Step 9: The hybrid alternative (version 2)I realize that as a country, we have gotten so spoiled by cars that expecting people to give them up is just not realistic.
Heck, even I have both a truck (that runs on biodiesel) and a motorcycle (that gets over 70mpg). Sooner or later most of us are going to buy a car.
Many times the question has been asked, "does the amount of gas a hybrid saves make up for the higher price?"
The answer is no.
A hybrid is not worth it.
The reason this seems like a reasonable question is because it is always posed as a false dichotomy: a new high-efficiency hybrid vs. a new moderate efficiency non-hybrid.
What if I told you you could have a car that gets about the same mileage as the Prius, and only cost about $2000?
The purchase of which, unlike the first two options, caused zero additional ecological damage in the form of mining materials, manufacturing energy, and transporting the final product.
Buy a used sub-compact car from the local paper or Craigslist. The Geo Metro got around 50mpg. The Chevy Sprint, Ford Festiva, and Suzuki Swift all got around 40. These numbers are EPA ratings, but if you put even a minimum of thought into how you drive, you can easily get much better than the EPA rating in any given vehicle
(I'll elaborate on that in a future instructable, but for now, you can see how I get 100% better mileage out of my truck here:
http://www.instructables.com/id/Vehicle-efficiency-upgrades/ )
You should easily be able to beat the Prius for mileage in any one of these cars.
PREEMPTIVE RESPONSE TO THE OBJECTIONS:
1)"Small cars are unsafe". This extremely pervasive myth comes from the fact that in crash tests which simulate a head-on collision, a vehicle with more mass fairs better (all other things being equal).
This is due to physics, and can only partially be mitigated by the design of safety restraints and crumple zones.
However, how a vehicle fairs in a head-on collision is only a small part of overall safety.
For one thing, head-on collisions are the not the most common type of collision. In a rear or side impact collision, a roll-over, or a single-vehicle collision with an inanimate object, vehicle mass has little or no impact on passenger safety. I won't get into the details, but, again, this relates to physics more than car design.
If you live in a rural area with high-speed undivided roads, you may have reason to worry about head-on crashes. Most of us live in a city or suburb where freeways have dividers down the middle, and city street speed limits are too low to worry about fatal crashes.
The other reason crash tests are misleading is that not all vehicles are equally likely to get into a crash.
Think about it - which would you rather: get into a crash and survive; or avoid the crash altogether!?!?
A vehicle with twice the mass takes twice as long to stop (physics again!)
You don't believe me do you?
OK...
This is from a 2000 NHTSA study of actual fatality rates by different vehicle classes.
If being heavy really made a vehicle safer, then fatality rates would drop in proportion to weight. That isn't at all what happens:
Class avg weight in lbs fatalities per bil. miles
Mid-size 4-door cars 3,061 9.46
Small 4-door SUVs 3,147 10.47
Compact pickup trucks 3,339 11.74
Mid-size 4-door SUVs 4,022 13.68
Large 4-door SUVs 5,141 10.03
The reality doesn't exactly match up with conventional wisdom. A 3,000lb mid-size car turns out to be
safer than a 5000lb SUV when you look at fatalities per mile instead of just crash test ratings (and these results include all situations, including the undivided highways that most of us don't travel on very often)
Mid-size cars are safer than any size SUV.
Assuming you aren't at high risk for head on collisions, the things to look for are braking distance, maneuverability, and lack of blind spots, and a small car beats out a large SUV on all three points.
2)"The car is too small for my needs". Considering most American households have between 2 and 5 people and one car per driver, and the majority of US car trips have one passenger or less, it's hard to understand why anyone would think 5 seats and a trunk wouldn't be enough.
Instead of sizing for a trip that comes up a few times a year, consider your day-to-day use. On those rare occasions you actually need something bigger, rent it.
3)"Used cars are unreliable". Fair enough.
Say, after a year or two, you need to do a major repair - say, it needs a new engine or transmission. It costs you a couple grand, at the most - as much as you spent on the car. On the other hand, you are not paying for full-coverage insurance - which would have cost you a couple grand within a few years. You are also not paying interest on a car loan. Or making any payments, for that matter, because what you would have spent on just the down payment of a new car was the total purchase price of the used car.
Simply put: for the cost of one new car, you can buy five to ten 20-year-old used cars.
It doesn't matter how much you sink into a used car in repairs, you will NEVER come close to breaking even with the cost of a new car with a warranty.
Worse case scenario, the car is totaled, and you don't have full coverage insurance.
Now you have to buy a new car.
But again, the new (used) car costs about as much as 2 years of full coverage insurance would have cost you.
Unless you total a car every two years, you come out ahead.
(And if you do total a car every two years, you really should have your license revoked)
This stands to reason, since (like with all insurance) the insurance company is in business to make a profit, and they set the price to insure that 90% of people pay them more than they will ever get back in claims. You can beat them by buying a car that doesn't warrant full coverage.