Skip those two wretched pages of the Journal and it's a pretty good newspaper. It's amazing the quality of news coverage when the intent isn't to brainwash people with sixth-grade reading levels.

Oh no! I guess this means that this billboard is a sham!

;-P

Thank you WSJ for making me realize that all these years I haven't owned a car, someone else was burning my oil, and that I should buy a car ASAP to take back what's mine!

kind of sad that one of the last news sources worth reading has stooped to this level

Hmmm. I actually agree with the WSJ, sort of anyway. I've always had a problem with the idea of "saving" something that you are actually using. By driving a car, you are using energy, not saving it. Certainly an efficient vehicle is a better choice than a vehicle that is inefficient, but all vehicles, even highly efficient ones like bicycles (with something like a 5:4 input to output energy ratio), require energy to be used up if you want to go anywhere with them.

(Admittedly, my issue has more to do with the semantics of the word "save", rather than anything to do with energy. But it is true that promoting a car by saying it "saves energy" is mostly just a marketing scam to make you feel inferior enough to buy a "new and improved" car.)

Using less energy to accomplish the same work isn't saving energy? Somebody needs to retake middle school Physics.

I'm as pedantic as the next guy -- probably more, since I'm an editor -- but that argument doesn't fly even on the most restrictive semantic/pedantic plane.

Try this one: spend half as much for this loaf of bread as you normally would. Have you saved money or not?

People are going to hate me for saying this but.

Making the comment that if i don't use it someone else will is so American it is not funny! i have travelled the world and have not come across any other countries where people actually look at life in that way as much as people do in the US. i know i am being General and people are going to hate me for it but that was my general observation while travelling America(been to about 30 states).

I have been to many countries around the world and have not felt that that comment applies to any other country i have been to.

I am from Tasmania

The author inadvertently seems to address the "Tradgedy of the Commons" in his piece. That hybrid cars are inappropriate to the metaphor made no difference. Prius, for example, is all about creating customer delight in multiple directions, including, but not limited to, saving gasoline. The commons, and sources of delight, include the air we breath and lane space we take up and the peace and quiet that remains by virtue of driving a quieter car. It includes preserving a bit more of the oil reserves already half gone,. To protect all of that and save ones personal resources on the way sounds like a decent investment. How is it he missed that? No doubt the same sort of single minded grumbling washed over us when Henry Ford's first cars drove horses to the roadside. Saving all the horse apples for someone else to fertilize with. yaddy yada.

Not having read the article, I don't know if this is the argument, but one could claim that the petroleum is a relatively large and liquid market, and that as the price of petroleum is driven down by each prius owner, other users would find this lower price more attractive and buy up more of it. With those assumptions, the petroleum actually saved is less than the hybrid owner didn't use. Perhaps even close to 0. The point is that one person buying or not buying petroleum is probably dependent on the rest of the people in the market.

Your tongue-in-cheek Katrina victims example is an example where this wouldn't hold -- what money you give when passing a collection box on the street much more independent of each other donor's individual choice to donate.

JustDave, if you properly recalled middle school physics, you would have recalled that force=mass*velocity and it is in fact impossible to do more with less energy. Sending a ton of steel rolling down the road is going to take a set amount of force, and nothing can defy that.

Or to put it simply, there's no free lunch. People looking to feel smug while sipping their Starbucks are jumping on the hybrid bandwagon today, but in twenty years those giant batteries are going to be leaking all over junkyards and landfills. People love zero-emission hydrogen power, but to harvest the hydrogen out of water takes huge amounts of power from the local smog-belching coal plant, not to mention the fuel to drive the tanks of the stuff to the local gas station.

Efficiency is commendable, but you have to look carefully at a product's past (the power needed to get the hydrogen) and the future (disposing the batteries from hybrids) and make certain that the efficiency isn't all just smoke and mirrors.

Does anyone else get bored with silly trolls? I sure do.

On the topic of the American way of thinking:

While talking cars with a co-worker the other day I had to set him straight. Upon hearing that my wife is expecting he said, "we'll I guess you'll be buying a minivan", "No" I said. "So then an SUV", again "No". I asked him why for one child even with the few extras you need to bring along would I need something larger than a midsize sedan? But it just shows the way many Americans think. My wife has a co-worker who bought a mini-van when she found out she pregnant!?! Why! Even with a bit of extra baby gear a sedan will get better fuel economy and use less resources to build than SUV's and Mini-vans. I could rant on but I think point made.

BTW Toyota still builds SUV's that get crap fuel economy so that billboard and those stupid "Imagine" ads are Greenwashing in my mind. I once heard it takes the engergy equilivent of 20K gallons of fuel to build a car and since hybrids use more materials it my be higher. What does it cost in energy to build those batteries? How many miles does the car need to be driven to pay that back? Also until I'm conviced that in 10 to 20 years hybrid batteries arn't going to be a big disposal problem I will stay off that bandwagon.

Kitsune, if you had properly recalled middle school physics, you would know that force=mass*acceleration. You *can* do more with less if you have a mechanical system, because they are not nearly 100% efficient, especially when considering cars. If you increase efficiency from 35% to 40%, you can indeed at least do the same with less (or do more with the same), because you've managed to harness energy that was previously lost through heat/sound/wind resistance/friction/etc.

My general question is: Are hybrid batteries in landfills any worse than all the other car batteries that are already there?

Tim, Toyota does Life Cycle Analysis on its newest vehicles.

Unfortunately, I can't locate detailed numbers on specific vehicles in English, but there's data on Toyota's Japanese website. Take a look at the information for the Kluger (Highlander):
http://toyota.jp/klugerhybrid/ecology/index.html

Towards the bottom of the page is this chart:
http://toyota.jp/klugerhybrid/ecology/image/06-p01.gif

Basically, they compare an average gasoline vehicle in the same vehicle class (A) with the Highlander Hybrid (B) across five types of emissions (which you'll recognize from their chemical symbols). The colors in the upper right of the chart form the components of each emission category.

Blue - raw materials production
Brown - vehicle manufacture
Yellow - operating the vehicle
Red - maintaining the vehicle
Green - waste

Except for a slightly larger amount of particulate matter created (which is overwhlemingly produced in the raw material phase), the hybrid is better in the other emissions categories.

Though they don't account for energy directly, CO2 is a good proxy for it. And you can see the hybrid produces far less CO2 over its lifecycle than a comparable vehicle.

Toyota also produces an annual environmental report in English that covers things much more in depth for the company as a whole [file is about 5 MB in size]:

http://a230.g.akamai.net/7/230/2320/v001/toyota.download.akamai.com/2320/toyota/media/about/2005envrep.pdf

Kitsune and JustDave, you're both right/wrong.

Kitsune - The whole "basic physics" theory holds no water whatsoever. Who cares how force is calculated. It's not relevant when discussing gasoline "savings". I believe your point was that no energy is "saved", true, but the article is not about energy; it's about petroleum.

JustDave - I can't completely agree with you either. Gasoline used will always be gasoline used. A more efficient hybrid may use less gasoline, but it is still using gas. Your argument to Kitsune using money spent at the grocery store is not valid. You are not forced to spend money. You may want to purchase something and when buying it on sale you may spend less, but you're still spending money. If the converse were true you could get rich by shopping at sales all day long, "saving" money, and forget about work.

The point to take away from all this is: it is our, each individual person on the earth, decisions that dictate the consumtpion rate of our common resources. We decide where we live and work and how we transport ourselves from place to place.

Petroleum is NOT a necessity.

I think the WSJ is right on this one. If demand for oil for use in cars dropped by 1 bln barrels/yr in this country due to widespread adoption of hybrid technology, it would not result in 1 bln barrles/yr less oil being consumed globally. It would result in more oil being consumed by other nations, or for different uses in this country, because the demand for oil is highly elastic. As demand drops the price would drop, causing solar and other energy sources to be less cost-effective, and trips by motor-home to the mountains to ride ATVs would be cheaper, in other words, the use would just shift to other forms of consumption as the price dropped.

The only way to reduce overall use of oil in this country is to ensure the price stays high, either using taxes as they do in Europe, or by restricting supply with import quotas.

I've been in this argument on other pages. I hate to say it, but it breaks down between those who can follow an economic argument in rigorous detail, and those who cannot.

1. If I drive X miles in a hybrid, I use less gas.

2. By reducing "quantity demanded" I will discourage both price increases and current production.

3. Other folks, seeing those "lower" prices may be encouraged to maintain, or expand, their consumption.

That's all good economics, but the leap made by the WSJ is that factor "3" will completely balance (or exceed) factor "2." I think the evidence for that is both sketchy and self-fulfilling. If we encourage both SUVs and hybrids, they are likely to balance. A self-fulfilling prophesy.

On the other hand, if we (as a society, and internationally) successfully encourage fuel conservation across the board, we'll have a different kind of self-fulfilling prophesy: at the least a reduction in the rate of increase in gasoline consumption per capita.

And certainly, every "consuming nation" currently has efforts under way to reduce consumption, from China, through the United States, to Europe and beyond.

BTW, it might be a little bit of cognitive dissonance to say that hybrids don't matter, even as we hand out tax credits to their buyers. Obviously we are, as a society, attempting to kick-start a trend in this direction.

It's just too bad we don't have the guts to move beyond credits (give aways) to gas taxes (disincentives across the board).

Ok, looks like there are two issues here.

1. supply and demand.

If lots of people buy less gas-guzzling cars out of thin air, demand drops. Likewise prices will drop and Jr. can enjoy his Hummer for a few years more.

2. political will.

Does this nation (or any other) WANT less oil consumption? If so, they should raise gas taxes and let the market do the rest. If not, then there is no point and the WSJ is right saying that we shouldn't care about Priuses.

In the end, driving efficient cars is an economic decision only on the personal level, not on the national / global level. It comes down to the question, whether one takes into account the effect of fossil fuels on global climate. If one chooses to disbelieve any such influence, then the WSJ position is self-consistent and, from an economical perspective, valid.

I hate to be pedantic, but the WSJ doesn't just talk about the market forces, but they also call the outcome.

There isn't really evidence for that. The net US gasoline consumption over the next 5 years will be the result of the sum of market, social, and regulatory forces over that time.

Anyone who says they know the outcome of that complex equation has to be lying to themselves or to you.

(BTW, wouldn't the recent SUV sales decline mean that we have ALREADY shifted the national fuel economy in an observable way?)

Thank you Odograph for very succinctly hitting the nail on the head. Mr. Jenkins article is not an economic analysis or a polictical analysis. It is simply an expression of fatalism that is woven into absurdity. Even as basic polemic, the article does not pass the "smell test." It sounds like an absurd argument because it is absurd, even though it is sprinkled with some ideas that sound vaguely like economic principles. The response to Mr. Jenkins is so simple that it seems silly to even have to say it: if we all used less oil, then less oil would have been used.