Industrial Dust To Dust

[elfs]

There's a scene in one of my more recent stories where Belle reveals Misuko's economic naivete by taking over responsibility for the economic future of the starship Chance Lifter. One of the things she discusses that confounds Linia is the "dust to dust" concept: how much it costs to make the ship, how much utility it's expected to produce over its lifetime, and the final cost of its disposal.

CNW Marketing Research took the time to figure out what the energy cost per mile of owning most of the popular cars on the market really was: how much it cost to design, build, drive, and finally dispose of an automobile. One of the perhaps arguable points is the lifetime, but they're taking from the manufacturer's own literature. Toyota admits that the average Prius will last 100,000 miles, whereas GM states unequivocally that the expected lifetime of a full-size truck is 300,000 miles.

The report is now available. And the outcome is heretical: the Toyota Prius, because of its plastic and composites construction, costs so much to manufacture and recycle that it is twice as expensive and environmentally damaging to own and operate than a Hummer. The best car to own is a Scion XB, followed by the Ford Focus and the Toyota Echo. The Honda Civic Hybrid has 20% non-recyclable components, whereas the Honda Civic has only 10% non-recyclable parts. The Hummer, because of its expected 300,000 mile lifespan, gives much more utility before it's almost entirely steel body goes to the recycling plant than the plastic Escape with its 100,000 mile lifespan.

The report is 450 pages and I've only read the summary, so I actually have no idea if their data collection is valid, what algorithms they've used, and what assumptions they've made. But these are serious considerations to be taken into account while lusting after the Tesla Roadster. The internal combustion engine has been around for more than a century, and we've learned how to extract as much efficiency out of one as we possibly can. The same cannot be said for electric cars yet, and while I applaud people trying to push the limit of the technology with consumer dollars, we should not kid ourselves that we're doing the planet a favor yet.

Comments

[woggie.livejournal.com]

The way I'm trying to look at it is: how much of a lifespan would these things have without gasoline? The Hummer needs gas, so it would have no lifespan at all except as a steel hulk somewhere, which might bring down its value a bit. :)

One of these days, probably within our lifetimes, we are going to see the last of the drillable oil. When that happens, a lot of things are going to change.

Makes sense to me.

[wolfwings.livejournal.com]

And reinforces why I more-or-less disbelieve in things like the Prius when a 20-year-old Honda CRX can match it on the MPG charts. That still stands as my benchmark of sorts, we've made mass-produced vehicles that broke 50mpg regularly without being hybrids when I was first born, and I've owned 200hp/tonne sports coupes that still got 30MPG. Yet the news media is practically cheering when we make a mega-expensive hybrid car that gets 50mpg at best, and a sports car that gets 25mpg? That might be impressive in the 70's, but even in the 80's and 90's we were doing much better, and still with good emissions compared to modern standards.

Thanks for pointing out the record though, I'll be reading it over my bus trip tommorow. :-)

BTW, hello as I ride past...

[wolfwings.livejournal.com]

...since I'm heading south from Seattle down to Los Angeles over the next day and a half. *waves at the house of Sternberg somewhere along the way in passing*

[gromm.livejournal.com]

A few years ago, I read a book titled "Divorce your car (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0865714088/102-7583857-0850505?v=glance&n=283155)" that changed my perception of driving. There are several chapters on why cars are so bad for us. Even if they could run on magic, convert polluted air into clean air, and last forever, there are still the issues of deaths due to accidents (which have killed more people in the 20th century than all wars combined and at the same time still outrank all other accidental deaths by a factor of four), that our streets are made of oil, that we consume more real estate for parking and roads than any other activity, and that they're making us fat and sick. Oh, and they're prohibitively expensive too (when was the last time you bought one without borrowing?). Cars will never do the planet a favour. Hell, they're not doing *us* a favour either.

I'm glad that I read this book when I was 25, since it helped to change my priorities in life. When I chose the apartment I live in now, I found one near my wife's workplace. I insisted on buying a house near rapid transit (yes, I know they still haven't built any in Seattle). At 31, I still don't own a car despite good (http://gromm.livejournal.com/93310.html) reasons (http://gromm.livejournal.com/59488.html) to do so.

At the same time, should I ever actually break down and buy a car, I will make a point of using it as little as possible. Commuting, of course, is totally out of the question, and thankfully I don't have to worry about that either thanks to our new location.

[blackcoat.livejournal.com]

I own two motor vehicles, a 1992 Mazda 626 and a 2001 Yamaha YZF-1. The first is useful for the transport of medium level goods (trips to costco, carpooling groups of children, etc) and the second is very useful for transporting me, but not a passenger, distances or locations that are mass-transit prohibitive, but don't require much cargo space (lunch meetings over the hill, specialist appointments in the city, etc). The car has nearly a quarter thousand miles on it, and the bike is eding up on a hundred thousand. However, for my general commute to work (a seven mile commute) I ride my bicycle. Even without traffic, it only loses me about 20 minutes, and with the current traffic situation, it gains me almost 15. Plus it means that I'm getting two halfhour sessions of aerobic exercise a day, and saving the gas money (most of which is spent in stop and go traffic).

[http://users.livejournal.com/_candide_/]

I soooo wish I could still commute by bike.

Unfortunately, I can't. Too far from the train to do that. Plus, where I live, cyclists are worth 15,300 points. The roads are just too hazardous.

Still, it'd be great to get the exercise. (leSigh)

[gromm.livejournal.com]

Yeah, see that's exactly my point. I hear people say this all the time... "It's not practical to commute by bus/bike/walking for me, so I *have* to own a car!"

It's not practical to do so because you chose to buy/rent a place that's too far from work or the train. That's why I consider myself so lucky for realizing that this is priority #1 before I went out and bought a townhouse.

Actually, even better, our new place is only a 10 minute walk to where I work. :) It's also right next to the train, so even if work moves somehow, it won't be much of a problem.

[talek.livejournal.com]

Modern cars aren't even close to fully exploring the limits of efficiency of internal combustion engines. For one thing, they have far too many moving parts. Unfortunately, there's far too much investment in the training of mechanics to use some of the more radical changes that would help us out greatly. As just one example, look at http://peswiki.com/index.php/Directory:Revetec_Cam-Drive_Engine. I was also going to point you at the dynacam engine, but the manufacturing company got bought out and the website taken down.

A nice directory of alternative engines with some rotary component is at http://www.dself.dsl.pipex.com/MUSEUM/POWER/rotaryIC/rotaryIC.htm.

[jenk]

As a side note, the following tweaked my interest:

Toyota Prius, because of its plastic and composites construction, costs so much to manufacture and recycle that it is twice as expensive and environmentally damaging to own and operate than a Hummer. The best car to own is a Scion XB, followed by the Ford Focus and the Toyota Echo.

My 2002 Toyota Prius' body is identical to a Toyota Echo. The innards are different, yes, in particular the Prius has a honkin' huge NiCad battery and an electric motor that the Echo doesn't. Still, amusing to see the Echo on the list ... since the salesfolk were quite eager to point out back in 2001-2002 that Echos were the same body, got nearly-as-good gas mileage, and didn't have the wait that Prius' did.

However the similar-body comparison doesn't actually apply to report because it uses 2005 models. And in 2005, the Prius shares a body with the Toyota Matrix. A larger car - and per the report, Matrix costs $1.011 per mile to Echo's $.70.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_candide_/]

Funny thing ... when I bought my Honda Insight back in the fall of 2001, it wasn't because I thought that I would be, "saving the planet," by doing so. Nor did I have any illusions that the gas savings would somehow, "make the car pay for itself."

I did so to be an early-adopter. To be the one that field-tested this
technology. Because we do need this technology.

First: I had a professional electrical engineer tell me that, given
an electric motor and an internal combustion engine of the same size,
the electric motor can generate far more torque, hands down.

Second: If someone gave you a choice of slowing down a massive flywheel one of two ways, which would you choose: (A) One large brick of rubber to push into the flywheel; (B) an electric generator with a rubber wheel to contact and be spun by the flywheel?
Most people I've posed the question to answer (B), but do (A) on a daily basis.

Third: As a physicist, the idea of trying to store some of your gravitational energy for later reuse just makes sense to me. Hey, you expended energy getting up that hill. Why throw all of it away?

Now, personally, I have to agree that the automakers could be producing much more fuel-efficient non-hybrid vehicles. But recuperative braking ain't a bad idea. It really should be a standard part of every vehicle.