GM Closing Four Truck and SUV Plants!

In a move that I have been waiting for, for a long time, GM is closing four plants according to the Associated Press in a story out this morning.

Rising gas prices have precipitated a dramatic switch from larger vehicles to smaller ones, and American car companies have been left out in the cold in a sense because their gas sipping options are far less populous than those of foreign car makers.

GM, the one responsible for attempted murder of the electric car not five years ago can now be seen as making amends for that. It now appears that the Chevy Volt just may actually happen. The shift away from bigger vehicles is even more dramatic when you understand that switching from a 10 mpg vehicle to a 20 mpg vehicle saves approximately 600 gallons of fuel per year while switching from a 50 mpg to a 100 mpg saves only 120 gallons. Think if someone switches from a Hummer to a Prius, they would save approximately 750 gallons of fuel a year, and at current prices, that's a hunk of change.

Speaking of Hummer, GM has decided to reevaluate the brand, possibly even selling it. This is the thing I am glad of the most, because Hummer means so much more than just a big SUV, it really represents something to the rest of the world. The rest of the world sees Hummers as small tanks, and here our moderately wealthy drive them as family cars or commuters.

GM says the change is permanent, let's hope so, and let's hope that other car manufacturers do the same. Toyota needs to get rid of Sequoia.

I think with the right impetus, we can transition away from fossil fuels without having a huge crash.
WiredForStereo

A Hummer is cheaper than a Prius?

If you pay attention to the hybrid vehicle products on the market, or environmental issues, you’ve probably seen or heard about this article, or the report which it cites:
http://www.reason.org/commentaries/dalmia_20060719.shtml (A libertarian site.)

I encourage you to read it, but I do not encourage you to believe anything it says. In my ever furthering pursuit of truth, I’ll explain why.

The article says essentially that over the life cycle of the vehicle, a Hummer costs less to own than a Prius.

Let us do a little figuring.

The first mistake the report makes is to assume certain things about the life cycle of the vehicles involved. In fact, the first mistake is the biggest. The report assumes that a Hummer will last 380,000 miles. Yeah, right. What was the last American car that lasted that long? Some Toyotas and Hondas can if well cared for, but American cars are definitely not known for their longevity. The report assumes that a Prius will last no longer than 109,000 miles. This is even more ridiculous than the Hummer is. Prii are warranted everywhere in the world for 100,000 miles, and everywhere in the world but the 49 non CARB states for 150,000 miles. Why would a car company warrantee a car up until the day it is expected to die? Half the cars would die before that day, they’d lose money out the wazoo. Additionally, there are already whole bunches of Prii that have before now exceeded the 100,000 mark. I don’t know of any Hummers that have exceeded the 200,000 mark. Therefore, lets for the sake of argument pretend that they can both last the same amount of time, because realistically they can, and lets go with an even 200,000.

According to GM’s website, a base model H2 costs $56,695 (more than half the price of my house.) A base model Prius costs $21,100 according to Toyota.

My research tells me that the average American drives about 12,000 miles per year, I don’t know if this is completely factually accurate, but for the sake of argument, let’s assume it is.

According to dealers, (CBS News) about the best gas mileage you can expect from an H2 is 10 mpg. Consumeraffairs.com averages the Prius at about 43 mpg. Notice with both of these, I have taken neither the EPA figures nor the manufacturer figures because both of those are notoriously optimistic.

Now that we have our vital information, let’s do just a little life cycle assessment. We take the price, add to it the average number of miles and miles per gallon, assume at this point $3 per gallon of gasoline, cram all that into our trusty TI-83 Plus calculator and presto. At these numbers, both the vehicles should last around 16 years, the Prius during that time will incur a total cost of just over $35,000 while the Hummer will cost you $116,695. That’s right, the Hummer will cost more in gas that the machine itself, while the Prius for gas will cost several thousand less. Just for fun, I calculated the cost for my Corolla at 34 mpg and came up with almost $33,000. Of course, you will also have to factor in the fact that the Hummer uses around twice the oil per oil change, and tires that are just freaking huge and cost quite a bit.

The claim that “exotic metals” are more costly to recycle is completely bogus. The exotic metals contained in a Prius are not a whole lot more than aluminum in the hood and engine, and nickel in the battery. Soon Priuses will have Lithium in the battery. I’ve talked about this before, metals are the best paying back of all recycled materials. Listen to the news about metal prices, they are going way up. Metals can be recycled cheaply and easily and are worth a lot of money.

According to Wikipedia, the claim that a Hummer has a lower life cycle cost than a Prius has been debunked enough to be considered an urban legend. Hopefully, like other urban legends (see dishonest email posts) this will go away eventually. Even the company who published the report has since published newer yearly reports that show the Prius to be as much as 25% cheaper than some SUV’s.

Is a Prius more costly than a Chevy Aveo, certainly. But it also offers more. The Aveo doesn’t offer regenerative breaking or any other hybrid functionality. Hybrids are the future. For every gallon of gasoline you buy, the terrorists win.

The near future is littered with plans for more hybrids from many companies. Today’s spotlight: Phoenix Motorcars. They have a full electric SUV and small pickup they claim will be on the market soon. They have great battery technology and are not bad looking either. Ed Begley has one. Also keep an eye out for plug in Priuses and other cars, they are being tested as we speak and should be on the market soon.

Drive
WiredForStereo

Emails to Phil Valentine

I was listening to the Phil Valentine show recently because he had an American car company representative on talking about gas mileage. As you might expect, this guy was giving all the normal nonsense about the car companies not being able to do what the government wants and only selling what the people want.

So I wrote Phil a letter. Here is the whole back and forth in it's entirety:

That guy you had on talking about gas mileage was lying through his
teeth, wow, what a load of crap.

Car makers can make what ever they want, or are told to. They just
don't want to make efficient cars. You think they can't make a pickup
that will get 35 mpg? Daimler Chrysler was advertising that they could
before the sale of the company went through. Why was there such a boom
in light trucks and SUV's? The car companies decided that's what
people SHOULD want, not what they did want. Advertising did that.
Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh both are now advertising Cadillacs while I
now have to listen to whiney commercials about gas mileage that the car
companies have made.

Why did Honda drop the Accord Hybrid? Because the Accord Hybrid SUCKS.
It gets 27 mpg while my non-hybrid Toyota Corolla gets 35. You don't
see Toyota complaining about the Prius, they are making money hand over
fist off that car, and as gas prices rise, they'll be making even more.
Toyota plans to offer the Hybrid Synergy Drive in all it's cars, and
people will buy them, because they work, and they work well. American
hybrids barely get 2-3 mpg better than their non hybrid brothers.

You think car manufacturers can't make a car that gets 52 mpg? The
Prius already does if you take it easy on the gas, and the third
generation Prius, out next year or the year after, is said to be able
to get 30% better than that.

Technology travels faster than B.S.

Bottom line, that guy was so full of crap his eyes were brown. And you
bought every minute of it.


Phil replied:

Bottom line: Auto makers make what they think people want.
If their research showed people wanted cars that get 52
miles to the gallon you don't think they'd make them?
What would be their motivation NOT to make them?

Phil


To which I replied:

Thanks for responding,

It's monetary motivation. It costs hefty amounts of money to retool to
make new cars. In fact, it costs more to create a new line of cars
than it does to launch an ad campaign to make people like the cars that
already exist. There was a significant amount of time, money, and
effort that went into making the Prius, as well as the EV1, and will
also into the Chevy Volt.

True, car companies make the cars people want. But if a car company
wants the people to want a car, it's a simple task of telling them what
car to want. Appeal to machismo, add some sex appeal, and slap the
word "new" on it. Not hard. It's been done for millenia, and it costs
less than actually making something new.

American car companies will continue to slide into the back seat in
sales and popularity as long as they continue to push the status quo.
I personally am an American, and proud of it, and I'd absolutely love
to buy and American car. But every American car I've owned has been a
piece of crap, and every Toyota I've owned, I still have. Right now,
there are no American cars beside the Chevy Volt that I would consider
buying, and the Volt is still years off.

American cars will also not win the car wars when they advertise "high"
mileage as 30 mpg while there are a great many Asian cars that get
above 40, and most European cars (not sold in America) get above 40.

If Toyota meets it's goal of producing the third generation Prius drive
train at 50% of current costs, there will be no way American cars will
ever catch up. And when gas gets to $7 a gallon, suddenly that ugly
little aerodynamic pod car starts to look mighty enticing.

Thanks


Unfortunately with his show hosting duties to fulfill, Phil was not able to reply. I can only expect that he remains unconvinced and continues to tow the party line.

I shall try again another day,
WiredForStereo