Why driving a Falcon won't break the planet

[Bipolar]

Understanding of global warming
Discussion on hybrid vehicles being worse for the environment than other passenger vehicles
The irrelevance of CO2/carbon emmissions

8% of carbon emmissions come from passenger vehicles in Australia according to the Australian Greenhouse Office, with 50% coming from stationary energy production (electricity etc). So with all this info, it's amazing there's so much energy (lol) being put into "saving" the world from something that ultimately won't much of a difference.

Anyway, I'm trying to find something that states the total carbon footprint of vehicles so I can compare the vehicles we have at work, rather than using the Green Vehicle Guide which only takes carbon from a vehicles exhaust emmissions into account. According to it the Prius is tha bomshiz. The only Falcons that managed to make it to the list were the E-Gas ones, from XT to G6E. Before they were going off GVG ratings it was '4 cylinder vehicles only', which they soon discovered was severely flawed.

I wanna see just how much of a difference there is when comparing the vehicles carbon emmissions to their total carbon footprints so I can stick it to 'em. Sick of them changing their minds about what can be driven everytime someone comes up with a brilliant (read: kneejerk retardation of an) idea.

[Commando]

Commando's views: Priuses (Prii?) and other hybrids are the anal bifida of the car world.

Some orright Prius reads:
http://fallbackbelmont.blogspot.com/200 ... ummer.html
http://www.environmentnc.com/?p=71
http://www.carlustblog.com/2008/05/car-lust--toyot.html
http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load ... 17285.html

This article is a little gay but the discussion in the comments is interesting:
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/10 ... _prius.php

[serial_fool]

I love pointing shit like this out to people at my school, mostly chicks who have NFI about cars that go on about being green and saving the planet, that the energy required to make/ maintain a Hybrid outweighs the benefits for its 100,000 KM (which lets be honest...the first owner won't have the car by 100,000 kms) lifetime.

[Gozza]

I couldn't care less what people think. I have nothing to prove to Greenies or anyone with uneducated points of view. Say for example if you were in a conversation brimming with excitement (such as this) you argued your point with cold hard facts. Do you think they will care? If people feel like they are buying a ticket to "Planet Earth and its Ethics" buy driving a retarded car, let them.

Just for the hell of it, there has been talk of eating Kangaroos and shit instead of cows due to their methane output

[Bipolar]

If people feel like they are buying a ticket to "Planet Earth and its Ethics" buy driving a retarded car, let them.

Agreed. Where my OP comes from is committees that sit around for months deciding on all this shit because some ecowarrior group told them the Earth is coming to an end, only to change it months later, all at the taxpayers' expense (millions of dollars in staff and resources). That money could go into hospitals, or education or anything else and be of better value.

[Dezza]

And the old e-series are good for the planet as they just keep going, and are mostly made out of parts of other retired e-series! When an e-series leaves the road, a lot of the time it goes to the wreckers where it ends up keeping a few more e-series on the road! Efficient way of production and disposal!

[Malakai]

I agree totally. I wonder if you will find any CO2 emissions information on EA-EL Fords.

I see all these Suncorp staff driving around in Prii and wonder what the bottom line looks like for their fleet. I imagine if you worked out the TCO they end up paying more in the end compared to having the staff drive around in a Hyundai i30 or something similar. On the other hand the customer loyalty, repeat business and public perception they gain from their staff using only Prii might balance that out.

I think the numbers would be fascinating nonetheless.

[AaronEF8]

I couldn't care less what people think. I have nothing to prove to Greenies or anyone with uneducated points of view.

The problem is, those same people recently gave away $30 million of your money to the worlds biggest car company to build a car they were already going to build. That's K-Rudd giving Toyota $30m to build the hybrid Camry here for the uneducated.

I know these numbers aren't entirely representative of how much power it takes to build a car. Holden Elizabeth's power bill in 03-04 was roughly $2mill a month, and they were making at least 18,000 cars per month, which means each car was using roughly $110 of electricity to build. I really don't know how much of the office space was included in the bills I saw, Holden Eliz has a lot of office space, although it is needed to sell cars... Keep in mind only part of the car construction is done there too though, all the suspension, brakes, diffs, interiors, engines, transmissions etc are made in other factories, which now I think of it would chew through the electricity too.
I wonder if a greenie has ever been cleaned up by a Prius because they didn't hear it coming? I would lol excessively at that

[Bipolar]

Lmao!!!

So based on those figures and that it'd cost more to produce a hybrid, the Goverment is paying the power bill for Toyota for up to a year.

[BillyED]

havent you guys seen the top gear ep where the M3 gets a better MPG rating than a Prius?

Plus all the shipping and stuff for the batteries is mental

Its not always the car you drive but mostly the way that you drive it

[bluntltd]

The Prius with its in built battery replacement is at first glance a farce. And it is in every way. These stats that factor in carbon footpints are nebulous at best. Its the political doctrine of our time. We have to live with that. But the consumer is not going to pay for dodgy technology. Also the massive run to LPG with potential servicing problems has not made the populace on mass convert. The oil price was inflated. Anyone with a basic understanding of the market knew that. We had insane debates in parliament about 3 cents a litre. Oil is now half the price it was. Petrol is now $1.20 something compared tp $1.70 something. That is a saving for me of about $30 on a tank. We still have not seen the real price at the bowser.
Hang on to your sixes and V8's my friends. They are the saviour of the free world. They are there. To create a new car burns up CO2, steel, iron ore transport etc. The CO2 alarmists have no formula to factor this in.

[Rollin]

I like to help the environment by cramming as much nasty greenhouse air into my engine as I possibly can at all times

Bottom line: Prius are gay, the Govt is gay and has NFI, and E85 is the best shit since sliced bread, because it will let me cram more of that nasty atmosphere into my engine without it going pop

[Gozza]

The problem is, those same people recently gave away $30 million of your money to the worlds biggest car company to build a car they were already going to build

I had 30 million? Damn . what the f(ck went wrong

[Commando]

Brewster's Millions?

[Russ.]

Anyway, I'm trying to find something that states the total carbon footprint of vehicles so I can compare the vehicles we have at work, rather than using the Green Vehicle Guide which only takes carbon from a vehicles exhaust emmissions into account.

PM me your email adress and I can send you something (or tell me a way to upload a PDF to the forums for people to download). Its a 458 Page PDF doco called:

Dust to Dust
The Energy Cost of New Vehicles
From Concept to Disposal
The non-technical report

It was written around 2001 i think

It goes through and studies around 300+ cars and ranks them according to their cost for manufacture, disposal, fuel consuption, recycle-ability etc. and ranks them according to cost per mile (for the average life of the vehicle particular) It also categorises the vehicle types i.e. hybrid, SUV, Luxury, Sports, pickups etc. and gives an industry/category standard for each group, so you can see a bit about how much "worse" the gas guzzlers or sports cars (including Ford GT, Porche Carerra GT, Aston Martin).

Summary of some results:
The Top 10 most energy efficient vehicles over their lifetime:
1. Scion xB ($0.48 per mile)
2. Ford Escort (0.57 per mile)
3. Jeep Wrangler ($0.60 per mile)
4. Chevrolet Tracker ($0.69 per mile)
5. Toyota Echo ($0.70 per mile)
6. Saturn Ion ($0.71 per mile)
7. Hyundai Elantra ($0.72 per mile)
8. Dodge Neon ($0.73 per mile)
9. Toyota Corolla ($0.73 per mile)
10. Scion xA ($0.74 per mile)

The 10 least energy efficient vehicles over their lifetime:
1. Mercedes Benz produced Maybach ($11.58 per mile)
2. Volkswagen Phaeton ($11.21 per mile)
3. Rolls-Royce (full line average: $10.66 per mile)
4. Bentley (full line average: $10.56 per mile)
5. Audi allroad Quattro ($5.59 per mile)
6. Audi A8 ($4.96 per mile)
7. Audi A6 ($4.96 per mile)
8. Lexus LS430 ($4.73 per mile)
9. Porsche Carrera GT ($4.53 per mile)
10. Acura NSX ($4.45 per mile)

Hybrid energy efficiency over their lifetime:
1. Honda Insight ($2.94 per mile)
2. Ford Escape Hybrid ($3.18 per mile)
3. Honda Civic Hybrid ($3.24 per mile)
4. Toyota Prius ($3.25 per mile)
5. Honda Accord Hybrid ($3.30 per mile)

Anywhoo, if you want it, PM me your email, its 3.3Mb