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

[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).