hybrid.

What do we do with these cars when they eventually die, plant them and watch the plant grow? No we have to recycle them, which once again costs money and pollution.

If a Hybrid just appeared out of thin air, and you could drive it and when you were ready to upgrade it just disappeared, then that would make it very friendly to old mother nature. But this is a fairytale. These cars have a dark and disgraceful upbringing, one which those tree huggers ignore, because it makes their baby look worse.

As long as it 'saves' the environment in the present, who cares what went on to make it. Blind thinking. Get in your petrol/gasoline car and just drive, maybe plant a tree and get on with life.