Dark Age of Cars Part 2: Hybrids

The continuing saga: The Dark Age of Cars.  This week's post is about Hybrids.  Keep in mind this was written before the release of the Chevrolet Volt.

Nothing gets me more worked up then hybrids.  I will not hide my opinion of them; they are worthless, possibly worse for the environment than regular vehicles and worst of all, they represent the death of exciting vehicles with their soul-crushing dullness.  But aside from that, they actually have higher cost of ownership than similar non-hybrid vehicles and that is their real sin.  For those who don’t know, a hybrid is any vehicle that uses a combination of two different power plants.  Hybrids are extremely common in the world of industrial machinery.  A huge majority of large ships are hybrids, extremely large dump trucks are hybrids and some of our military vehicles are hybrids.  I will revisit this later, but the hybrids that we drive are significantly less efficient than these examples.  The two major hybrids on the road today are the Toyota Prius and the Honda Insight.  There are some other good (better) hybrids from Ford but you don’t see those in the media much, so we’ll focus on the two big ones.  To get some figures out there, the Toyota Prius is largely considered to be the most advanced, and I use ‘advanced’ in the loosest sense, hybrid in production at this time and is in its 3^rd generation.  It has 134 horsepower combined between its gas and electric power plants and can run for very short distances without using the engine at all.  It gets 49.5 miles per gallon combined and is the most popular and best selling hybrid ever.  The base Prius starts at $22,800 and can swell over $34,000 with all the options.  The Honda Insight was the first mass-market hybrid and is currently in its 2^nd generation.  For everything the Prius is, the Honda is not.  The Honda has the simplest hybrid system on the market and cannot accelerate without its gasoline engine, but for this simple system it charges less.  It has 98 horsepower from its power plants and gets a combined average of about 41.5 miles per gallon.  The base Insight starts at $19,800 and swells just over $23,000 fully loaded.  The cars are almost 100% visually identical (how creative can you really get with a Kammback profile?).

            Now, I would like to revisit a couple points I mentioned above.  First, the ‘advanced’ comment.  Our ‘so called’ advanced technology that goes into hybrids is nothing more than rehashed World War 2 submarine technology or to put it another way 80 year old technology.  The Toyota Prius isn’t doing anything that the Type VII German submarine didn’t do.  However, if you look at the Gato class American submarine, you see the technology our hybrids should be using.  The diesel engines in the Gato ran generators only; the screws were turned entirely by the electric engines.  This is the technology our hybrids should currently be using.  The Chevrolet Volt uses this technology and GM claims it might be capable of 250 miles per gallon.  100 miles per gallon is more likely, but that is significantly higher than the Prius and the Volt will offer higher maximum power while having the chance to use no fuel at all (though that might result in a ‘shock’ to the electric bill, har har).  This is what we should be doing with our hybrids but instead we bow down to

Hybrid Synergy Drive

because Toyota was the first to market the technology successfully.

So now we visit the real myth of the hybrid, that it saves money.  For this comparison, the Prius and the Insight will be going head to head against vehicles from the same stable that are similarly powered and have a similar size.  The Insight will face off against the Honda Fit.  The Fit is actually a bit larger than the Insight and offers better performance.  As much as I wanted to put the Prius up against the Yaris, it isn’t a fair fight because the Yaris is a much smaller vehicle so the Prius will be facing the Corolla. 

Prius finally catches the Corolla after 15 years of ownership and the Insight catches the Fit after 15 years of ownership.  Because the base price of the hybrids is so high, it takes forever to catch up on fuel costs alone, not to mention the increased costs of servicing hybrids.  Now you must all ask yourself: “Do I believe that the owners of Insights and Priuses will still own their cars after 15 years?”  NO!  Owners of these hybrids will dump them after about 6 years because the batteries will start losing their effectiveness and need replaced.  Decrease the number of miles per year or the cost of fuel and it takes even longer for the hybrids to catch the standard vehicles.  Now that I’ve proved Hybrids are pointless, let the rant begin!  To those who get an elitist environmental stance because you drive a hybrid, stuff it!  Your hybrid does just as much to pollute the planet as a gas guzzling Hummer.  You still use gasoline, you still belch pollutants and you still kill large portions of the planet trying to get the materials for your vehicles you just seem to like to punish yourself while you’re doing it.  You can tout your AT-PZEV all you want, but you’re still abusing the hydrocarbons right along with the rest of us.  Your hybrid is about as attractive as a Gremlin (the car) and has the personality of a dishwasher.  Hybrids might be the future, but not like this.  They are too expensive and offer no benefits for the average person.  They are, for lack of a better word, a punishment.  Basically, a hybrid might be nifty to look at for a while, but it’s too big of a shock to the status quo.  And note to automakers, stop making hybrid versions of everything!  Nobody cares!  A giant alternator doesn’t make a vehicle green.  Tesla Roadster, that’s green.