Thursday, February 07, 2008
Toyota Prius: The Great Deception
I was going to make this blog about the evils of illegal immigration and how the government should pull all programs and benefits for illegals, but I have decided against it. I may still write that article, but for now, I wish to focus on the great consumer deception known as the hybrid automobile.
Back in 1900, there were more electric cars on the roads than gas-powered cars. Of course, the roads were still mainly meant for horses and buggies, so having a complex gas-powered engine could prove disastrous to a trip. Also, folks were really wary of carrying all the explosive gas around with them. Could blow up at any moment. Since that time, roads improved as did the internal combustion (IC) engine and we saw such engines take off, moving way out ahead of those electric contraptions. (Thus, the birth of the burnout, wheel stands, and fart cans.)
By the 1970s, cars had achieved their full size, some stretching 19 miles* from stem to stern. They often dwarfed those who drove them and the garages they occupied. It's a good thing that they designed garages to fit a 1976 Chevy Caprice because when the 2000 Excursion came along, it had a place to live. Anyhow, these enormous monsters of the late 60s and early 70s were known for their comfort and not much else. They drove kind of like an SR-71 at full speed -- they required about three states to turn around. Now, these huge cars were very good for one thing: you could drive over a whole switching yard of train tracks and never spill your cup of coffee. (Notice how the hot coffee lawsuits have only come relatively recently?) These cars were also notorious for something else: horrid gas mileage. "Mileage" was better measured in inches per gallon rather than miles per gallon; it made it look better. Your typical '76 Caprice got about 8 MPG on a good day with a nice stiff tailwind and the engine shut off. Hey, that was a 1970s hybrid, after all. :) It might get better mileage if you put up a big sail on the antenna mast for those tailwinds.
Fast forward a few years to the year 2000. Cars are generally smaller than the hulking land yachts of thirty years prior. I did say cars, not trucks, were smaller. In the year 2000, we have monstrous machines like the Ford [Take an] Excursion [to go around it], but generally, cars are smaller, lighter and more fuel efficient than their older brethren. In this time of general renewal (I mean, c'mon; it is the new millennium) Honda, the Japanese maker of lawn mowers, weed eaters and some pretty nice dirt bikes, introduces the Insight. It's basically a gussied up, modernized CR-X combined with a golf cart. Somewhere inside there is an engine. It gets great gas mileage and doesn't look half bad to boot. (Of course, I've always kind of liked the futuristic-looking cars, myself, so I'm somewhat biased.) Unfortunately for Honda, they only sold six of them. The liberal environmentalists (another invention of the late 90s and early 2000s) didn't even seem to notice them. They were still trying to save the world by driving 1972 Land Cruisers and VW Micro buses.
So, we jump now to 2001. Someone at Toyota got some balls and decided to ship a Japanese-market car west and land it in California. It was sure to get noticed there. Sure enough, that little car known as the Prius, started selling. They sold ten of them, and then 14, and then 21... The sales kept on going. Now, the Prius was not a new model. It had been living in the Land of the Rising Sun since 1997. The thing that made the Prius sell where the Honda Insight did not was the fact that the Prius had four proper doors and seats for regular-sized people. It also had an engine. The only thing wrong with it was that it was (and still is) really ugly. When I first saw it, I asked, "Why is it that new-technology cars have to look so different (read: butt ugly) than their normal-tech counterparts?" To this day, I haven't figured it out.
So the environmentalists and the environmentalists-at-heart gobbled up the Prius. At one time, there was like a two-year waiting list to get one and once you had one, it actually appreciated in value. What other car has done that? None that I can think of. In 2001, gas was at a pain-inducing $1.30 per gallon. People clamored after these "hybrid" cars because they were supposed to get great gas mileage (if you learned to drift behind semi-trailers and drive 17 MPH on the freeway.) As the gas prices went up, so did the value (and cost) of these hybrid vehicles. More and more models were introduced. Different body styles showed up, all bearing the "Hybrid" logo. I think you can now even get a hybrid Abrams tank for your urban assault vehicle. There's nothing like 57 tons of steel powered by a gas-electric hybrid engine. :)
Now, all this hybrid stuff actually sounds pretty good. On a good day (again, with a stiff tailwind and running downhill) you can actually get motorcycle mileage out of your hybrid car. For those of you who are not motorcyclists, we're talking 50+ miles per gallon. Great! I love it! NOT!!! What's up with 50? My gas-only car gets pretty close to that on good days. Why should I spend a bunch more money on a car that only gets somewhat better gas mileage and looks kind of like a pyramid on wheels? I don't get it. But, I decided to just admit that hybrids must be the way of the future...
...Until I discovered diesel. "Diesel!?" you say. Isn't that the stuff that powers those big smoke-belching, headache-inducing pickups that weekend warriors like to drive around in just to intimidate the rest of us? Well, yes, it is. But, isn't diesel smelly and greasy and aren't the engines noisy and rough? No, not really. I mean, they are if you're driving a Ford truck, but consider that most small cars in Europe run on diesel. Most newer models make almost the same sound as their regular gasoline counterparts. They don't belch out smokescreens and their engines are not constantly covered in grease. Engine technology as well as fuel technology has gotten much better for diesels in the last ten years. Consider also, that diesels get better mileage than their gasoline cousins (even surpassing hybrids) and with little or no modification, they can be made to run on stuff that you wouldn't normally imagine they could run on. Take corn oil, for instance. Your typical diesel engine can run on the same stuff you cook your fried chicken with.
Now, of course, for this to be any sort of controversial, I have to mention the environment. We all know that burning petroleum is as bad for the environment as last year's Christmas fruitcake. What makes it this way, though? Why is it that cars running on petroleum are simply flatulating our atmosphere out of existence? Well, it all has to do with something we call the ecosystem. You probably remember the little circular diagrams depicting the water cycle and life cycles and various other systems associated with our environment. In these diagrams, everything was recycled. Well, you see, long ago, our planet was much warmer than it is now. There was a lot more plant life than there is now. Over the eons, these ancient plants and animals died and the carbons in their bodies were returned to the earth. These became trapped as oil deposits, completely taken out of circulation, so to speak. Our climate cooled off and humans came along.
Then, one day, we determined that we could do a lot with the energy released from burning these fossil fuels (carbons taken out of circulation). In that instant, we reintroduced those carbons back into our environment, effectively putting them back into circulation. Well, the environment as it is currently, really wasn't meant to have them put back into circulation. The "new" carbons bond very quickly and securely to the existing oxygen in the atmosphere and other places. It creates greenhouse gases. So, burning these fossil fuels, such as gasoline, petrodiesel and coal, is bad and is contributing to damage to our environment. (Go ahead and say global warming, but I'm not going to jump on the AlGore bandwagon just yet. It's having an effect, but to what extent is debatable.)
"But wait, Turbo, you said burning petrodiesel is bad," you say. "Didn't you just praise diesel for all the good things about it?" That I did. Burning petrodiesel is bad for the environment. It introduces the new carbons the same as burning gasoline or coal. However, diesel made from current biological sources does not introduce these new carbons. It takes carbons already extant in our environment and simply moves them. They follow one of those cycles I mentioned earlier and gets recycled back into something else in the environment.
"So what does this have to do with hybrid cars?" Well, those blessed hybrid cars that everyone is so ga-ga about right now, don't do anything to help the environment. In fact, they simply drag out the problem longer. Auto makers would like you to believe that hybrids are completely benign when it comes to environmental impact. But, this simply isn't true. They run on good ol' gas the same as every other car.
Hydrogen fuel cell cars are arguably worse yet. While a hydrogen fuel cell car produces no emissions in an of itself, the process for hydrogen extraction requires a great deal of energy. Hydrogen's bond to oxygen is extremely strong and requires the use of fossil fuels to produce enough energy to separate it.
So, really, what we need to do is put our money into development of small, clean and efficient diesel engines and then run them on biofuels such as corn liquor or general biodiesel. If you want to have a near-zero impact on the environment, that's how you do it. The history of the automobile is one of innovation and progress. Unfortunately, for now, we are stuck using 19th Century technology in our internal combustion engines. It's time to move on and work with the environment and not against it.
*Slight exaggeration. Cars did not actually reach 19 miles long, but they were pretty close, and there's something beautiful about the classic American road barge.
Back in 1900, there were more electric cars on the roads than gas-powered cars. Of course, the roads were still mainly meant for horses and buggies, so having a complex gas-powered engine could prove disastrous to a trip. Also, folks were really wary of carrying all the explosive gas around with them. Could blow up at any moment. Since that time, roads improved as did the internal combustion (IC) engine and we saw such engines take off, moving way out ahead of those electric contraptions. (Thus, the birth of the burnout, wheel stands, and fart cans.)
By the 1970s, cars had achieved their full size, some stretching 19 miles* from stem to stern. They often dwarfed those who drove them and the garages they occupied. It's a good thing that they designed garages to fit a 1976 Chevy Caprice because when the 2000 Excursion came along, it had a place to live. Anyhow, these enormous monsters of the late 60s and early 70s were known for their comfort and not much else. They drove kind of like an SR-71 at full speed -- they required about three states to turn around. Now, these huge cars were very good for one thing: you could drive over a whole switching yard of train tracks and never spill your cup of coffee. (Notice how the hot coffee lawsuits have only come relatively recently?) These cars were also notorious for something else: horrid gas mileage. "Mileage" was better measured in inches per gallon rather than miles per gallon; it made it look better. Your typical '76 Caprice got about 8 MPG on a good day with a nice stiff tailwind and the engine shut off. Hey, that was a 1970s hybrid, after all. :) It might get better mileage if you put up a big sail on the antenna mast for those tailwinds.
Fast forward a few years to the year 2000. Cars are generally smaller than the hulking land yachts of thirty years prior. I did say cars, not trucks, were smaller. In the year 2000, we have monstrous machines like the Ford [Take an] Excursion [to go around it], but generally, cars are smaller, lighter and more fuel efficient than their older brethren. In this time of general renewal (I mean, c'mon; it is the new millennium) Honda, the Japanese maker of lawn mowers, weed eaters and some pretty nice dirt bikes, introduces the Insight. It's basically a gussied up, modernized CR-X combined with a golf cart. Somewhere inside there is an engine. It gets great gas mileage and doesn't look half bad to boot. (Of course, I've always kind of liked the futuristic-looking cars, myself, so I'm somewhat biased.) Unfortunately for Honda, they only sold six of them. The liberal environmentalists (another invention of the late 90s and early 2000s) didn't even seem to notice them. They were still trying to save the world by driving 1972 Land Cruisers and VW Micro buses.
So, we jump now to 2001. Someone at Toyota got some balls and decided to ship a Japanese-market car west and land it in California. It was sure to get noticed there. Sure enough, that little car known as the Prius, started selling. They sold ten of them, and then 14, and then 21... The sales kept on going. Now, the Prius was not a new model. It had been living in the Land of the Rising Sun since 1997. The thing that made the Prius sell where the Honda Insight did not was the fact that the Prius had four proper doors and seats for regular-sized people. It also had an engine. The only thing wrong with it was that it was (and still is) really ugly. When I first saw it, I asked, "Why is it that new-technology cars have to look so different (read: butt ugly) than their normal-tech counterparts?" To this day, I haven't figured it out.
So the environmentalists and the environmentalists-at-heart gobbled up the Prius. At one time, there was like a two-year waiting list to get one and once you had one, it actually appreciated in value. What other car has done that? None that I can think of. In 2001, gas was at a pain-inducing $1.30 per gallon. People clamored after these "hybrid" cars because they were supposed to get great gas mileage (if you learned to drift behind semi-trailers and drive 17 MPH on the freeway.) As the gas prices went up, so did the value (and cost) of these hybrid vehicles. More and more models were introduced. Different body styles showed up, all bearing the "Hybrid" logo. I think you can now even get a hybrid Abrams tank for your urban assault vehicle. There's nothing like 57 tons of steel powered by a gas-electric hybrid engine. :)
Now, all this hybrid stuff actually sounds pretty good. On a good day (again, with a stiff tailwind and running downhill) you can actually get motorcycle mileage out of your hybrid car. For those of you who are not motorcyclists, we're talking 50+ miles per gallon. Great! I love it! NOT!!! What's up with 50? My gas-only car gets pretty close to that on good days. Why should I spend a bunch more money on a car that only gets somewhat better gas mileage and looks kind of like a pyramid on wheels? I don't get it. But, I decided to just admit that hybrids must be the way of the future...
...Until I discovered diesel. "Diesel!?" you say. Isn't that the stuff that powers those big smoke-belching, headache-inducing pickups that weekend warriors like to drive around in just to intimidate the rest of us? Well, yes, it is. But, isn't diesel smelly and greasy and aren't the engines noisy and rough? No, not really. I mean, they are if you're driving a Ford truck, but consider that most small cars in Europe run on diesel. Most newer models make almost the same sound as their regular gasoline counterparts. They don't belch out smokescreens and their engines are not constantly covered in grease. Engine technology as well as fuel technology has gotten much better for diesels in the last ten years. Consider also, that diesels get better mileage than their gasoline cousins (even surpassing hybrids) and with little or no modification, they can be made to run on stuff that you wouldn't normally imagine they could run on. Take corn oil, for instance. Your typical diesel engine can run on the same stuff you cook your fried chicken with.
Now, of course, for this to be any sort of controversial, I have to mention the environment. We all know that burning petroleum is as bad for the environment as last year's Christmas fruitcake. What makes it this way, though? Why is it that cars running on petroleum are simply flatulating our atmosphere out of existence? Well, it all has to do with something we call the ecosystem. You probably remember the little circular diagrams depicting the water cycle and life cycles and various other systems associated with our environment. In these diagrams, everything was recycled. Well, you see, long ago, our planet was much warmer than it is now. There was a lot more plant life than there is now. Over the eons, these ancient plants and animals died and the carbons in their bodies were returned to the earth. These became trapped as oil deposits, completely taken out of circulation, so to speak. Our climate cooled off and humans came along.
Then, one day, we determined that we could do a lot with the energy released from burning these fossil fuels (carbons taken out of circulation). In that instant, we reintroduced those carbons back into our environment, effectively putting them back into circulation. Well, the environment as it is currently, really wasn't meant to have them put back into circulation. The "new" carbons bond very quickly and securely to the existing oxygen in the atmosphere and other places. It creates greenhouse gases. So, burning these fossil fuels, such as gasoline, petrodiesel and coal, is bad and is contributing to damage to our environment. (Go ahead and say global warming, but I'm not going to jump on the AlGore bandwagon just yet. It's having an effect, but to what extent is debatable.)
"But wait, Turbo, you said burning petrodiesel is bad," you say. "Didn't you just praise diesel for all the good things about it?" That I did. Burning petrodiesel is bad for the environment. It introduces the new carbons the same as burning gasoline or coal. However, diesel made from current biological sources does not introduce these new carbons. It takes carbons already extant in our environment and simply moves them. They follow one of those cycles I mentioned earlier and gets recycled back into something else in the environment.
"So what does this have to do with hybrid cars?" Well, those blessed hybrid cars that everyone is so ga-ga about right now, don't do anything to help the environment. In fact, they simply drag out the problem longer. Auto makers would like you to believe that hybrids are completely benign when it comes to environmental impact. But, this simply isn't true. They run on good ol' gas the same as every other car.
Hydrogen fuel cell cars are arguably worse yet. While a hydrogen fuel cell car produces no emissions in an of itself, the process for hydrogen extraction requires a great deal of energy. Hydrogen's bond to oxygen is extremely strong and requires the use of fossil fuels to produce enough energy to separate it.
So, really, what we need to do is put our money into development of small, clean and efficient diesel engines and then run them on biofuels such as corn liquor or general biodiesel. If you want to have a near-zero impact on the environment, that's how you do it. The history of the automobile is one of innovation and progress. Unfortunately, for now, we are stuck using 19th Century technology in our internal combustion engines. It's time to move on and work with the environment and not against it.
*Slight exaggeration. Cars did not actually reach 19 miles long, but they were pretty close, and there's something beautiful about the classic American road barge.
