Controversial Study Rates Hummers Over Hybrids... For Now
by Rose Fox, New York City 
on 07.30.06
A friend pointed us to an enormous study of cars undertaken by Art Spinella and his team at CNW Market Research. It's called "Dust to Dust" and it tracks the energy used in creating, operating, and scrapping numerous different types of cars, even taking into account the different amounts and types of pollution caused by production in different countries (including whether factory workers are likely to commute via public transportation). The surprising result is that based on those numbers, it's possible to claim that Hummers are, at the moment, a more energy-efficient choice than hybrids.
Before you swallow your gum, though, consider some of the relevant factors. Hybrids are new enough that no one really knows how many miles you can put on one before they fall apart. When you're discussing cost per mile, that's an important question. CNW went with Toyota's expected lifetime miles figure for the Prius, 100,000, but it's unclear how accurate that is (some hybrid Priuses in use as taxis have reportedly exceeded that figure by a considerable margin). In addition, conventional cars are made with established technology where the high discovery costs have already been paid; hybrids, by contrast, are still undergoing serious development and change, so the R&D costs are high and it's much harder to recycle the pieces of the vehicle when it reaches the end of its life. The nice folks over at theWatt got Spinella on one of their podcasts and asked him to clarify these and other points. Interesting quotes from that interview and the study itself are below the fold; they make it clear that hybrids are still the environmentally sound way to go.
(Please read this entire post before commenting.)
"[This study] would be totally different in three years," said Spinella. "The hybrids will look significantly better. The new hybrids they are developing now—the new ones that I've seen, Prius III and Prius IV—are so much more simplified. They'll do what the current versions do, but with far less complexity, lighter motors, more recyclable parts, and longer lasting components. The current Prius, for all intents and purposes, will be the Model T."
The report is enormous, but the final chapter is short and simple:
To be quite up front, there is no actual conclusion to this study. It is, hopefully, only a beginning of a discussion about the social cost of energy.Just as an example of some of the issues future reports from other sources and investigators must consider include those already pointed out in this report but should increasingly note the small items in the calculations. Just a few:
- The type of material used other than major panels or understructures have important impact (albeit seemingly small overall) such as chrome. It is one of the most difficult and expensive to make and dispose of. The pollution and clean-up cost for such material far outweigh its seemingly insignificant contribution to a vehicle's appearance or cost.
- "Manufacturing" must include suppliers and the design, development and manufacture of support machinery, not just the use of those machines. Human labor is far less energy intense than a robotic milling machine, even though there are clear cost advantages when replacing human labor with robotics.
- Dies, molds and related equipment are more complex for more technologically advanced vehicles. This can be the difference between a Maybach and a Sonata or between the Scion xB vs. the Scion xA. More bending, more components, more cost.
- Some portion of the worker transportation to and from work at all levels of the auto design/develop to disposal can be a critical component in the overall energy expense. This relates in part to where those manufacturing plants are located be it in China or Tennessee and what the infrastructure demands are to support that manufacturing plant. (Note: CNW used a 22 to 46 percent range of employee transportation costs related to the individual models based on actual surveys of what portion of total driving is specifically for work and adjusted for the fact that worker would obviously be employed somewhere else if not at the car plant.)
- Autos are fully a quarter-plus of all items disposed of in the U.S. as a share of energy expended to recycle, re-use and/or dispose of non-recyclable components and material.
- To sell 17 million vehicles the auto industry needs roughly 45 million shoppers or intenders. No evaluation except this one has included that calculation in the overall energy cost of a single automobile.
While we could expand on this for pages, the real conclusion is that there are many other factors involved than the simple "fuel economy" cost that most consumers believe is the true measure of a vehicleís efficiency.
For environmentalists and those concerned about CO2, for example, the adage that this emission knows no (national) borders is not only true but important to the discussion about pollution, global warming or related discussions. And that leads back to the ability of an automaker to produce simplified vehicles, the ability of the recycle/disposal industries to increasingly more efficient means of using those vehicles at the end of their lives.
For government agencies, a serious consideration of the global impact has to be addressed when deciding on a local regulation regardless of the final decision.
For automakers, it is important to consider all aspects of energy consumption and how this important social product impacts society in general.
For other researchers into this topic, we would recommend adding as many factors as conceivable to their evaluations to better understand the overall impact.
For CNW, it means continued refinement of the data whether it results in significant alternations in methodology or how the data is reported. We welcome comments, criticisms, suggestions and recommendations for a better way of reporting the findings. We expect to continue on this path for some time into the future.
We'll be keeping an eye out for future studies. In the meantime, we suggest skipping cars altogether and going with public transportation, a bicycle, or an electric scooter; if you do have to drive, then carpool, keep your car in good condition so that it operates efficiently, look into whether Zipcar or another car sharing service is available in your area, and keep an eye out for that next generation of hybrids. (If you're in a position to buy one now, do; it tells the manufacturers there's a market. Also, support local legislation that encourages hybrid use and development.) We look forward to the day when they beat out all-gasoline models from start to finish. ::CNW's 'Dust to Dust' Automotive Energy Report via ::The Reason Foundation, ::HybridCars.com, and ::theWatt; see also Treehugger on transportation
Follow @TreeHugger on Twitter & get our headlines with @TH_rss!
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This is somewhat silly. The Hummer has been around since World War 2. It's had decades of research and development behind it and it's from another era. The hybrids are still very new. Give them 40 years of research and I guarentee they will be a smarter choice.
To be honest... It hasn't been discussed much but I'd love to see cars that are easier to assemble and easy for the 'common person' to work on... but to that end we can resurrect the old VW Beetle. It's a little more with the times than the Hummer.
This study is a red herring; basing life span on the auto maker's estimated life span for hybrids and on known values for the non-hybrids is very poor science.
The study operates on the principle that a hummer ( or other large vehicles) can be driven for 2+ times the total distance as a hybrid!
Bah-humbug.
I don't really think that a Hummer is truly more effecient that a hybrid. However, I do know that simply becuase a vehicle is a hybrid, doesn't mean that it gets better gas mileage. edmunds.com is a good website to compare vehicles. By comparing the same make/model of an SUV (one being the hybrid and the other being a standard), I was surprised to find that the non-hybrid got better gas mileage, and had by far, more safety features. The only real benefit that I could see was when comparing standard size Honda cars with the standard size Honda hybrid.
Hybrid technology is really in its infancy and I think that in order to get away from the evil ne'er do wells at OPEC we need to start really move ahead with this sort of technology.
This "research" was done by a marketing agency that happens to hold a multimillion dollar annual contract with GM. What do you expect it to say.
If we're pointing out faults, part of the huge expense of the hybrids, according to the "report", is the cost of building new factories. Were the hummer's factories not built some time in the past? Why are those costs not included?
This isn't research, it is marketing pap.
I disagree that the study is necessarily bad science. Presumably Toyota & the other hybrid manufactures know what they put into those hybrids and decided that 100K miles is a reasonable expected life.
I would certainly have some serious doubts if the authors came up with that 100K number on their own.
As the author of the study states, a lot of hybrid technology is just out of the labs. I can see why it might have both a short life and high disposal/recycling cost.
The fact is that right now it isn't cost/energy efficient to drive a hybrid. That will certainly change over the next few years as the technology matures. The people buying Priuses (Prii?) aren't helping the environment today, but they are laying the groundwork for the real environmental benefits in 5-10 years.
How hysterical is it that the publication is called 'Reason.' According to this line of reasoning, the smartest thing we can do is just adopt the W strategy: stay the course. The argument here boils down to the fact that because they are going in a new direction, they are increasing costs.
As for Ford's decision, it is completely laughable to claim that they have figured out that hybrids don't make sense. What they figured out was that they were getting killed and couldn't compete. Further, there is no discussion of their chosen alternative: 'Corn, grown in the homeland.' Talk about totally phony. Get a clue.
Well, TrollPatrol, you could either go with numbers that Toyota gives out or... make up your own. That's worse science.
I'm just saying they didn't have too much of a choice, as I don't think any prius II's would have been driven 200k+ miles yet.
I would trust nothing from that 'news' source.
I think the disposal and recycling values are very dodgy. Their claim is that a $20,000 car takes $200,000 to dispose of. They're not very enlightening about how they translate energy into dollars, but this doesn't make much sense to me, and they don't justify their numbers. By weighting "decomissioning" the car heavily, it minimizes fuel efficiency gains. For example, the graph above shows that 15% of the cost is disassembly, 15% recyclable expenditures, and 10% non-recyclable for the hybrid Civic. 40% of the car's energy useage is getting rid of it? They'll need more than hand-waving to convince me that they've got it right.
THere is actually an International Standards Organization (ISO) standard for the methodology of performing life cycle inventories, per this report. It involves professional peer review by other non-biased experts, the full citation of data sources --- this would be down as far as whether the electricity for making a machine tool came from coal versus nuclear power for example --- and much more. The fact that this is being done by a "market research firm" is a clue as to whether the persons who actually did the work followed that standard.
There's no way that a market research firm can afford to keep full time LCA experts on staff once a project like this is completed. More than likely the actual work was outsourced to a specialty practice LCA firm. Maybe someone who actually did the analysis work would be kind enough to leave a comment about how the LCA peer review was accomplished?
Not that I agree with the results of this study, but to respond to David Rinck's comments that the Hummer has been around since WWII, it has not. The early designs were developed by AM General starting in the late 1970's and the first order was not delivered until 1985. While his point that development on the Humvee has long since been conlcluded and it uses established technologies, is valid, it is important to remain factual in any arguments against what appear to be biased, industry funded studies.
Based on how this article is written I feel it is more of an opinion piece than fact. I seriously doubt its credability. Not that everything is false but some things seem... well just plain made up. Take this quote: "Spinella's customer satisfaction surveys show that 62 percent of hybrid owners are dissatisfied with the fuel-economy performance of their cars given what they have paid for them". Are over half of you Prius owners out there disappointed with the mileage. I don't own one but I have rented one on two occasions. I averaged 50 miles per gallon with mainly highway driving with the AC on. That kind of mileage doesn't disappoint me one bit.
The numbers, even if they don't all add up, do provide a significant amount of food for thought. The goal is energy conservation not pollution shifting.
My wife and I were trying to imagine who would drive an H2 or H3 to it's estimated 200k mile lifetime.
Wow it's amazing how many people offhandedly defend hybrids. How many people drive any car for 200k? Not many, most get a new car every 2-3 years.
--
editor note: But the car doesn't disappear at that point. It can still be driven up to 200k+ by many different drivers.
So basically a Hummer wins because it is expected to drive miles over its lifespan, and therefore spread out its manufacturing energy expenditure over more miles? I see two problems with this.
1. Honda Civic is consistently in the list of the most reliable cars, and Hummer is consistently in the list of the least reliable cars (http://autos.msn.com/advice/CRArt.aspx?contentid=4023544#below)
If this is the case, how can a Hummer put on more miles then a Civic?
Did they factor in the energy used to manufacture repair parts?
2. Maybe Hummer drivers inherently put more miles on their vehicles than a Civic owner. A Civic owner owns their car for 10 years and puts 100,000 miles on it, while a Hummer owner owns their car for 10 years and puts 300,000 miles on it. This would skew results toward the Hummer because the figure they are looking at is (energy used)/(miles drive). If the Hummer driver had purchase a Civic instead, they would have used less overall energy.
Why is the life time energy usesage of the cars measured in dollars instead of watts or joules? That makes the study confusing and it seems really fishy to me.
The basic math in this story is so awful it almost deserves framing.
Each year residential cars and light trucks travel over 2.5 trillion Miles. Using the CNW 'industry average' number of $2.25 energy cost per mile, that works out to 5.6 trillion dollars. The US GDP is 12 trillion. Over 1/3 of the economy goes into the energy costs of owning our cars? What about housing, schools, air travel, electricity, all other industries?
In fact, the total amount of energy expenditure in the us for 2002 was a 0.6 trillion dollars. (source: Energy Information Administration ) This covered gasoline, natural gas, coal,hydro, etc, etc. Only some fraction of this expenditure was for building, maintaining and disposing of cars (cars are the most successful recycling story in the world).
I think that the persons who wrote this report may think that they did an honest job, but the simple fact is that the report is total complete garbage.
If you download the report, they even have a few people in the report who point out these absurdities, and their answers to them are laughable.
Anything to get on CNN.
Tom Andersen
David... "This is somewhat silly. The Hummer has been around since World War 2. It's had decades of research and development behind it and it's from another era."
Ummmmm... Not true. The JEEP has been around since WWII. The AM General HUMVEE prototype was made in 1979 and after testing, was sold to the ARMY for the first time in the early 80's.