A Hummer is more environmentally friendly than a Prius!?!

When you ask most people what the most environmentally friendly car is, most will reply the Toyota Prius. It is widely known as the flagship of all hybrid cars as it has the most sales and it gets a ridiculous 51/48 MPG!! The government also gives you incentive to buy a Prius over…a Hummer for example through cash back and use of carpool lanes in larger cities. But is a Prius really that environmentally friendly?

The problem with the way most people compare how green a car is, is by comparing their MPGs and CO₂ output. If this was all that mattered then hybrids would kick normal cars’ butts but unfortunately this is not the case. What most people tend to forget is the environmental impact that the actual manufacturing of the car is, specifically the manufacturing and disposing of hybrids’ batteries. The nickel batteries that hybrids use are not environmentally friendly at all. The nickel for the Prius is produced in Sudbury, Ontario. This plant has caused so much environmental damage to the surrounding environment that NASA has used the 'dead zone' around the plant to test moon rovers. All around the plant, there is no life for miles. But the environment killing doesn’t end here, there are still many steps in the process that occur all over the world. The nickel from Canada is sent off to a refinery plant in Europe and then to China and the battery ends up in finished form in Japan. There it is placed in whatever car it was made for and shipped all over the world to the car dealerships.

Quoting The Recorder Online, “researchers discovered that the Prius costs and average of $3.25 per mile driven over a lifetime of 100,000 miles (the expected lifespan of a hybrid). On the other hand the Hummer costs $1.95 per mile over an expected 300,000 miles. This means that the Hummer will last three times as long and use less energy than the Prius.”

In addition, when the hybrid vehicle has reached the end of its lifespan it cannot just be taken to the junkyard and be crushed because its batteries are highly toxic and must be disposed of in the proper way….Unfortunately we don’t know what the proper way is...Hybrid vehicles have not been around long enough to know what happens when they are just left to sit in a landfill. So there could be extremely adverse environmental implications to driving a hybrid.