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Hybrid vs Diesel
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Of course, hybrids have little advantage on the highway, where they have the same mileage as their gas-only counterparts would have with a comparably sized engine, because the batteries become depleted and the electric motor can't help.
This is where the diesel would be so helpful, because its fuel economy can ROCK on the highway. So clearly once they get all this sulfur content nastiness out of the diesel fuel, diesel-electric hybrids are the way to go.
At least until the widespread development of fuel cells - I bet this is at least 25 years away from widespread availability at a comparable price.
2014 Mini Cooper (stick shift of course), 2016 Camry hybrid, 2009 Outback Sport 5-spd (keeping the stick alive)
>> ...because the batteries become depleted and the
>> electric motor can't help
The batteries DON'T become depleted on the highway! That's a misconception!!!
When cruising on the highway, the engine alone has more than enough power available to propel a Prius. So what you see 100% (yes, 100 percent!) of the time is electricity creation. Most of it is routed to the battery-pack for recharging. Some of the time it is consumed immediately by the propulsion-motor.
JOHN http://john1701a.com
Not to mention I watch the display, which is always feeding the wheels from the gas motor...sometimes the electric wil help but then for every five minutes there is of that, there is also five minutes of recharging the battery pack, which presumably is a bigger drain on the gas engine than just pushing the car would be. It all balances out - net zero after the first ten minutes on the highway.
But I have topped 50 mpg if all my driving is on a city route! that is fun.
2014 Mini Cooper (stick shift of course), 2016 Camry hybrid, 2009 Outback Sport 5-spd (keeping the stick alive)
More on diesel maintenance...
10k miles oil change (using synthetic oil)
20k fuel filter change (the expensive part)
80k timing belt change (2002 TDI...the labor intensive part).
That's about it for TDI routine maintenance.
Gasoline-Hybrid:
7.5k miles (probably less for real owners)...most likely using conventional oil...depending on the owner
100k: Tuneup....using Platinum or Iridium plugs. Denso or NGK plugs aren't cheap either...Denso double platinums retail for about $10-$14, Iridiums are more. The Insight uses indexed plugs...each cylinder has a different spark plug part number.
60k: fuel filter change. Though not suggested by Toyota or Honda...they claim it's a lifetime filter...they clog eventually and will cause driveability issues (been there before)
But the second you leave the highway you see an immediate benefit... because you spent the entire time on the highway topping-off the battery. So there is a net gain OVERALL when you take into the account the fact that you eventually have to get off the highway. Then later, you have to accelerate to get back on.
Plus, your emissions on the highway would still much cleaner than just about everyone else's.
Also, how fast do you drive? Cruising at 70 MPH I very routinely get around 45 MPG with Non-LRR tires and E10 in the tank.
JOHN
http://john1701a.com
John - I mostly drive the limit, which is 65 here...sometimes I might stray a couple of mph over, but not much. This is a county car, so I do not look closely at what tires they put on it.
Metro/Aspire/Swift were all really efficient cars, but they were also very basic, cheap commuter cars. If they had the sound-deadening materials the Prius has, for instance, so that it was not 100 decibels inside at 60 mph, they would not have been so efficient - more weight. If they had the smog controls that enables today's cars to be SULEV-rated, they would not be so efficient. The Prius and the Honda HCH are the next generation response to these cars - much lower emissions, comparable fuel economy, in a package that has the refinement of today's $20K midsize cars, with things like quiet interiors and auto climate control.
I would be intrigued to see an experiment where they attempted to engineer one of those older models to have the interior sound and comfort levels and the emissions rating of the Prius/HCH - what I would want to know is (a) if they could meet that design goal in one of those older vehicles and (b) what fuel economy rating it would have then, as well as what performance rating (acceleration), since performance has been an oft-discussed topic on the hybrid threads.
2014 Mini Cooper (stick shift of course), 2016 Camry hybrid, 2009 Outback Sport 5-spd (keeping the stick alive)
To quote MIT: HYBRID DIESEL WILL OUTPERFORM FUEL CELLS
Meanwhile, a study performed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology finds that fuel-cell cars, while promising in principle, will be out-greened by hybrid vehicles, particularly diesel hybrids, until at least the year 2020. The problem, the MIT study says, is how hydrogen fuel for fuel cells is harvested; until 2020, most hydrogen will be extracted from natural gas, consuming vast amounts of energy that will reduce their overall environmental benefit. In the distant future, scientists expect hydrogen to be "cracked" from water molecules through other power sources. President Bush has pledged $1.2 billion for the development of fuel cells, and many car companies are promising mass-production fuel-cell vehicles by the end of the decade.
(end quote)
Hydrogen fuel cells are a boondoggle. One would be better off with a straight electric car. Hydrogen isn't a fuel source... it's an energy medium, like electricity. To quote straight from another forum:
Compare the energy efficiencies. What's the efficiency of directly charging a battery, and the battery releasing that energy? Very high - I can't remember offhand, but I'm pretty sure it's up in the 90 percentil range somewhere. Compare that to electrolyzing water (best case is 61%) and using it in a fuel cell (best theoretical case is 80%). Add those, and even ignoring the energy required to compress the gas to incredibly high pressures, the maximum possiblie efficiency is less than 50%. Real world efficiencies will be in the 30% range (not much better than a gasoline engine). So, you have to produce 3 times as much electricity to "charge" a fuel cell car to the same amount of recoverable power as an electric car - getting 3 times as much pollution. When you compare the ranges of fuel cells and electrics, fuel cells only win out by a tiny margin. It's amazing that people have been convinced they're the thing to focus on - in real world performance (even if fuel cells eventually come down in cost by a factor of 50 so people can afford them), they're only marginally better than electric cars, and require 3 times as much energy input.
If electric vehicles were powered entirely by renewable sources like wind and water (and sun) and had a range of 300-400 miles, they would be the perfect goal to shoot for. That may yet happen in the far distant future, but for now fuel cells offer the advantage possibly of not burning oil to achieve mobility. Even natural gas would be a small step in the right direction, although they are not there yet.
Using a renewable energy source at 50% efficiency is still way better than using a non-renewable source (Petroleum) at 100% (which we don't anyway)
2014 Mini Cooper (stick shift of course), 2016 Camry hybrid, 2009 Outback Sport 5-spd (keeping the stick alive)
The second law of thermodynamics says that whenever you convert energy from one form to another, you lose energy. So if the hydrogen comes from fossil fuels, we'd be better off just using the fuels in a combustion engine. Or if we get the hydrogen from electolyzing water, we should just run the car on that electricity.
We can already power modified diesel engines on compressed natural gas. Why LOSE energy to turn the natural gas into hydrogen? Just do CNG. Either way, we're still burning a non-renewable fossil fuel. The fuel cell car just does it less efficiently than the CNG diesel.
Or, better yet, just do biodiesel.
You are right about the fuel cells of course, but the one detail you left out is the smog emissions, and the point-source vs non-point-source thing...it is a lot easier to control the emissions of factories making electricity than the emissions of a billion little poorly maintained cars driving all over the place - this has been part of the push of alt energy programs for cars for a while now.
Think of the fuel cells as being a really big onboard battery pack. If it works out, we will finally have electric propulsion, but over a range bigger than any battery pack we are capable of building. I personally think electric vehicles would have been a lot more popular if they had an operating range of several hundred miles and a refueling time as quick as gas cars. Both are crucial, and both can be met with the fuel cell proposition.
2014 Mini Cooper (stick shift of course), 2016 Camry hybrid, 2009 Outback Sport 5-spd (keeping the stick alive)
It's my first TDI...since I passed up on the Hybrids and the Toyota Echo...overall...If I could afford it when it's available...I'd get the Toureg V10 TDI as a second car. The one of the reasons I got the TDI because of the driving experience. It's more fun to drive than the Prius, Insight, or Echo.
nippononly:
Based on my experience on my previous car (88 Camry V6)....after 90k miles the stuff coming out of the fuel filter was not pretty. In a perfect world, everyone will fill up with perfect gasoline, there would not be a concern for changing the fuel filter. Of course that is not the case...at times we get a bad tank, at times we unknowingly filled up a tank some time after the gas station got more fuel....
Changing the fuel filter is preventive maintenance...plus a filters clog sooner or later. There's no other place for solid impurities to go, except for in the trash when you replace it.
Hybrid Fuel Cells
Toyota's FCH-V....what's its hydrogen source? Ultra refined gasoline. This is the current feasible hydrogen source for hydrogen, in Toyota's case
Gasoline is the source for all current working fuel cell prototypes - that is why this technology has a long road to travel before there is any advantage to it.
2014 Mini Cooper (stick shift of course), 2016 Camry hybrid, 2009 Outback Sport 5-spd (keeping the stick alive)
City cars however should not be as expensive as the hybrids tend to be in my opinion.
I don't think people buy Corvettes for long drive either. Do they? They are expensive too! As for cost, it will eventually go down. Just watch.
Diesels at least get reasonable fuel mileage in the city and can do quite well on the highway.
Although diesels get good mileage and low end power, EPA isn't very high on rating the diesels from environment point of view.
Civic HX: 44 mpg (highway). At $1.60 per gallon, 1000 highway miles will cost $36.
Jetta TDI: 49 mpg (highway). At $1.70 per gallon, 1000 highway miles will cost $35.
Yes, one would save $1.00 per month by choosing the diesel over the gasoline powered car. Now, I would love to see IMA applied to Civic HX. It will only improve the output. It will add cost as well, but to get to Jetta's price, $5K is available to play with! With electric motors, low end torque improves. With gasoline engine, top end performance is retained. That said, I would love to see gasoline-electric hybrids evolve. Diesels have had how many years of advantage?
8u6hfd
But...currently, given the availability of hybrids in the automotive market...it's gas-electric.
I don't think we limit ourselves to the present when we talk about diesels. We even visit the realms of fuel cell. So why is it only the present when it comes to hybrids? Let us be consistent.
That said, I don't keep up with hybrid power train development as much as many here would do, but I'm sure some automakers already have diesel-electric concepts.
Honda is about to unleash its first (home-grown) diesel effort in Europe. Could they do diesel-hybrid in the future? Yes.
Why are many against "recycling" the otherwise lost energy? Even in my car, I would love to have the feature of idle stop, courtesy of electric motors, a fantastic thing. The same can be adopted for diesels.
And since "hybrid" is the term here, and can be applied to gasoline, diesel as well as fuel cell vehicles (yes!), why are we discussing the maintenance aspects of gasoline versus diesel engines (and to top it off, completely irrelevant comparisons as well, going down to the type of spark plugs used)? How does an electric motor stack up in terms of maintenance compared to a diesel or gasoline motor?
BTW, another point about discharge rate of batteries was brought up earlier. There is this another thing called an ultra-capacitor, likely to be used in the next upgrade of hybrids. It improves the efficiency of the entire charging/discharging process! A few prototypes, since the launch of Prius, Insight and Civic Hybrid have already used them. In fact, Honda FCX uses it as well.
Things will only get better, and there are ways to go before gasoline/diesel-electric hybrid technology can be near the development of current gasoline/diesel technology.
Power plants are often not all that clean. Trust me on this one... I live two towns away from a massively polluting power plant. It probably puts out more PCBs and pollution than all the cars in the area.
<rant class="slightly unhinged">
And, listen, we need to start weaning ourselves off the teat of fossil fuels TODAY. At current rates of consumption, there's no way we don't rip through ALL our useful fossil fuels in this century. At the end of the century we will either a) have transitioned to renewable fuels (most likely solar, wind, and hydro-electric) and conservation b) perfected nuclear fission or c) collapsed into an anarchaic Mad Max or Amish future, with MASSIVE human die-off in the meantime. This could be a VERY ugly century.
</rant>
2014 Mini Cooper (stick shift of course), 2016 Camry hybrid, 2009 Outback Sport 5-spd (keeping the stick alive)
If it is now for gasoline-electric hybrids, let us keep the now for diesels as well. That said, may be we will have choice between gasoline, gasoline-electric hybrids, (bio)diesel-electric hybrids, diesels, or some other form of fuel in the future.
They aren't taking a loss on every diesel like they are on most hybrids and the technology is easier.
Which hybrid is selling at a loss now? Both, Toyota and Honda, are earning profits. That said, any form of entrepreneurship requires initial investment. It doesn’t begin with profit.
Texas must be a high sulphur state, California has Diesel at $1.99 and Premium at $2.13.
Gasoline/Diesel price in a gas station in Dallas I visited a few days ago,
$1.60: Regular (Octane: 87)
$1.70: Plus (Octane: 89)
$1.70: Diesel
$1.80: Premium (Octane: 93)
I personally think diesel hybrids running on biodiesel is about as clean and renewable as we're going to get for a while.
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/WEBONLY/publicfeature/jan03/thev.htm- l
"Although regular hybrids can improve fuel economy by up to 400 percent, that advantage comes at a cost: with its dual power plants, Toyota's Prius is said to cost far more to make than its $19 995 sticker price. (A Toyota spokesman declined to comment on the Prius's production cost or to say whether the carmaker is turning a profit on the vehicle.) "
or
http://www.insightman.com/opinions/amazing_car.htm
I cannot commend Honda highly enough for taking the profit factor out of the equation. The incomparable Honda engineering team has done a marvelous job of balancing the physical trade-offs to create a car like no other in the hundred-odd years of the automobile and Honda management has bought into the project in a big, big way by pricing the Insight below $20,000. In reality, it should cost more than the $32,000 S2000 sports car, but Honda knew I couldn't afford a car that expensive (they must have read the Insight survey answers I submitted on their website) and made the ultimate trade-off: a fantastic car that will make no profit.
or
http://www.colby.edu/~dlfouche/electriccars.html
However, there are some problems with these hybrids. This car is mechanically more complicated because it has to have two different types of engines and clutches. There is also a complicated computer system in the car to control the clutches and motors. This causes the manufacturing cost of the car to be quite high, about twice what a regular car sells for. The reason why so many people are buying Priuses is because Toyota is selling them at a loss.
And Civic Hybrid has been selling alright, so there is no plan to replace it, yet. 2200 units last month is quite good, IMO. It has been in the market of just over a year, right? That is no time to think about replacing a car. Civic follows 5-year redesign cycle, but may get some tweaks in a year or two.
And now the news is that Civic Hybrid may be offered in Europe. And another news may be a big one, and has been in Europe... a performance Accord using gasoline-electric drivetrain. The AWD prototype at Geneva had 350 HP, but production variant could be like 240-260 HP as the Accord Type-R replacement. And we could see it as a higher trim of TSX as well!
OTOH, Honda may not bring its diesel engine (it is a 2.2 liter CTDi pumping 140 HP/245 lb.-ft) in the USA any time soon. The release in Europe is a few months away.
Yes, Toyota uses a planetary setup for ages now. I don't believe this is the case for the Prius as it uses a CVT.
Profit margins
When Toyota launched the Prius in 1997 for Japan, they were selling it at a loss. At that time, the technology and manufacturing of was not matured....flash forward to today, as Toyota "sold" its hybrid setup to many companies...more production means lower unit costs.
#172 boaz47
Biodiesel, made primarily from rapeseed (Canola) oil is popular in Europe. It is sold along side of petrol diesel.
That is true for any new/redesigned vehicle. Initial (R&D) costs are high so it takes a while to get the returns. Honda S2000 was a hot car when it was unleashed in 1999, and so was the redesigned Odyssey. It took about six months for these vehicles to turn in profits.
The costs and complexity associated with hybrids using electric motors is exaggerated, IMO.
1. Price it to have a profit margin
2. Price it to lose money, but have it accessible to consumers.
The first case is simple, automakers do this in general. For the Prius, as before I mentioned, the cost of producing the technology was very high, due to small production numbers....it would have put the car out of reach for most consumers Toyota was targeting. If they couldn't sell the car because the high pricing...they lose money anyway.
The second case, is what Toyota did. Even though they were taking huge losses per car, they felt the long term benefits to the company outweigh the initial losses. Toyota's hybrid system is gaining acceptance, thus why a few years later, Toyota introduced the Estima Hybrid, and soon the Harrier (Lexus RX330) hybrid. Also the Toyota hybrid system is used for the Escape Hybrid, as well as upcoming Nissan hybrids. Now because of the widespread acceptance and customers, production of the Toyota hybrid system can increase, and drive down unit costs, and finally get their return on investment, and get profits.
Look at the technology you see in cars today....many of the features, like power windows, locks, ABS, airbags, etc., when first introduced they were high cost options. Today since so much is produced, they are features that don't cost much nearly as much as they were first introduced.
I understand what you are saying, but my point still stands, and not much different from your. You can't expect something new to start adding to profits immediately. If Prius is turning profits, at some point, the initial investment was recuperated. And if is turning profits today, it was priced to have a profit margin, not to lose money as we continue to wait for the other models that build upon the investment Prius started with.
Honda is developing its first diesel engine for launch in European Accord later this year. Although the engine will be shared by some other models later, do you think it will be priced with a profit margin? Or with an effort to make it accessible to the consumers? Either way, it is not going to start delivering profits immediately, whether or not it is shared with other models.
Intel went from the 486 processors to the Pentiums as a new technology. Price was only slightly higher than a 486 and it was much faster.
This is an excellent example of upgrading an existing technology and the costs associated with it. Expect the same with hybrids.
Intel made profits right off the mark it seems, and prices even went down when the 90 came out.
Intel didn't start with Pentium but built upon an existing product. Still, the initial investment was not recuperated with the first sale of the chip, I can bet on it.
Hybrid is not a new technology in that it hasn't been tried before. Diesel trains have used a hybrid system for years. Ships use a hybrid system now. Both perform better and are more fuel efficient than their non hybrid cousins.
That's the point. I did mention that hybrid technology has been around for a long time, just not in automobiles. And this is critical because hybrids are still perceived as something very different, and it is a cautious market at its best.
To believe a company like Toyota made a vehicle that far outstripped their expectations in the first year and by year three a company that can produce close to 400,000 Camrys couldn't make more than 20119 Hybrids for the US seems silly.
One step at a time is the key. Business decisions are (should) never made to flood the market with products, no matter how successful they are. Honda can sell 400,000 Accords per year, does not mean they can flood the market with 400,000 Odyssey, although the demand is strong. TSX target is only 15K per year, TL sales were targeted at 40K when it was redesigned, and increased to 60K as sales caught up. Insight arrived with projected sales of 5K per year, Civic Hybrid takes it up a notch and projected sales volume is about 25K for the year. So, how many Jetta TDI does VW sell in a year in the USA?
People didn't want a little commuter so the Insight failed.
Did it? It was never meant to be a mainstream product. It was a stepping-stone and has served its purpose.
As someone has already said there are places where you can by biodiesel right next to petrodiesel. Renewable fuel and a proven engine, how can that be a bad idea?
It is not a bad idea, but use of electric motors to assist a proven technology isn't either. That said, somebody here may be living a few miles away from hydrogen re-fueling facilities (South Cal), that does not mean Honda FCX can go mainstream. And it won't (again), because FCX is another stepping stone in the fuel cell vehicle development program.
However, the two of the three most important details were not included... what region of the country you live in and whether you have a manual transmission or an automatic.
(Type of driving was the third.)
I'm driving a manual TDI. My driving is typically throughout northern TN, KY, OH, IN, MI, WV.
I have a brother-in-law with an automatic TDI with about 140k miles on it last time we chatted. He claims his average sits right around 43mpg, however he doesn't zoom-zoom like I do. I spent about three weeks driving his car semi-locally around Ohio two winters ago. With my style of driving I got around 40mpg on two fill-ups. BTW, once I learned the tranny and it learned my driving style, we got along quite well. I would put the performance very close to a stock manual TDI, although substantially slower than my modded TDI.
The Diesel Dilemma
Diesel's Role in the Race for Clean Cars
Union of Concerned Scientists, 1/6/2004
http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_vehicles/cars_and_suvs/page.cfm?pageI- D=1307
I do not know if the fuel of the future will be hydrogen or diesel or something undiscovered, I do know the Union of Concerned Scientists would IMO be better named the Politicians Hiding Behind Science.
For those who don't understand how a hybrid works, it captures the vehicles energy when slowing by re-charging batteries instead of just converting kinetic energy to heat via the brakes.
This battery power is then used to help accelerate again via an electric motor.
It sounds good in theory, but I have 2 gripes:
- the manufacturers "cheat" in the comparison with "normal" cars because they also perform additional mods to reduce weight and reduce drag. If they did that to their other cars their mileage would improve without the trendy hybrid option.
- the manufacturers have chosen to use the most technically advanced, dense, electric motors. This is a good engineering decision, but not a good environmental decision. What are the world stocks of Niobium like? How much Molybdenum is available? If you though Aluminum was expensive to produce (making aluminum is akin to mining rust and then applying huge amounts of energy to reduce it to Iron and Oxygen) then you haven't seen what these other metals require.
Toyota builds hybrids as a marketing gimmick to make up for the fact that they had the largest selection of SUVs for sale in the US a couple of years back (I'm sure GM has passed them now that they're even putting every GM badge onto flavours of the Saturn VUE!)
Honda does it to play catch up with Toyota.
Both sell at a huge loss, but its a marketing gimmick remember, not a profit center.
Re: Test Drive ... [venus537 #253]
From the off-topic thread of "Diesel Passats"
When they talk about cost, they are talking about "old" gas technology, and when they talk about mileage, they are talking about "future" gas technology. Here's a hint for fair journalism: PICK ONE OR THE OTHER!
The new "direct injection" gas engines have the injection complexities of diesels, but are burdened with the additional electrical and maintenance issues of spark-plugs.
And there was no mention of the added pollution caused by gas engines in bad need of a tune-up! (a real and significant problem on our roads)
And there was also no mention of the additional longevity of the diesel engines. Once again, a study that assumes that cars just grow on trees in Japan and there is NO energy/material/resource/environmental costs in manufacturing them.
In reality, new cars (which pollute less in operation) are consuming much more energy and generating MORE pollution in their manufacture than the ones they replace.
There is a significant environmental advantage to keeping cars on the road longer and amortizing the damage from creating them over more passenger miles!
So, compare a diesel powered car that is still efficient at 300,000 miles to a gas powered car that is not so clean burning at 200,000 miles.
But the editors don't have a clue. They're too busy chasing "the sound bite" to invest the time or energy into examining the big picture. Hype beats substance ... again.
For X barrels of crude, you can generate "G" barrels of Gas or "D" barrels of Diesel. I read a figure once that indicated D ~= (6 x G) ... meaning that every gallon of gas could be replaced by 6 gallons of diesel for the same price!
Its obvious that the oil companies have artificially inflated the price of diesel fuel to curb sales of diesel vehicles in order to maintain their high sales volumes of gasoline.
If diesel was fairly priced at about 1/4 the cost of gas (US$0.40 a gallon) then the large resultant shift to diesel vehicles (which consume less fuel) and the lower revenue from diesel would severely cut into oil company's profits.
Plus, the huge reduction in the demand for crude would mean that the US wouldn't have to import oil, driving prices (and profits) down further.
That bogus "diesel dilemna" article looks like the that article in the computer world that says developing programs on Microsoft Windows costs less than on Linux ... oh yes, we forgot to mention that the study (which goes against ALL user experience) was funded by Microsoft.
I wonder which oil company paid for "Diesel Madness!" (as in "Reefer Madness")
I am all for the Hybrid cars, but I just cannot see paying $3000 over sticker and waiting 6 months to get a car (Toyota Prius), when I can have a great riding, comfortable car for right at $21000 with all the bells and whistles and still get over 40mpg around town. These aren't your Daddy's Diesels......things have come a long way since the 70s. I just wish people could see that.
Proud owner of a 2004 Jetta GLS TDI.
the manufacturers "cheat" in the comparison with "normal" cars because they also perform additional mods to reduce weight and reduce drag. If they did that to their other cars their mileage would improve without the trendy hybrid option.
Not necessarily true. In case of Honda, your gripe may have been true if you consider Insight. But I doubt getting 60+ mpg would be possible just by reducing weight and drag. For one, you would be left with a less powerful engine (Insight uses 1.0 liter engine, and electric assist helps create instant power).
In case of Civic, Honda added IMA, additional sound insulation and underbody panel on a regular Civic. OTOH, Honda HX (regular “high mileage” Civic, EPA rated 36/44 with manual) gets several cost cutting measures. I just don’t see how adding IMA would not improve the EPA rating established for Civic HX.
the manufacturers have chosen to use the most technically advanced, dense, electric motors. This is a good engineering decision, but not a good environmental decision.
Nope. Honda IMA is essentially a compact and thin DC brushless motor. There is a lot more metal needed to deliver a diesel engine.
So, compare a diesel powered car that is still efficient at 300,000 miles to a gas powered car that is not so clean burning at 200,000 miles.
But the editors don't have a clue. They're too busy chasing "the sound bite" to invest the time or energy into examining the big picture. Hype beats substance ... again.
That said, any ideas why diesel locomotives use hybrid set up? I believe those engines are series hybrids, running primarily on electric motor, with energy source being diesel.
Plus, cars are getting more and more slippery as years go by. The Prius 0.26 will be matched by other non-hybrid models within a few years I am sure.
2014 Mini Cooper (stick shift of course), 2016 Camry hybrid, 2009 Outback Sport 5-spd (keeping the stick alive)
That said, replacing 120 batteries (1.2V each) after ten years may not be any different from using 12 AA sized batteries per year for next ten years. If hazardous material concern were valid, we might want to take into account the additional “hazard” that refineries would spew into the atmosphere to deliver 40-50% more gasoline/diesel for 17 million cars. In the end, the premise of hazardous waste from use of hybrid technology may be pointless.
If you can't, what is your argument based upon?