The Prius and the Hummer: Which is Truly Greener?

Written by Tyler Allen

The Prius and the Hummer: Which is truly greener?

As I was taking a shower today, I do what we all do, wonder about life and everything of the like. Well in the midst of my wondering and questioning the Cosmos, I pick up the new bottle of shampoo my mom bought. I begin reading it and it says “94% Bio-Degradable formula” and “Made from 50% recycled plastic” (Referring to the container itself obviously ). 

That’s when I remembered something I had heard a while back and heard multiple times from different sources. That the Hummer is actually greener then the Prius. Puzzled by such strange words, as Hummer and green are never used in the same sentence, I decided to do so some research. 

What I found was rather surprising…

While this isn’t a Prius bashing article, I’m just using the Prius because it is the most popular “Green car” on the market. This should give you an idea of how bad “Green cars” really are.

From a gas mileage stand point, the prius is much, much greener, but from a production standpoint, not so much. To make the Prius’s batteries, you have to mine the nickel. Nickel is a rare metal found fused with iron in the wild. To get this, you must mine, either open pit or underground. After the iron ore is collected for nickel production, it is then smelted down at super high temperatures or you can separate the nickel from the ore by using chemicals. 

Once enough nickel is collected, it is then shipped off to a European refinery (Nickel for the Prius is mined in Canada). Where afterwards of being refined in Europe, is sent of to China, where something else done, then it finally ends up in Japan, ready for Prius duty. So this basically uses more energy as it is shipped from place to place, causing a bigger carbon footprint. 

Then there is the issue of what to do with the Prius battery pack once it is depleted or the car has met its fate. As of now, not enough Prius’s have met their fate to cause alarm. But it will eventually happen…with every green car, not just the Prius.

Now the point of this article wasn’t to bash the Prius, even though I hate Toyota and have no qualms in saying such. It was more about how green cars, really and truly are not all that green as the media portrays.  Other green cars that will eventually face this same thing are the Chevy Volt, Nissan Leaf, Any Tesla car, and the Fisker Karma. While there are more cars with battery  packs, this was just to give you an idea of how un-green, green cars really are.