[SGVLUG] [OT] Especially for Tom & his Prius.... [my rebuttal, then I'll shut up]

[Dustin Laurence]

On Mon, Jul 10, 2006 at 06:48:42PM -0700, Emerson, Tom wrote:

> I suspect since I was targeted by name I should weigh in at some
> point...

Yeah, be a good sport and come out to face the villagers with torches
and pitchforks. :-)

Nah, really, I just thought the piece was fun.  But we can talk actual
issues, that's fun too.  It might even save the Tasmanian Fruit Bat. :-)

> I've seen this host on other [discovery-channel-esque] programs, and I
> suspect some of this was indeed intended to be "tongue in cheek"
> reporting.

Well, yes, but it isn't *only* that.  However, he's so funny about it
that the humor aspect is what counts most.  After all, we all want to
save the Tasmanian fruit bat, don't we (I wonder if he made that up or
it's the Spotted Owl equivalent for Ye Olde Empire)?

But it's good food for thought, and I've been researching this because
we really have to replace the dying Geo.  I've been looking for the
"best" solution and in particular the lowest ecological footprint per
dollar.  I have a very different answer than I expected.

> ...As
> Dustin alluded to in a previous message, it isn't "just about MPG" --
> although not discussed much, there is a point to be made about the
> amount of "greenhouse gasses" and what-not emitted by the vehicle -- it
> is essentially damn near zero for the prius, which was the final
> decision point I made between this and the Honda that was available at
> the time.

Here I don't agree.  We originally expected to buy a Prius, but we've
changed our mind, and Greenhouse gasses are a major reason why.  Note
that this is totally separate from point emissions, which is what the
CARB cares about and mostly what the EPA cares about.  I think you're
confusing the two.

Greenhouse gas emissions are mostly CO2 for vehicles (you also get H2O,
which is a greenhouse gas, but as that rains out we're not worried about
an accumulation--it is a higher order problem, at worst), and those
emissions are pretty much exactly proportional to the fuel efficiency of
the vehicle (with some tweak factors for fuel I don't feel that much
like working out, but see below).  So the greenhouse footprint of a
Prius is more or less however many gallons of fossil fuel it burns.
That is inescapable.  If you get 46 mpg in a Prius you have exactly half
the greenhouse gas emissions per mile as a family car getting 23 mpg.

> In particular, "the average car" in this class had an emmision level
> of x% (I don't remember the exact number, but it was integral and >
> 1); the Honda was claiming ".1%", while toyota claimed the prius was
> ".001%" or something equally insane :)

This is absolutely *not* greenhouse gasses.  It is point emissions of
things like NOx, sulfur, and particulates.  It doesn't count greenhouse
emissions at all--remember, neither the CARB nor the EPA officially
cares about them.  You probably know that, but what you wrote sounded
like you equated the two.

> An interesting chart is posted on a toyota site:
> 
> http://www.toyota.com/vehicles/2005/prius/glossary/emission_levels.html
> 
> Which points out that to classify as "SULEV", the maximum allowable
> emissions is 10 pounds of "smog forming" stuff per 150,000 miles (the
> California averate is 91 pounds -- ironically, "ULEV" classification
> ALLOWS for 103 pounds...)

Right.  You could emit the carbon in a tropical rainforest, and as long
as it is all fully oxidized CO2 that would count as *zero* by that
measure.

Moral.  *DON'T* use that measure if you care about greenhouse gasses.

OK, so there are two entirely distinct kind of emissions, point
emissions counted by CARB and the EPA (call them GTLA's--Government
Three Letter Acronyms, even if they aren't *three* letters) and
greenhouse gasses which aren't.  You mentioned greenhouse gasses first,
so let's talk about them.

For ordinary fossil fuels like gasoline and diesel only MPG matters.  So
a Prius is really great, right?  Well, yes and no.  It's quite good if
it substitutes for something that gets a lot less, but it has the most
overoptimistic EPA rating in the history of the world, at least after
2003.  My research seems to indicate that the <2004 generations (I
called them first gen, but Tom just said that's wrong) get about 41-47
or so for most people not trying to drive really gentle.  Consumer
Reports got 41, for example and only a couple three more >=2003.  The
EPA numbers are 48 combined for <=2003, and 55(!) >=2004.  Essentially,
the bigger motor and battery pack simply broke the EPA's estimates.

You can see this at http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/sbs.htm, where the
user reports for 2003 average 46.8 and for 2004 average 47.1, probably
not even a statistically significant change.

On the other hand, VW TDI diesel owners regularly meet or exceed the EPA
combined rating of 45; the 2003 owner reports for the 2003 TDI Jetta
average 47.3 mpg, *higher* than the 2004 Prius (but not by a significant
margin, I'm quite sure).

So--greenhouse emissions are roughly the same (ignoring a bit of
difference in carbon content between diesel and gasoline), and we'd have
to take into account other factors (one factor might be driving fun,
which I think would heavily favor the VW, but let's ignore that for
now).

One other factor might be point emissions, where the Prius is indeed
much better than the VW (thanks to too much sulfur in diesel until this
September, you can't run a catalytic converter on a diesel in the US,
which really bites).  However, we don't have to use "normal" fuel:
better still is a Honda Civic GX running on natural gas (yes, they're
available if you know where to look).  The mileage isn't great, but
methane is super clean, and the fuel is (currently still) much cheaper
than gas.  As a bonus, the tweak factor for methane is *not* small,
maybe 20% or something (I'd have to look) lower in CO2 per unit of
energy.  Given that the economy isn't nearly as good I doubt it's CO2
footprint is lower than the Prius, but still it's a big overall win.

But it's still fossil fuel.  Here is the nice thing about a diesel--it
doesn't have to be fossil fuel.  You can run that VW on biodiesel, and
while your footprint isn't zero, it's maybe 78% lower than petrodiesel
(actually it's 100% lower, or zero greenhouse gasses, since the carbon
was removed frome the atmosphere in the first place, but once you factor
in the fertilizer and agricultural fuel it appears to be about 78%).
The Prius, or any gasoline car, would have to get 150-200mpg to have as
low a Greenhouse footprint.  It's also lower on all scales except NOx.
It's also not too expensive (~$1200 kit plus labor if you don't want to
do it yourself) to turn it into a flex-fuel vehicle that can burn
straight vegetable oil, if you have a source of clean oil.  That's much
cheaper than making a Prius a plug-in hybrid.

And that is why we're probably going to buy a VW--we can actually do
*much* better, like a factor of 3 or 4, on greenhouse gases than we can
with a Prius or a cng vehicle.  Nothing else seems to offer that
possibility (I exclude pure electric and other extinct and/or mythical
creatures).  We will likely prioritize greenhouse gasses and non-fossil
fuels over point emissions (where the GX just dominates).  The fact that
the VW is genuinely fun to drive and the GX, is, well, gutless also
helps. :-)

> generation" prius(*), the 2004+ versions are third generation.  I can,
> with reasonable effort, get 80+ mph (to >ahem< "pass" another vehicle)
> which would be well over 100kph.  A third generation prius has more
> power, so I'd imagine getting >100mph would not be difficult; OTOH, I've
> not had the need nor desire to exceed 100mph in this car, so I haven't
> exactly tested this particular claim...]

I cannot imagine not being curious enough to push it that hard.  That's
what the road to Vegas is for.  That and seeing if your car has enough
downforce to not become an airplane (if the other drivers are any
indication).

>    economy -- he did point out 45mpg, and this is the interesting thing:
> given the accent, right-hand-drive, and other factors, I gathered this
> was a UK based review, which leads me to believe he was thinking in
> terms of "imperial" gallons, not "US gallons".

Maybe.  But that makes the comparison 45mpg vs 60mpg for the Lupo, which
still more or less makes his point.

> [aside part two: As such, I actually consistently get 45 miles per US
> gallon in this car; the 2004+ versions are supposed to get between 50
> and 60 mpg as referenced by the "quote" the sidekick read from a
> magazine.

Based on my web research, this is an EPA fantasy.  The difference seems
to be somewhere between a couple of mpg and noise, except when the EPA
dyno goes nuts (I somehow suspect this is when the engine kicks off
entirely and the motor runs on stored power--*stored power whose
pollution was emitted before the test began*).

20% of 45mph would be an additional 9 miles/gallon, bringing

> his result up to 54mpg and well within the tolerance of "how the EPA
> drives vs. the average joe"]

Well, OK, we can compare 54mpg to 75 mpg instead.  Still, he's got a
point--if you can do *that much better* then the Prius is hardly
anything to get excited about, except on point emissions (which he
doesn't address, a fault of the review).  Besides that, the biggest
failure is that he doesn't realize that *you can't buy anything
comparable to the Lupo in the US*.  The Lupo has a 1.0 L turbo diesel,
and Wikipedia suggests either he *did* convert to US gallons, or he was
a real leadfoot: it insists it can get up to 78 mpUSg or 94 mpIMPg.

It also looks like a smaller car than the Prius, and so maybe it is a
class below in size.  On the other hand, besides being funny, his point
was that if you want to "quit clubbing baby seals" then you should buy
whatever emits the least, so I don't know that it's entirely unfair to
compare them.

That isn't to say that the Prius doesn't have a better ecological
footprint of either type than most vehicles, and for short stop-and-go
commutes it probably really is better than the VW (diesels *hate* to be
run cold).

I just became unhappy that hybrids get more attention than they deserve
and particularly that, say, an Accord Hybrid which uses the electric
motor as the equivalent of weak but repeatable nitrous injection basks
in the same glory as the Prius or the newest Civic hybrids, which really
do use the system for better economy.  The GX beats it all hollow on
point emissions and may do as well on greenhouse emissions, but it
appears to be less fun to drive than the Prius and may not be as
practical, not sure.  For freeway cruising and for greenhouse emissions
nothing is going to beat the VW running on biofuel, and even though they
have a price premium it doesn't seem as bad and that for the Prius, so
you can probably afford to pay for the biofuel (however, it's *hard* to
find, I'll give you that, unless you have it delivered which is
expensive).

Anyway, that isn't really to knock the Prius except to say it shouldn't
be synonymous with "green", let alone all the performance hybrids
out there.  I see it like this:

Point emissions: Civic GX dominates Greenhouse gasses: TDI running on
biodiesel dominates Best compromise: depends on weighting, it *might* be
the Prius.  Or might not.  I think I could create a graph to see; there
are few enough parameters here that I think there is actually a simple
answer.

> There is also a google-group devoted to hacking the prius
> ["prius_technical_stuff"] which I'm sure has many articles on adding
> alternative OS's 

That's pretty cool.  The amazing amount of information on TDIs was a
selling point, and it would be nice if there is something similar for
the Prius.

There was one hack I liked, at least.  If we bought a Prius I had
planned to try to get a 2004 so I could try to convert it to a plug-in
hybrid.  I thought that would be pretty cool, still do.  The problem
there is that with the premium for one that new, plus the $5000-$10,000
to convert it, I could buy a 2000-2003 VW, several mileage enhancements
like re-chipping it, putting in a taller 5th cog, and so on, run it on
100% biodiesel pretty much forever, even buy the Elsbett flex-fuel
conversion so it can run on straight vegetable oil (I kid you not), and
probably *still* save money.  So I just couldn't justify it, not even as
cool as a plug-in hybrid would be.

Say, assuming we manage to buy this thing, I think some more of you
should get into the act so we can have a "my car is greener than your
car" showdown. :-)

Dustin, OK, maybe not

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