The Real Cost of Driving....

[Brian Ellis]

Indeed - but that is not the logical conclusion for the simple fact that he is already sitting with the caddy in the driveway as it is - he did not buy a Corolla.

Nor did he buy a Prius, but that doesn't stop him from making the comparison that started this discussion. And my original point is that owning gas-guzzlers today is selfish and anti-social, unless you have a real professional need for it. The guy's point is implying that it is better to buy one on the grounds that it is cheaper to run than a more environmentally-friendly car. He may be right but, fortunately, more enlightened persons have more social conscience, which is why US sales of SUVs are down and those of hybrids are up.

[LvR]

And my original point is that owning gas-guzzlers today is selfish and anti-social

I think the real selfish and anti-social thing is the fact that there are social people insisting on seeing only hybrids or moderns or even smalls on the road. I would agree that would be ideal if all people were financially equally well-off, with exactly the same social and transport requirements, but we are not.

In South Africa where I live, the cost of a typical new small family car is just about equal to half that of a small house on an income of about one tenth the cost of a new family car per year. Yet we have huge distances to travel due to under developed or non-existent public transport .

So I guess one could then argue that we should not be allowed to drive the older vehicles during a process of development because of the past green screw-ups by the now-oh-so-green-aware-and already-developed people? - a process that may take another few tens of years to reach the de-facto US/European standards of green non-selfishness ...................................

Lets say your social conscience allows you agree that we at least may be allowed to screw the environment some during that time for obvious reasons,.......................... who the hell are you to then glare at a person in the street in US that may be equally less financially fortunate while driving a cheap caddy while making ends meet (but on effectively the same footing as us plebs) than those driving the latest and greatest super green vehicles making the green rules while sitting comfortably in their huge houses, smoking cigarettes, chewing McDonald's burgers bred in a cage and not in a open field etc etc .......................................... and yes he will most likely be driving a huge caddy because the price/secondhand value of those will be close to zero as dictated by the greenies driving their latest modern miniature wonders.

Easy to talk green when there is food on the table and a roof over your head.

[Brian Ellis]

I'm sorry, but I've not dictated that everyone should buy a Prius or Insight of even a Lupo, and I have suggested it will take a decade before the fuel consumption and thus emissions are halved. But, even if you will be able to buy a Cadillac or Lincoln for next to nothing, it will not be essentially because social conscience dictates it.

It will be because fuel prices will rocket as there is less and less fuel pumped out of the ground. If oil today is $70-odd/bbl, you can bet your bottom dollar that it will be more than $200/bbl before this decade is out. With fuel in the US foreseeable at $10/gal, the poor, in their free cars, will not be able to afford to fill 'em up. We are ineluctably heading rapidly to Peak Oil, probably hitting it in 2008/9. It is the already-faltering US economy that will be hit the hardest because they will have to compete with China and India as oil becomes an increasingly sellers' market. The US consumer is not insulated against this because a) oil is traded in dollars and b) the price of fuel is not buffered by high taxes, as in Europe. As the price rises, so the dollar will fall, entering into an inflationary spiral. The increasing costs will be less hard for the non-dollar area because petrodollars will be cheaper to buy, which is why China is slowly freeing itself from the dollar. That is why I could buy only $1.40 for a Cyprus pound three years ago, but $2.10 today. It is becoming cheap money. It is also why South Africa is making motor fuel from coal, even though the energetic efficiency is deplorable.

The world is changing and those that cannot change with it will fall by the wayside.

[ZokesPro]

Cars are expensive, especially in Quebec where the roads are left unmaintained and your car gets chewed up in half it's expected lfiespan. I try as much as possible to use the car only to go to work, otheriwse I bike it. i've gotten lazy since I got my car, damn I miss biking, prolly going to do another couple of hours today.

[Nolicorice]

WTF! Seriously, what kind of dimwit did these calculations?? One cannot include the cost of buying the cars ($4,8K and $27+K) into the cost of driving them over a two year period!!! Why? Because they won't be worthless if you then decide to sell them!! It's only the depreciation over that period of time that can be added to the cost of owning and driving them. That should even things out quite a bit.

Not very politically correct, but too true;

Let's repeat that for good measure:

Old Caddillac: $0.70 per mile

Oh-so P.C. Toyota Prius Hybrid: $1.42 per mile

The "econobox" is TWICE AS EXPENSIVE TO DRIVE!!
And people wonder why we still have our old Voyager & Grand Caravan, both of which are more reliable & cheaper to run/maintain than either of the above

[MultimediaMan]

You lose almost 50% of the money you invested in your car the moment you drive it off the lot, unless you go for a two year trade-in cycle (for the same brand of vehicle). The only way you keep your principal "in-play" is to keep up the two year trade in cycle. That's not environmentally sound, it's just business.

Hybrids cost quite a bit more to maintain because of longevity issues surrounding their batteries. Public safety concerns come up because the risk of electric shock rescue personnel can be exposed to...think about a bad wreck in wet weather.

Most hybrid's are built with the Devil's own as far as raw materials go. You won't see see a RoHS sticker on one for a very, very long time. The environmental cost in building Hybrids is a very open question. The amount of fuel used in producing them vs. regular vehicles should be figured as the total "energy budget" over the expected lifetime of the vehicle. This should include things like power losses incurred when converting energy, etc...

I sometimes wonder if we wouldn't be doing the world more of a favor by building ICE engines with NO emission controls, and focusing on thermal efficiency exclusively.

It could be that the total energy saved in reducing the complex infrastructure (Obtaining Raw materials, manufacture, design and maintenance) associated with emission controls devices and hybrids could be a bigger benefit to the environment than having to live with current ICEs which use a sizable fraction of their power running (and thus transporting) emissions control devices.

Just a thought.

[TransformX]

Actually, a well build, good lasting, well maintained gas guzzler is more enviromentally friendly than a not-so-well build, hardly lasting (around 10 years life cycle before having to replace batteries or simply junk the engine/whole car) 'eco' car.
By the way, the new Volvo cars according to what I've been hearing are bio degradable, which is nice.. BUT: they weren't planned for too hot countries like Israel, what happens is that the wire insulations starts degrading rather faster here and after a few years, people either get a short circuit, burning some cables or the WHOLE engine goes poof...

[GT98]

The Prius isn't a panica that everyone makes it out to be...everyone made by Toyoda loses money, and what company in its right mind is going to sell a product that they dont make $$$ off of, just because it gives them a warm and fuzzy?

[Nappe1]

hehe
it's always fun to watch when americans start talking about starting to care about how much their car takes gas. another even funnier discussion is when americans talk about expensive gas (which is about half what it costs here, btw. ) and how expensive buying a good new car is nowadays. (cars are here heavily taxed, so afaik you can put 35-60% on top of your Prius prices to get it in finland...) But, don't let me disturb your discussion...

[MultimediaMan]

I'll take Brian Ellis on his bet that Oil is going to be $200 a barrel by 2010....

My bet: $65

Why? It is not oil Production that is impacted, but Refining capacity and Lift capacity. New refineries are being built and should be online within two years; lift capacity is already improving. Things will stay volatile because of things like Nigerians incinerating themselves because they were drilling holes in pipelines. Oil went up $2/barrel on word that a couple of workers were kidnapped in Nigeria. This is nothing but market nerves we're seeing.

[Dr Mordrid]

Also: ~174 billion barrels in Canadas Athabasca tar sands, 60% of which are regarded as 'easily recoverable'. Ecomically; as long as prices remain >$20-25/bbl it's competative.

[LvR]

Brian - given your last post I may easily be led to conclude that the real "green" issue you are so concerned about is the color of the extra money you are going to be forced to spend sooner rather than later to continue driving fuel burning vehicles you have grown to rely on while living in a society that have in the past knowingly f-ed up the whole of the atmosphere because you had the ability to do that at the time while practicing the belief " The world is changing and those that cannot change with it will fall by the wayside"


Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth, but in the meantime the strong will have a ball.

[Brian Ellis]

I agree that refining capacity is the current bottleneck but, by 2010, the global supply, as wells dry up, will have started to ceiling out or even drop and the demand will be increasing exponentially from developing countries. The only way that the supply and demand equation can be evened out is for those who can to reduce their consumption. Otherwise, prices will rocket, aided and abetted by Mr Shell, Mr Exxon, Mr. Total, Mr BP, Mr Yukos and all the other cartelised companies.

It is true that the Athabasca oil sands are potentially rich. The only problem is that they are energetically inefficient. For every litre of motor fuel produced from them, it requires nearly another 1½ litres to mine, refine and transport it. The total ex-refinery costs are about the quadruple that of, e.g., Saudi or Russian refined products. Furthermore, it is a slow process digging up the stuff and the environmental balance sheet is very negative. I wouldn't bet too heavily on this as a major world supplier.

And you will never see an RoHS sticker on any car, simply because vehicles are exempted from the Directive. For the moment, they are covered by the ELV Directive which governs the recycling of cars after they are scrapped and which states what materials cannot be used in new vehicles. I don't know about other makes, but the Toyota hybrids, including their batteries, are >85% (by weight) economically recyclable at their end-of-life.

Actually, it is a myth about hybrids losing money. It was true at start-up, but economy of scale has now kicked in and Toyota are currently at break-even and will be profitable by the end of this year. In a year or two, as the same applies to Honda, I anticipate that they will become cheaper in real terms.

[Dr Mordrid]

You don't have to 'dig up' tar sands anymore. Steam extraction is much faster/cheaper and most of Canadas are near-surface deposits.

[cjolley]

We opperate and pay for cars just the way this guy says.
Two 1993 luxury cars, a Lexus and an Infinity, purchased when they had about 90k on them.

But. His numbers are idiotic.
Including the price of the car, not depreciation of course blows the whole calculation.

And think about this.
Where the hell did he get a 14 year old car with only 80k on it?

I mean he's got this whole thing so rigged it's meaningless.