Tesla delays its next model, replaces its CEO, lays off workers

An all electric car is NOT clean, as the article claims. Electricity come from power plants at around 33% efficiency, 80% of which is carbon based. Battery tech is NOT clean either, and costs alot to build in terms a rare metals and total energy.

An electric car might work in San Francisco where the temperature is 72F year round, but not in the real world. The thermal loads to heat and cool a car can be 50%+++ of average drive loads, dropping range by up to 1/2. Try that electric car at -20F in Alaska or Wisconsin, and just see how far you get on a "charge" trying to stay warm and see out the window through all the frost...

Ask yourself why a hummer's total co2 "foot print" is less than a Prius and you start to understand that TOTAL energy input is what a designer needs to look at, not MPG. A Prius just transfers energy consumption from the driver to the manufacturer, making total energy HIGHER. If your religion says CO2 is evil, then I would advise you to stop "sinning" by driving a Prius.

A battery has 1/10 the energy/volume of CNG (@3000 psi), and 1/80th the energy/weight. If you want HIGH mileage, you cannot do it with battery technology. The FUTURE in NOT in electrics.

The Future is a car with 3-4 types of energy, not one. Those are: air: hydrogen; CNG: and liquid fuel, with a range of 800-1200 miles so that you can go without needed fuel when fuel (cng or hydrogen) is not available. If you want to get to a "hydrogen economy" you CANNOT get there by making hydrogen only cars!!!!!

Hydrogen is for regeneration while the car sits in a parking lot, and not as a primary fuel. If you can generate hydrogen equal to 50-100 miles while sitting in a parking lot for 8 hours, most people will not need to buy CNG (compressed Natural gas) or gasoline/diesel. Get it? This requires a 3x-6x increase in fuel economy per unit area, and a 3x times increase in solar energy conversion over PVs. Hydrogen IS the battery, and if you can figure out how to convert co2 to ch4 energy effectively, hydrogen will not be needed... Get the picture? Batteries are NOT the answer. Nature is...

Seaplaneguy

a hummer's total co2 "foot print" is less than a Prius

citation?

Google seems to work for me...

CNW Marketing Research was the source of the reports. This is a classic case of lack of data mixed with political agendas.

Such a study would, of course, be an accountant's dream job, which is complicated by whether or not some parts can be used in more than one car and how to weigh the R&D costs, and on and on... Prius tires wear out earlier than others so that the MPG goes up, but in the end, that small amount "saved" was just transfer from the buyer to the manufacturer. The point being is that total energy per mile from "dust to dust" is not what you get from the mpg rating...

Reason would have it that the more complicated a device is the more energy it would use to make it. This would include more labor fabrication, along with shorter life cycles. Electronics are not low costs to make energy wise. Each person, engineer or worker, requires maintenance for living, and when you add all that in, you get a different picture than mpg to the buyer.

http://www.thecarconnection.com/article/1010861_prius-versus-hummer-exploding-the-myth

"Dust to Dust: The Energy Cost of New Vehicles from Concept to Disposal," CNW claims to assess all stages of vehicle production, including research and development, raw material production and sourcing, production and assembly, sales, operation and maintenance, and disposal of the vehicle at the end of its life.

You be the judge...

Well, if I'm to believe your link,

Over the past year, there has been an explosion of stories raising questions about the real environmental cost of hybrids.

One of the most misleading ones, which has been spread by countless blogs over the past several weeks, and cited without verification by several sources that appear reputable, looks to have originated in a story last November in England's Daily Mail, a right-leaning, British tabloid paper, which bore the gleefully spiteful title 'Toyota factory turns landscape to arid wilderness.' An editorial, published last month in a newspaper for a small state university on the East Coast, helped bring this misleading report a new life.

But it isn't a Toyota factory at all. The automaker has, in fact, only been purchasing significant amounts of nickel from the Sudbury , Ontario , Inco mine for its batteries in recent years, while the environmental disaster the headline is referring to largely occurred more than thirty years ago.

And that ore is at the core of a semi-urban legend that leads to dumb headlines like "HUMMER Greener than Prius," and others we've seen recently.

It's clear that the calculation is a complicated one. You really need to examine the entire life cycle of the car model, from inception of the idea to the end of the last car to come off the assembly line, including dealerships, transportation energy, recycling, etc. to accurately determine the "real" cost. For most consumers, the cost of ownership is what counts.