Toyota Not As Green As It Pretends To Be?

For a while I've been hearing how Toyota is really green and environmentally friendly, due to their investments in hybrid techonology and the like, but I came across an interesting article that seems to refute this today.

What do you all think?

http://businessweek.com/innovate/content/oct2005/id20051027_151002.htm

 

Short of running my own comparative emission tests on vehicles, I really don;t feel this article gives me any firm information on which to take a stance

 

Its a load of crap... (pardon my french) My dad works at Toyota and ive been to the company and met the man in charge (Mr. Watanabe) hes really nice and even paid me for helping the "test drive" department! These people have nothing but good intentions.. They DONT want to be the dominating car company, they WANT Ford and GMC and Chevy to stay fierce competition! The new cars are nice though..

 

Wow, just a little disillusioned there?

Nothing but good intentions....ROFL.

So long as it doesn't interfere with the almighty buck.

As for Hybrids, the only real success story (I've seen anyway) of melding gas economy w/ power, has been the Honda Accord hybrid.

37mpg highway, 29 city, 255hp.

 

(shrug) The Business Week article is basically quoting ONE environmental activist group's statement. Enviro-activists don't like much of anything about conventional cars, but there are NO current viable replacemts for them. Tough. The bill to reduce "greenhouse gases"... carbon dioxode is assinine. The only thing that doesn't emit carbon dioxide is pure electric, and those are NOT viable for normal transportation yet, and there is no charging infrastructure to support them en mass. Yadda yadda.

Toyota IS better than most, but they're still a corporation charged by their stockholders to make products and make a profit. That doesn't make them evil.

Except in the eyes of the enviro-wackos.

 

Pure electric cars could be some of the worst polluters , carbon dioxide included because most electricity in the US is from coal burning powerplants. Most coal power plants are not real efficient and then the line loss between powerplant and end user is also a huge amount of the total generated. The only plus is it uses domestic produced coal instead of foreign oil.

 

Another problem with electric and hybrids is that after so many miles the batteries need to be replaced, what kind of enviromental nightmare is that plus the extra expense.

 

Absolutely. Currently, 50% of our electricity is produced by coal, most of the rest by oil, natural gas, some hydroelectric, and a small amount by wind/solar. For real polutants, coal is far dirtier than what comes out of auto exhausts, and for the unproven "dangers" from carbon dioxide, coal, oil, and natural gas are all "bad". With our current mix of power, what comes out of the smokestacks makes the electric cars dirtier than gasoline, it just moves the polution source.

And with the current shortages and prices for oil & natural gas, the coal mines are hiring for the first time in about 20 years. Demand is UP.

And we don't have near enough electric output to support electric cars. The grid is maxed out already.

Environmentalists should all be big proponents of nuclear power, the only reliable totally polution-free energy source available. And they mostly all hate it.

 

I see BP are on track for $5Billion in profits this year. Good job gas is so expensive, or those guys might go short...

 

And BP is not alone.

 

What does meeting "the man" and thinking he's nice have to do with it? He's still essentially a car salesman.

There are quite a few draw backs to these hybrids. Comparisons have shown little (less than $200 on one model) to no cost per year decrease over cars using standard gas (over a 5 year period). Next comes the cost of vehicle maintenace... your local neighborhood mechanic will not be able to work on these increaseing cost and creating a monoploy for the dealer/manufacturers. Insurance cost is another. What about when emergancy services folks have to respond... they just can't douse the car with water or use the jaws of life. Those battery chemicals can't be good when they go down the drain into the bay or local creek. Batteries will also need to be replaced approx every 5 years. What is that going to cost? And I'm sure there will be a enviromental fee stuck on that too.

 

I read a Popular Mechanics comparison last year between the standard and hybrid Honda Civics by way of one of their six month test drives and they calculated that it would take 1440 years at $2.00/gal for them to recoup the price difference between the two models.