I’ve been trying out various new technologies lately, with mixed results
My first attempt to present a paper using videoconferencing from my desktop Mac came to grief as a result of software incompatibilities, so I’ll be using standard videoconference methods again, to present a paper on Urban Water Pricing to a seminar at LaTrobe Uni, Albury-Wodonga, on Thursday. I’ll get started earlier next time and see if I can’t get these problems overcome.
During my recent visit to Canberra, I hired a Prius, which was an interesting experience. A few random thoughts about implications.
* I was particularly struck by the way it sits silently at traffic lights, and more generally how much quieter it is, most of theh time. than a standard car. That alone would be a big plus in a move towards electric cars.
* As this piece in Salon points out, a hybrid is not necessarily more fuel-efficient than smaller conventional cars. Then again, you can save even more just by driving less. The more options there are the better. I expect the price differential noted in the article will decline over time as production volumes increase.
* Looking at how easy it would be to switch to hybrids, I’m more convinced than ever that a peak in oil production (which may already have been passed) will not been the end of industrial civilisation as we know it, or even a major change in our way of life.
* s regards the more serious problem of global warming, a hybrid still uses electricity, so the gains aren’t as great. Still, many small reductions add up to big reductions Reader canberra boy points out that the Prius is not a plug-in hybrid as I thought . Rather the battery is recharged entirely by regenerative braking or, when that falls short, by the engine. As usual, Wikipedia has the details
Finally, I upgraded my Mac OS to OS 10.5 (Leopard), and am a bit grumpy. It seems as if it went smoothly for everyone but me, and in fact I nearly always have trouble with system upgrades. But, in between I really love my Mac, and my experience running Windows XP under virtualisation has only confirmed me in this.
John Quiggin 
JQ, not sure what you mean by a hybrid still uses electricity, so the gains aren’t as great.
I take it you realise the Prius batteries are charged by regenerative braking, downhill coasting, and the petrol engine, so the electric power is all provided by the car. Did you perhaps mean it still uses petrol?
The sensation of sitting at traffic lights with no engine noise is a bit eery at first. While there are undoubted gains in a noise-reduction sense, there has been some concern that near-silent hybrid vehicles represent a danger to blind people in suburban streets.
I also noticed that the information the car provides on its own performance tends to make you conscious of fuel consumption and drive frugally.
I must admit I thought the regenerative braking was only part of the deal and that there was some actual recharging of batteries. Thanks for setting me straight on this.
I can see Prius drivers required to carry and activate a bell – at least they shouldn’t need a man carrying a flag!
I drive a Prius that my work owns a bit, and if you drive them conservatively, you can get exceptional efficiency from them (I can get to around 3.1 litres per 100ks on a 70K round trip that involves some city traffic and some driving). My Hyundai Getz (a much smaller car) as a comparison gets around 6.0 litres.
I agree with canberra boy — I think half the savings come because it makes you completely aware of your own consumption. It also becomes almost game-like trying to keep you consumption as low as possible given all the monitoring and feedback.
How did you think the batteries would be recharged?
Let me say I am astonished that PrQ thought the Prius was a PHEV. The Prius is hardly bleeding edge technology either, with the current model being almost 4 years old and due for replacement in 2009.
PrQ, I think a feed to GCC would help!
Hybrids excel in stop-start traffic, but for highway/freeway cruising a good diesel will beat a hybrid every time — its just a petrol car carrying a lot of batteries. I drive from Sydney to Byron Bay and back every 12 weeks or so in my Jetta turbo-diesel and usually better 5.0L/100km, and that’s loaded up with four people, a full boot, and in a car with considerably more oomph than a Prius.
VW apparently tried to build a diesel hybrid a few years ago, but found it used more fuel than the standard diesel in all situations except heavy traffic. VW and other manufacturers are still investigating diesel-hybrid passenger cars, but AFAIK there is still nothing available commercially.
Another point about diesels vs hybrids: In Europe more than 50% of new cars sold are diesels, but hybrids still represent less than 1% of new car sales in all markets. The market has spoken (and yes, I know that diesel is cheaper than petrol in some Euro countries)
That said, I believe BEVs are the future for personal ground transport, with PHEVs an important transition technology. V2G is also very exciting.
Not that I should be interested in the technology, because “the invisible hand will provide” eh John? The stone age didn’t end because we ran of rocks. The whale oil wasn’t a problem was it. Blah, blah, blah … and all the other Simon-esque twaddle.
It won’t be the end of industrial civilisation, but it will involve considerable economic disruption. Lets agree to disagree here, but the way you discount peak oil as a serious threat reminds me of climate change denialists, and if you hadn’t noticed it makes me cranky.
Don’t feel too bad JQ, generation 3 Prius hybrides will be combination wall charging along with all of the other features. And they are targeting beating the diesel lites for consumption. The real advantage of the hybride over the diesels is that the hybride can use ethanol mixes which then dramatically reduces the real CO2 emissions. Diesels can use bio diesel but that will be in very short supply until the bugs are ironed out of algal oil (working on it).
I rode in a recent release prius and it was a dream for quietness and comfort. Only problem was that it took 10 minutes for a car load of clever people to figure out how to turn it on.
But here is the rub. Toyota, the worlds largest auto maker can now make 1 million hybrides a year. So from that one supplier it will take 1000 years to make the first billion prius hybrides (don’t forget at 20 years they must start doubling the production to replace wornout vehicles). Replacing all of the world’s vehicles with electric is a massive undertaking, and can most certainly not be done in time to have an effect on CO2 levels, in the short term.
Note to carbonsink, diesel is a fossil fuel, unless it comes from plants.
The biggest cost with vehicles is purchase price and depreciation, something which the hybrids have yet to tackle.
Diesel electric has been around for some time, decades even; mining trucks and locomotives employ diesel powered generators which charge batteries which drive electric motors in each wheel. These motors become generators delivering power back to the batteries on downhill runs or when stopping
Thanks for the tip BilB, or should I call you Biofuel Bill?
Hey, didn’t the UN call biofuels a crime against humanity this week? I think you’ll find that replacing all the world’s food crops with fuel crops is also a massive undertaking, and a monumentally stupid one at that.
Yes, but never in passenger cars.
“most of theh time” and “will not been the end of industrial civilisation as we know it”. I get fniger truoble myslef, two.
“The biggest cost with vehicles is purchase price and depreciation, something which the hybrids have yet to tackle.”
That’s the rub rog. You can safely assume that dollars equates to resources used up in such basic transport, as distinct from say the luxury car market. When I did the sums(cost, petrol consumption difference, etc) on a Prius vs Mitsubishi Colt, say travelling 160000km over 10 years, you could save around $15000 upfront on the Mitsi and that could go on solar electricity to the grid on your house.(you can even add the govt’s $8000 subsidy to that too) Hybrids are still for the conspicuous moral badge wearers as distinct from making a hard nosed, real difference at present.
Carbon C,
That will have to do as BioWilly is already taken.
I made reference to the UN statement elsewhere. The rhetoric (crime against humanity) and the arguments used leave me thinking of this as “comment for cash”. Maybe that $10,000 dollar offer for pro-oil comment is still up for grabs.
the changeover cost may be much lower than you imagine: a lot of people will be on bicycles and motor scooters, from choice or necessity.
Yeah whatever BioBill, the UN is infested with oil company shills after all.
observa and rog:
Prius apparently hold their value extremely well. I agree however that hybrids are still way too expensive and make no sense in purely economic terms. Higher fuel prices, increased competition (there’s not much for Toyota ATM) and economies of scale will change that over time.
OTOH, diesels obviously do make sense in Europe already where their market share is growing rapidly even in countries where diesel is more expensive than petrol.
I just love this quote:
Which pretty much sums up the rich fantasy world that most economists inhabit.
We’ve had seven years of rising oil prices, five years of strong global growth, but global oil production has been flat since 2004.
Where’s the substitution people?
The best estimates for tar sands is 5 million barrels a day by 2020, and BioBill’s biofuels don’t even register on this chart.
On your Leopard woes, SMH had an article yesterday about it. Seems a lot of folks have woes, some are blaming it on third party software but many are quite OK thanks Jack, and are accusing SMH of an antimac beat up. Apparently lines to Apple service centres in both OZ and the US are totally tied up.
Software by Unsanity has been mentioned as one cause. Hope this helps to you and any others of the apparent minority who got caught (some, humiliatingly, with a blue screen of death).
Carbon C,
Australia and Brazil between them can feasibly (and easily) produce 240 billion litres of ethanol per year if Brazil incresed their land commitment to 2.5 percent from 1. percent and Australia cultivated 2.5 million hectares (1 quarter of Brazil’s commitment). This would have nil impact on food prices as the land used is tropical and challenges only pineapple and bannana cultivation land (staples for no one). This would be well and truly on the scale.
The UN is rampant with corruption. Jean Zieglers comments do not stack up against reality.
As the unoffical Mac support guy where I work, I’m very interested. How did you upgrade? “Update” or “Archive and Install” or “Clean Install”?
Perhaps I can help…
Oh well, problem solved then. Brazil and Australia represent what, three percent of global oil consumption? Tough luck Asia, Europe and North America. I guess the petroleum age is over for you guys.
Oh BTW, Australia has 400,000 hectares of sugar under cultivation. All you want to do is multiply that by six, on land that is either marginal or has never been under cultivation.
And that’s just to replace petrol. Where’s the diesel coming from BioBill?
You’re sounding more and more like George corn-ethanol Bush every day.
Observa and BilB both seem to be close to the fallacy ‘I/Australia/a hybrid can do very little to mitigate AGW, so there’s no point in doing anything.’ Surely a hybrid’s economy and its cleanliness in traffic (most of Australia’s driving is in cities in traffic, not tooling down the coast at weekends) mean that anyone who buys other than solely on price should consider a hybrid on grounds of doing something for the environment? Does anyone remember the Australian of the Year’s book on climate? As I recall, he listed ‘making a hybrid your next car’ as one of his top 3 steps towards helping the planet.
“We’ve had seven years of rising oil prices, five years of strong global growth, but global oil production has been flat since 2004. …. Where’s the substitution?” – carbonsink
LOL. Did it never occur to you, carbonsink, that one reason oil production has been flat is because oil demand has been flat? And that’s in the face of very strong global economic growth, which means that the high prices have in fact already stimulated lots of substitution.
But really effective substitution takes some time (time for development of more costly sources, time for innovations to occur and to reach market, time for habits to change, and ultimately time for infrastructure and real estate adaptation to more costly road transport). So I reckon there’s a lot more substitution in the pipeline (sic) if prices stay high. Long run elasticities are generally much higher than short run ones.
O6,
I’m not saying “don’t buy hybrides”, quite the contrary. I am pointing out that the fastest way to address CO2 emissions is to change the fuel by adding progressively more ethanol, as the available ethanol volume increases. Personally I cannot wait to have an all electric car/motor bike. Robert Merkel is in China and reporting on the popularity of electric scooters. It is from that seed (China’s self used product) that the massive volume of environment friendly vehicle replacement will come, not from the hybride end. But at the moment the ethanol powered hybride is the most environmentally responsible alternative (production efficiencies aside). And I can barely wait to fit into that mould. In between time I ride a 200 Kg motor scooter that has more than halved my personal daily fuel consumption.
I work for government and drive a prius, in Tasmania. I average less than 5L/100k travelling all over the state, which has far more in the way of terrain & highway driving. It is easily as efficient as a diesel, and does not drop fuel efficiency when I load it with people and gumpf.
While the arguments regarding the overall life-cycle costs and efficiencies of the Prius are accurate and important information, the bottom line is that new technology is never perfect, and never gets perfected unless the market supports the innovation. Which is why I think it’s critical that major public institutions like government simultaneously lower their own C02 emissions and support innovations like Prius’s.
I’m also all for highly efficient and clean diesel, as we need diverse and mulitple forms of transition transport that immediately allow us to reduce our carbon footprints. Ultimately however we are going to need transport that does not require fossil fuels – so diesel loses there, and electric cars will require a method of charging that doesn’t require reliance on coal or gas-powered sources.
I don’t find it hard to imagine having a fully solar &/or wind-powered home that’s grid connected, and being able to charge my electric vehicle overnight from the power latent in the grid -something that American researchers have shown would be entirely feasible.
In the meantime the Prius is a joy to drive and I feel highly appropriate as a government vehicle – with current petrol prices the comparitively higher lease rates are off-set by the less than half average fuel consumption, so it is sound for the budget as well. And yes, the market has shown that Prius’s hold their value remarkably well, which is critical for government / large car lease & sell-on schemes.
PS -as someone who works in the area of environmental / agricultural policy, biofuel generation in Australia is frankly assinine unless it is based on generation 2 or 3 technology – ie biofuels from plant waste products, not crops specifically grown for the purpose.
Anyone working with farmers in the current extreme drought conditions, watching what this is doing to our very small amounts of productive land, and our ability to produce food will concur. As climate change and other facts continue to shrink the amount of water and viable land for food production in Australia, its a serious contention that Australia will be lucky to be food self-sufficient in the future, and using arable land for biofuel production will simply not be an option.
PPS- biofuel crop production in SE Asia and the Pacific is directly responsible for the clearing of tropical peatlands, which store huge amounts of C02. the EU needs to take a long hard look at itself in this area, because its demand for biofuels from sources such as palm oil has directly driven the clearing and destruction of nearly half the world’s tropical peatlands, thus contributing, not reducing, the amount of global C02 emissions.
see here and here
I’m back.
The argument about the Prius’s lifespan is on the basis that its batteries will die in about 10 years, and will cost in the order of $3000 to replace – a massive expenditure on a decade-old car.
However, the evidence suggests that the batteries are much longer-lasting than originally thought – at least 290,000 kilometres.
Furthermore, the price of rechargeable batteries is dropping fairly quickly, and equivalent batteries are available from multiple suppliers. I suspect by the time it becomes an issue you’ll be able to buy aftermarket replacement batteries for a lot less than that – and the Prius will remain a pretty desirable car on the second-hand market because of the low fuel bills.
I don’t think one can say that oil demand has been flat. According the International Energy Agency Oil Market Report of October 11, 2007, Global oil demand remains unchanged at 85.9 mb/d in 2007 (+1.5% over 2006) and 88.0 mb/d in 2008 (+2.4%).
Going back a bit in time, according to a paper from the US Department of Energy, demand has grown from 76mb/d since 2000.
What a car like the Prius needs is a detachable internal combustion power plant/generator module — on days when you know you won’t drive far you recharge overnight from the mains, when a single charge won’t be enough you attach the power plant.
That way you don’t drag around the petrol engine when you won’t need it.
This does mean that you need bigger motors to get the same peak power, as peak power is no longer ICE+electric when the power plant isn’t attached.
As regards oil, I’d say the evidence is consistent with the combination of rising demand and declining volumes of extractible oil, at any given price. The result: rising prices and stable volumes. That’s why I go for the Plateau Oil theory.
Yeah it did, for about a millisecond. Then I looked at China and India’s car ownership growing exponentially, car sales still strong in the US, kilometres driven still growing in Europe and the rest of Asia, and oil prices heading ever skywards, and I realised demand is still growing in developed and industrialising economies. Surely even a disciple of Julian Simon could figure that one out 🙂
So what’s happening? How can demand still be growing and supply flat? Firstly, the developed world has started to run down crude inventories, and secondly, third world nations have been priced out of the market and are cutting consumption.
In short, we’re not substituting, [b]we’re conserving by sacrificing the third world[/b]. We can’t substitute because there ain’t nothing to we can substitute oil with, at least in the short term. It will take at least 20 years to turn over the world’s vehicle fleet to EVs, PHEVs or whatever, but we don’t have any major oil projects planned beyond 2010, and these things have 5-7 year lead times.
As I mentioned earlier, biofuels aren’t even a blip on the world oil production chart, and there are huge problems with ramping up biofuel production. Oil from the Canadian tar sands is running at ~1mpd with best estimates of 5mpd by 2020 … that’s out of global oil consumption of ~85mpd. i.e. Peanuts. And if you thought there were problems ramping up production of biofuels, its positively clean and green compared with oil sands.
So here’s the problem. Those crazy peak oilers are saying we’re gonna see 2-5% p.a. declines in oil production from 2010 onwards, which collides head on with continuing global demand growth of ~2% p.a. Something’s gonna break, and its not going to be solved by everyone headind down to the local Toyota dealer and picking up a Prius.
myriad:
Don’t get me wrong, I love hybrids, I think they’re a fantastic stepping stone technology to where we need to be. They just don’t make economic sense for the average punter right now, and that is borne out by the new car sales figures in Europe where people are paying up to $2.30/L already. Diesels outsell hybrids by 50:1 or better in Europe. That says something about the economics.
Its not a theory. We’ve been on the plateau since 2004. Its what happens after 2010 when we start declining that scares the bejesus out of me.
yeah, fair comment carbonsink. I can well understand the average punter going for diesel, but I do think there’s an argument for big car users / purchasers/leasers like government to help support technological innovation like hybrids through their vehicle fleets.
I can’t personally afford a prius – would love to – and if electric cars don’t come on the market soon in Australia, will probably upgrade my Mazda 121 bubble car (6L/100km) for a diesel.
so I think we agree 🙂
Myriad 24,
I am amazed that someone invovled with agricultural policy would have that view. May I suggest that there is a huge hole in your knowledge base. Certainly there are less appropriate crops for biofuels, and there are inappropriate crops. The loss of peatland is certainly regretable, but that is a matter of government policy not market forces. If there is land that should be protected then it should be so legislated. As for cane ethanol, the cane grows best where not much else grows. Wheat and cane do not compete. Where ethanol has been produced from wheat that production will soon be cyclically so limited to be unviable and the ethanol industry will move else where. But the ethanol yields from cane are too important to ignore, and the market will not allow that to happen. Australian cane is yielding 9,500 to 12,500 litres per hectare and the cost of production is very small. This also leaves huge quantities of cane celluslose available for biomass electricity production in addition to the fuel yield (refer Mark Diesendorf). Are you seriously going to say that this is bad for Australia and the environment? Are you serioulsy saying that cane which displaces bananas and pineapples is threatenning our staple food supply?
I take it that you find that to chop down 200 thousand hectares of Tasmanian forest for paper is just fine but for cash strapped pacific islands, who otherwise sell coconut oil for cosmetics, to convert their palm oil to fuel is somehow an offence to the environment. Compared to what you do in Tasmania, that is.
Hi Bilb,
The loss of peatland is certainly regretable, but that is a matter of government policy not market forces.
The destruction of peatland is a hell of a lot more than ‘regrettable’ – from the articles above:
. Lose the world’s peatlands and more carbon dioxide (CO2) will be added to the atmosphere than it currently contains; equivalent to 100 years of emissions at current rates from global fossil fuel use.
And its happening precisely because of a combination of both government policy – specifically the EU pushing biofuels – and market failure. You really can’t separate the two as if they are non-related entities. It will take government intervention to correct both.
As for cane ethanol, the cane grows best where not much else grows. Wheat and cane do not compete.
The first is quite incorrect. Most of Australia’s cane farming is located on prime or sub-prime agricultural land. And boiling down food needs to ‘wheat’ is hardly accurate or useful for this discussion. The bottom line is that the burgeoning demand for biofuels in many countries is seeing food production abandoned in favour of crop production for ethanol, and we simply cannot afford that. I invite you to have a look at the Food and Agricultural Organisation’s predictions regarding global food needs versus our rapid loss of topsoil and arable lands in general versus our still-rampant population growth. Australia, as a net food exporter is critical in the coming years for food supply globally, and as it is will be challenged to continue as it does.
In fact when you add in the predicted impacts of climate change, Australia will see much of our agricultural land threatened, degraded, marginalised or outright abandoned. Water supply is critical, and most of our water systems in our best agricultural production areas are over-allocated. Even if we get on top of this through water reform, irrigation efficiencies etc etc., the combined effects of lower and more erratic rainfall, (critically) increased evaporation from warmer night and soil temperatures, greater wildfire risks and storm events in the northern parts of the country and radical changes in seasonality will make secure farming increasingly difficult. In short, we can expect in most conservative climate change scenarios to become at best a small net food exporter, and most likely can best aim for food self-sufficiency.
The last thing we need is biofuel crops competing for the best arable land, which is precisely what is starting to happen. We risk creating a situation very much like the USA where corn is the largest crop grown largely for industrial purposes and animal feedlots, degrading land and actually massively reducing food production and efficiency. One also only has to look at what is happening in Mexico, where corn, the staple food is becoming too expensive for the largely poor population to buy because large agricultural conglomerates are buying up the land and selling the corn for ethanol production. In short, swapping food for fuel is nuts, unless we are talking about stage 2 biofuels which look to use waste products from food crops, but these are some way off full development – and in that scenario replacing our banana crops with cane is crazy, as 1) bananas provide a whole range of essential nutrients and are a recongised super food and 2)experiments have shown that converting their skins to biofuels is potentially one of the most efficient options out there.
Even in that situation, biofuels will more than likely remain problematic in Australia because our ability to produce an efficient and sustainable food-producing agricultural sector is only just starting to be seriously challenged. I can see local production of biofuels such as described above from bananas and other plant ‘waste’ products, but I really don’t think we can remotely afford to be planning on replacing fossil fuels with biofuels in this country.
I take it that you find that to chop down 200 thousand hectares of Tasmanian forest for paper is just fine but for cash strapped pacific islands, who otherwise sell coconut oil for cosmetics, to convert their palm oil to fuel is somehow an offence to the environment. Compared to what you do in Tasmania, that is.
I take it you’re not smart enough to distinguish between a government policy dictated by politicians, and the public service. Nor do I work for the Tasmanian Government. Personally I’m strongly opposed to the pulp mill, because we not only need the carbon sinks and biodiversity of the forests, it’s a total economic rip-off to sell native forests for woodchips. I’m not even remotely supportive of the current public subsidisation of the Gunns monopoly.
As to Pacific Islands, swapping one form of economic exploitation that encourages environmental degradation and local/global catastrophe for another is hardly a robust argument. The palm oil industry for biofuels in the Asia-Pacific is an environmental and economic disaster, and must be urgently addressed. I’m all for assisting with the creation of viable sustainable alternative industries as part of that, not to mention offering to take populations that will see their islands lost in predicted sea level rises – something the Howard Government to their shame and my utter disgust has refused to do.
clarification – Bilb presented the biofuels/food production argument as if it was largely about whether cane would compete with wheat. The counter-argument I make is that good quality arable land is scarce, and whether one major crop is competing with another is largely irrelevant when you start looking at our total arable land availability with a climate change overlay.
And btw, cane sugar is a water hog, both for production, and for biofuel processing.
Look at the sums like I did when deciding on a LS Mitsubishi Colt instead of a Prius for the missus. Here’s the specs comparison on Redbook, where you can check any car you like, including new and secondhand prices. Just about every LMVD uses it for their business.
http://www.redbookasiapacific.com/au/vehicle/comparespecs.php?id2=87387&id=102257&new=1
Largely identical in most respects except the Prius(cheaper version note) has cruise control but no CD stacker and a more sluggish engine 57Kw cf the Colt’s 77Kw. Add nearly a quarter of a tonne to the Hybrid(probably due to the batteries and electric motor) and it’s going to be a bit of a porky slug for a 1.5L green machine. Never mind because at the rated 4.4L/100km cf the Colt’s 5.6L/100km it’s saving the planet 1.2L/100km at first glance. So suppose you are driving an average of 16,000km pa for the 10 year additional ‘power train’ warranty of the Colt (sorry the Prius only has 3 years cf Colt’s 5 years all over warranty here) That’s a total of 1920 litres of fuel saved at say $1.35/litre or a saving of $2592 in today’s prices(for our present value comparison). Take that off the price difference of $18410 for the 2 cars, leaves you an upfront saving of $15818. Now for that you could put a 30 year panel warranty, ‘solar to the grid’ system on your roof tomorrow and generate about 1916 Kwhrs/year, which at my current peak rate saves me $402/year. I can of course, presently access another free $8000 worth, via the Fed subsidy and in the new year, the State Govt will force my supplier to rebate that power at 44c/kwhr,(Prius owners weep tears of blood right here and now) but let’s not talk about subsidies for the object of this exercise. Of course the much dearer Prius cops more stamp duty and insurance premia as well in that regard.(more weeping).
Now let’s really prick the conscience of proud Prius drivers shall we? You can get the CO2 emissions/km from the cars specs to compare the Prius average output at 106gm/km cf the Colt’s output of 134gm/km, an average difference of 28gm/km. Got that greenies? So at 16,000km /yr that’s an increased output of 448kilograms/year for Colt drivers. Now a kwhr of coal fired electricity emits about 950gms of CO2 (lets not get into the Leigh Creek burnable dirt output here in SA for this exercise.) Notice by not posing about in the Prius, the missus is saving 1916Kwhrs over the year, which is 1.82 tonnes of CO2 savings cf the Prius driver’s 0.45 tonnes AND she’s saving me $400/year to boot, not to mention the other aforementioned oncosts.
Ah the Observa’s missed the fact that the Prius holds it’s value much better than the Colt and that changes everything I hear you say. Back to Redbook for your tradein value of a 2004 model eh.? The first Prius came out in 2001 and the worst trade-in price is now $9500 after 6 years. What will they pay you for it in another 4 years with those older batteries eh? Reckon the uni students will still want it? Now let’s look at a comparison of 2004 models when the Colt hit the showrooms. They both could have done between 45000-7500kms and the Prius tradein range is $17400-$19600 now, while the Colt is $9700-$11300. The best tradeins show a difference of $10110 in depreciation or $10710 for the worst. Ten gees difference in around 4-5 years eh? No wonder only the doctor’s wives and the subsidised drive them. Now you have it. There is absolutely no excuse for govts or business allowing their workers to swan about in them burning up the environment when there are much cheaper and greener options.
Of course if you’re a greeny Croweater and thinking about the Colt vs Prius option for Xmas, how will Santa stack up? Well Santa could forgo the Prius and put the whole $18410 price difference into solar to the grid, along with Kevin’s $8000 subsidy and what do you get? Well 12kwhrs per day average or 5749 kwhrs/yr @ 44c(thanks Media Mike) each or $1927/yr, which we have to put away that $402 for the extra juice, giving a saving of $1525 for the year. Also it saves 5748 x 0.95 = 5.46 tonnes of CO2 for the year. Oooh, I’ve come over all green and tingly already, although I guess those folk with recharge cards for their power meters might get a bit dark. Still we’ve all got to make sacrifices to save the planet eh?
Oh and what part of ‘tradeoff’ don’t lefty’s understand? First there’s the spelling, then there’s the pronunciation, then…
Ummm … what has the CO2 emissions from coal-fired electricity got to do with driving a Prius. You don’t plug them in.
myriad: Well said, but you’re never going to convince Biofuel Bill that is beloved ethanol is a catastrophe in the making. I’ve been chasing him around the blogs for months trying to talk some sense into him. He doesn’t change.
So, apart from BilB, I think we can all agree we’re not going to substitute crude with biofuels. Oil sands, oil shale, coal-to-liquids, and other methods of making liquid fuels out of low quality hydrocarbons are a greenhouse nightmare and probably can’t be ramped up to meet demand anyway. If we’re going to substitute oil, its going to have to be some form of electric vehicle, and the electricity is going to have to come from low carbon sources. Its a big enough task just replacing the world’s stationary generating capacity, let alone the 40% of the world’s energy currently supplied by crude.
Yes I know this substitution doesn’t have to happen overnight, but if the peak oilers are right about 2-5% p.a. declines starting circa 2010, we are going to have to do some serious conservation.
carbonsink, you’re correct about the Prius not using coal fired electricity. However my household does and I either pay my utility to generate it with Leigh Creek coal (they do use some gas whereas most of you use Hunter Valley coal), or I generate it myself, in this case with solar. Now I(we all do) have a choice about where we invest our ‘green’ dollars. I’m being told here(implied) I should invest them in a Prius,(well the extra price of it over another alternative that gets the missus from A-B in similar style and comfort) and that way I’m saving the planet or some such. I just demonstrated how I can get a better return, both dollar wise and CO2 emissions wise, by investing the same dollars in a Colt and solar to the grid. The sums are better ($) and greener than the Prius only option, but add the middle class pork and it all gets rather fantastic. It’s called the ‘opportunity cost’ of owning a Prius only and you can only appreciate that when you compare the next best(reasonable) alternative. You do it in business everyday, but leftys and govt workers never get it, except when they shop with their own dollars of course. Nevertheless, I cannot price the dollar value(implicit utility) of moral badge wearing to an individual in a Prius, but can still point out the CO2 opportunity cost of being such a wanker, assuming they’re all about reducing such emissions. That is an implicit assumption of course.
I used to be cynical about electric vehicles because they usually involve burning coal at about 35% efficiency to provide electricity to power the vehicle. I then read somewhere that an internal combustion engine is less than about 20% efficient while an electrical motor is something like 80% efficient, so it is often more likely that an electric vehicle would be less of a greenhouse gas polluter.
carbonsink, let’s take Myriad’s statements-
“While the arguments regarding the overall life-cycle costs and efficiencies of the Prius are accurate and important information, the bottom line is that new technology is never perfect, and never gets perfected unless the market supports the innovation. Which is why I think it’s critical that major public institutions like government simultaneously lower their own C02 emissions and support innovations like Prius’s.”
I demonstrated that if her govt dept gave her a Colt to drive, they could GIVE him/her the balance of the Prius cost as solar to the grid for nix and he/she could pocket an extra $402/year to boot, gratis. Myriad would emit less CO2(1.37 tonnes at 16,000kms/yr) and be supporting solar innovation. What’s so special about hybrids you might well ask.
“I’m also all for highly efficient and clean diesel, as we need diverse and mulitple forms of transition transport that immediately allow us to reduce our carbon footprints.”
Running around in a Colt with solar cells on the roof is a pretty immediate way to reduce Myriad’s carbon footprint.
“Ultimately however we are going to need transport that does not require fossil fuels – so diesel loses there, and electric cars will require a method of charging that doesn’t require reliance on coal or gas-powered sources.”
Let’s get cracking with the solar panels and all that solar innovation then.
“I don’t find it hard to imagine having a fully solar &/or wind-powered home that’s grid connected,..”
Myriad could stop imagining if it were the Colt and solar to the grid on the roof at home.
“In the meantime the Prius is a joy to drive and I feel highly appropriate as a government vehicle – with current petrol prices the comparitively higher lease rates are off-set by the less than half average fuel consumption, so it is sound for the budget as well. And yes, the market has shown that Prius’s hold their value remarkably well, which is critical for government / large car lease & sell-on schemes.”
Absolute piffle the lot of it, as I’ve amply demonstrated, simply because Myriad’s not footing the bill and my missus reckon’s her Colt is a joy to drive too, while she’s saving the planet. The solar to the grid is going up just as soon as sparky MasterO gets the time and inclination.
Or Myriad could drive around in a Colt, while some struggling household could have the solar to the grid and save that 1.37 tonnes of CO2 to boot. Perhaps we could chuck a sign on it saying- “Prius foregone so struggling family can have cheap power and overall CO2 emissions are reduced”
Boy oh boy, wouldn’t that be a joy for Myriad, et al to drive about in.
Let’s be quite clear here, we’re not picking on Myriad, because we’re all prone to believe in old doctor’s wives tales from time to time. However, now that it’s myth busted, Myriad or any one of you running about in the firm’s or govt dept’s Prius, can take this analysis to your boss or departmental head and say- please explain? They get bloody well paid and have the bean counters on hand to know a damn sight better.
Myriad 35
You seem to have lost the plot, Myriad. What we did in the past is no longer relevant, other than being its what caused the problems of the future. Not adressing the underlying cause will make food production sustainablity even more problematic.
Leave the Pacific Islands out of this discussion for the time being (especially as they will be potentially inundated so protecting their peat patches might be pointless) and concentrate on what Australia needs to do to be a minimal user of fossil fuels.
I am going to attempt to get an opinion on the cane land use issue from those involved in the industry. It is my belief that you are quite wrong, but it is important, and I am no expert, so we will go for a second opinion.
Observa,
I actually overall agree with your argument for a colt (+ using the savings upfront to go solar at home) vs a prius – if it was for my personal use.
But the car doesn’t belong to me, it’s leased for my work use by the government, so the option of paying me the difference between an upfront colt/prius cost for personal solar panels etc. is completely out of the question.
To anticipate your next question/response, if I saw governments making intelligent decisions along the lines of “lets lease smaller, cheaper, fuel-efficient vehicles for our fleets, and pour the savings into turning all government buildings into renewable energy-powered, energy efficient havens”, I’d be all for it.
But they are not doing that.
On top of that, governments need a range of vehicles in their fleets, and as much as I’d like to drive something like a small compact all over Tasmania, the last time I tried that I ended up with severe OH&S issues – so the quality of the car comes into play, as does the resell value. Early prius models did ok; models from 2005 on have held their value exceptionally well, and are allowing already within the govt dept. I work for new prius’ to be leased cheaper because the return on the old model (govt vehicles are rolled over every 24 months) was so good (your new lease vehicle cost is in part determined by the re-sell $ of the last one).
To further complicate matters, I live in Tasmania where over 90% of the energy comes from renewable sources (hydro). So the major are of greenhouse gas emissions both personally and professionally is not actually base-load electricity, it’s transport, which I’m afraid rather makes most of your calculations irrelevant.
Finally, an important nitpick -the major issue with in particular photovoltaic cells at the moment is the amount of fossil energy it takes to make them, so if you’re serious about reducing your greenhouse gases, you’ve got to factor this in as well – ie life cycle GG production.
If you factor in these things, the decision to lease a prius as a government vehicle in Tasmania stacks up extremely well.
And then there’s the final factor which you missed, although not for want of some pretty comprehensive posting – encouraging innovation. To get to my hopefully near-future dream of a cost-effective all-electric vehicle that people could power from latent grid stored energy, which they can contribute to via personal generation…
we need innovation, and that needs market and government support.
An excellent example of this is that the demand for Prius by 2004 was sufficient for Toyota to invest in a part-share of Subaru. Why? Because Subaru at the time had the lead in battery technology, and battery technology is an area that has been sorely under-invested in, and underestimated in terms of importance for transport applications. Without the market responding positively to the prius, Toyota may well have not bothered to invest in Subaru and drive that area of innovation.
And btw, it would be nice if you could perhaps learn to make what overall is a cogent argument without resorting every 2 sentences to pejoratives like ‘greenie’.
You seem to have lost the plot, Myriad. What we did in the past is no longer relevant, other than being its what caused the problems of the future.
Bilb, it’s completely relevant when you consider that our mismanagement of our agricultural lands based on the misapplication of European and monocultural farming techniques is going to bite us in the ass for the next 100 years. We have set in train massive salinity, topsoil loss, waterway degradation, weed infestations etc. that are going to take over a century to fix, and in the meantime seriously threaten the amount of viable land we have.
Even without climate change to secure the sustainability of our agriculture we need to immediately move away from intensive large-scale monocultures in most instances, and radically ramp down the amount of inputs we rely on (fertilizers in particular, herbicides, pesticides), and learn to farm within the lands’ limits.
I can only shake my head when I see people advocating large-scale monocultural biofuel production from water hogging crops like sugar cane, which also requires massive inputs of fossil-fuel derived fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides. Talk about frying pan to fire.
You’re welcome to get a second opinion on cane. I think what you’ll find is that our main sugar cane growing areas in northern NSW and QLD are located on large alluvial plains, that were once naturally fertile, but now after in some areas as much as 100 years of sugercane monocultural production, are pretty flogged. However, the areas still are of high land capability capacity, and with the removal of sugarcane monocultures, can be returned to highly productive use. To state that they are grown on poor land capability areas is incorrect; they were established early on prime land.
i wonder if it’s physically or financially possible to process enough silicon to cover the homes in oz with solar cells, in the next 20 years.