@cowcascade: Barbie also drove a red Ferrari F355. It's a lovely car, though its controls are sadly dumbed down (forwards and reverse in a circle).
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@Almightywhacko: NiMH and lithium batteries are recyclable and are not particular toxic, unlike highly toxic lead-acid batteries.
@Elhigh: Think about the embodied energy bound up in a car. You'll drive for decades before you expend the same amount of energy as it took to build it in the first place.
@gavinski91: You're answering your own point. The correlation in that graph is "temperature went up (for a variety of reasons we can guess at like Milankovitch cycles and ice sheet changes) and then thousands of years later CO2 rose as temp continued to rise". Most scientists see this as evidence that CO2 acts as…
@gavinski91: Citation please. The Sudbury mine (that USED to be so polluted in the 1970s) is hundreds of miles from Hudson Bay, outside the polar bear's range. What's likely to hurt polar bear populations is the reduction in the arctic sea ice from which they hunt seals, caused by global warming caused in part from…
@miron721: The Prius battery pack weighs all of 100 pounds, and I think only 25 pounds of it is nickel, which is also present in the steel and chrome of regular cars. I agree it's one of the more polluting materials to go in a car, but the crocodile tears over mining 100 pounds are minor compared to the pollution…
@DeadBuick: I'm no engineer, but GM presented the Volt as the series hybrid system you describe and then in their "October surprise" revealed they instead put in a Toyota-style power split transmission so the engine could be mechanically coupled to the wheels in certain situations to improve efficiency. I assume…
@Sixpackdan: Good for you. For what it's worth, I ride a bike in town and have solar panels, but drive an old AWD 25 mpg car despite being surrounded by quiet unassuming Prius owners.
@MangoMimi: No, you might be helping. The Leaf has a 26 kW·h battery pack to travel roughly 100 miles. That's less energy than there is in one gallon of gasoline! Because electric cars are so much more efficient, they can make up for the emissions from a dirty coal plant. It's a close call, but some of the…
@wspeed6: You drive home and plug in at night when there's plenty of electricity available. The Leaf and Volt can both be set to start charging at some time after midnight when electricity is cheapest because demand is low.
@DeadBuick: If the Prius is the wrong technology, what exactly is stopping other companies selling cars that match or exceed its 50 mpg? Those Euro diesels you can't get in the USA are smaller cars, and the really high MPG ones use stop-start and regenerative braking, i.e. they're mild hybrids. VW announced it is…
@Lahjik: The planetary gear e-CVT in the Volt that lets the engine contribute to the wheels looks awfully close to Toyota's Hybrid Synergy Drive, but GM hasn't admitted any deal. However, Ford pretends it developed its own hybrid transmission when it buys or licenses them from Toyota or its parts subsidiary Aisin.
@miron721: Anyone driving a Prius is getting an astounding 50 mpg from a reliable practical mid-sized car. I don't see how that makes them a moron or what right you have to tell other people what to drive. Somewhere there's a bicyclist calling you an uncaring moron for riding a motorcycle when you could be…
@Sixpackdan: Repeating the thoroughly discredited "study" from CNW Marketing doesn't make it true. The H2 is so heavy it isn't doesn't undergo EPA mpg testing, but C&D found it got 9 mpg while Motor Trend got 10. Let's take 10 mpg. Therefore over 120,000 miles it will burn 12,000 gallons of gasoline weighing 37…
@killercanuck: The ocean freighters are not the worst. They're about 3-5 % of global CO2 emissions. By some measures airplanes are worse (and their greenhouse effect is more immediate), but both are dwarfed by emissions from road transportation, particularly in the USA
@diredesire: In January 2010 Road & Track found the Prius got significantly better mpg than a VW Golf TDI in every kind of driving they tried, including highway, suburban, etc.
@imconfus: Good point. So Nissan is only shipping 200 to the USA in December 2010, also known as running late like many new car models do. We'll see if Nissan does make 50,000 worldwide in 2011 as they claimed. Their USA and UK factory plans for 2012 remain in effect as far as I know.
@Morgan Carpenter: No, of course not. But as others have pointed out in comments, there are societies that have gone without meat for thousands of years.
@jesusdiaz