Tuesday, June 10, 2008

How big is your Prius' carbon footprint?

So you're one of those arugula eating "progressives" patting yourself on the back for that Prius purchase.

Well, maybe we should all kick you in the balls for the size of your carbon footprint.
Consider the eco-conscious automobile par excellence, the Toyota Prius. As it turns out, manufacturing the Prius's battery is extraordinarily carbon-intensive. Paying off this carbon debt through fuel savings will take 46,000 miles, according to Wired. Only after 100,000 miles would the Prius catch up with carbon savings offered by a ten-year-old Toyota Tercel. And the Prius would never catch up with a 1994 Geo Metro XFi.

By now the Prius is a cliche. Tooling around in an ancient, airbag-less deathtrap, by far the greener choice, is not. So one hopes the celebrity avant-garde will start bidding up the price of aging Tercels and Geos and Chevrolet Sprints, tricking them out and inspiring America's Joneses to keep up. Soon we'd see almost-new automobiles sporting faux rust, the better to convince us of their owners' environmental virtue. But somehow I doubt that Planet Green and the world's leading automobile manufacturers will push this line too hard. After all, used car dealers generally don't have big advertising budgets.


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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Right On

Anonymous said...

Yawn. Another non sequitur. A Wired article from a year ago, that compares the carbon footprint "debt" of a new Toyota Prius to that of a ten-year-old Toyota Tercel is meaningless.

Toyota does not build ten-year-old Tercels. Chevy does not build 15 year old Geo Metro XFis.

News flash: No car manufacturer builds used cars. SOMEBODY has to buy the car NEW in order for it to be available to somebody else as a used car 10 or 15 years later.

What's the carbon footprint if I buy a used 2001 Toyota Prius, instead of rushing to the dealer to buy a new 2010?

Flush that Wired article down the toilet, to join the CNW Marketing study that concluded that a Hummer is better for the environment than a Prius too.

Anonymous said...

anyone that buys a new car sucks at recycling. people are willing to recycle grocery bags, but still NEED a NEW car. forget that thousands of people DROVE to work to manufacture, assamble, and sell that new car.....at best it's economic stimulus - stupid style.

Unknown said...

i forgot.....speaking of stupid style, lets put your name on a an open pit nickle mine as a primary contributor. there is a sight to behold greenie!