Want to be the first on your block with a $50,000 Toyota Prius? Head to Hybrids Plus in Boulder, Colo., and leave your Prius with their technicians. Go skiing or something, come back in three or four days with a check for $24,000 and you will have one of the nation’s very few plug-in hybrids that should easily get 100 miles per gallon. A plug-in is an ordinary hybrid with an electric motor and gasoline engine that has been modified — usually by upgrading its battery pack or adding more batteries — so it can go a lot farther on electric power than it normally does. On Thursday, a study funded by the Natural Resources Defense Council and a power-industry group lined up behind advocates in dubbing plug-ins the car of the future, albeit the distant future. That study said greenhouse gas emissions and domestic oil consumption would drop sharply if plug-in hybrid technology became widespread by 2050. Mass production of the vehicles, however, is years away.
I suppose if $50,000 isn’t a lot of money to you, this sort of green living might just be the price of admission. I’m not even going to get into how long it might take you to recoup your investment, or what will become of the batteries once your Prius has lost it’s novelty value and it’s time for you to secure yet another visible, mobile symbol of your concern for the environment. OK, so perhaps I’m being somewhat simplistic and overly cynical here, but I’m also trying to be realistic. Yes, the Prius and it’s upgraded self may get better gas mileage, but at what cost? It may be helpful to try reminding yourself that nothing ever happens in a vacuum. Certainly, the batteries that make the Prius what it is are good things; but they become not so good once their useful life is over and they must be disposed of. At that point they become an ecological disaster looking for a place to happen. What was green in the beginning becomes quite a different color at the end.
Likewise, the cost of advanced hybrid technology makes it inaccessible to all but those with more money than sense. Who, really, is going to be willing to pay $50,000 for a Prius? It’s not going to be someone like me, who, while hardly poor, can’t afford to piss away money in such a cavalier fashion. If it’s worth $50,000 to you to make a statement about yourself and your status as an environmentalist…hey, knock yourself out. It’s your money and this is still a free country.
I’m all for the idea of alternative fuel technology, and I’m certainly not anti-Prius (or any other hybrid vehicle). What I am saying is that it’s far too early, and there are far too many unsolved puzzles to assume that hybrid technology is or will be the answer to our problems. Ultimately, hybrid technology may well turn out to be a viable substitute to fossil fuels- once they battery disposal issues are sorted out. For now, I’m sticking with my 2004 Mazda Tribute. No, it doesn’t get great mileage, and yes, it’s an SUV (albeit a small one)>. It IS paid for, however, and that’s good enough for me. If we’re going to be talking lowest ultimate cost, it doesn’t get much better than that.
Come back when the batteries aren’t filled with toxic chemicals that require special handling to dispose of. Perhaps then I’ll take the idea of hybrid vehicles a bit more seriously.
(PS- If you’re really looking to make a statement, try this.)
