"carbon cost" of making a new car?

I'm sure i read somewhere that the energy that goes into creating the batteries in a Prius takes 20 years of driving the thing to "break even" so to speak in terms of energy used, and the emissions created in the process/to power the proces.

The lifespan of a Prius battery? 14 years



This was during research for a University project, it's not from the Sun, however like anything spouted as "fact" in the eco-debate there's a chance it's bollards.

 

This thread could go on for quite a long time so i'll add my bit now!!
I can't believe that in 60 odd years we've destroyed the plant. 60 years in Earth time is not even the time it takes to blink!! What about the mini ice age there was back in the 1700's or something?? Was that humans doing that?? The 'global warming' issue could well be because of a cycle we're going through? They also harp on about the ice caps melting...at one point in Earths history there were no ice caps!!
I did also hear that apparently 5 supertankers are as polluting as all the cars in the UK!! Nice!!

 

I can believe it.
I have spent all of my working life in industry, except for a couple of years working in engineering research.
Accountants run companies, money is all that matters. The number of times I've offered energy conscious cost effective engineering solutions to clients who have rejected them is unbelievable. I once offered Black & Decker a hover mower blade that needed no heat treatment and saved them having to balance them at extra cost. They declined the offer as the base cost was more than the base cost of heat treated products. Even when I explained how much they would save by avoiding balancing every blade in their factory, all they would say is that they had to sve 5% on last years' purchase cost.
We've all heard the story where by a local Labour council switched all of its paint systems to water based paint only for a new Conservative council to switch back to solvent based paints as soon as they took over. Reason cost!

 

obviously varies with the car you are producing. as a rule of thumb i read that more energy was used to produce and transport a car from the production line, in e.g. eastern europe than will ever be consumed in fuel during its service life.

this was round about the time the government announced the scrappage scheme - so could have just been your typical invent-a-fact journalism to get a headline, or could be based on truth.

doesn't really matter though does it? there is only so much oil left in the earths crust - if global warming is a natural occurance, and it turns out that it was just an excuse to increase our taxes, when the truth is finally announced we will still be left with a load of empty oil fields!

as the UK oil fields will be some of the first to dry up completely, it really is in our interests to sort it out sooner rather than later!

have to remember the MOT test is only a very basic indicator of how efficiently your engine is burning fuel, as it is only tested at idle!

where modern cars have improved significantly over older ones is the combustion efficiency whilst driving, particularly on the european drive cycle (i.e. relatively low speed and low load accelerations and cruises.) as this is how the tax bands are calculated.

despite that - still a good result for the sweedish barge

 

Bit off the thread, but:
Back in the early 1970s, I worked for GKN/Laycock Engineering. We bought the rights to the FF 4 wheel drive system. My job was to set up the production systems to convert Ford Capri 3.0L to 4 wheel drive. We set everything up. Built the workshops. Even a washing system for the converted cars. But Ford would not give us Capris off the line un-trimed. We were supposed to buy them fully finished, convert them and sell them back to dealers.
GKN said p**s off.
Good job I say as I would have hated Ford to have had the first MASS production 4 wheel drive cars. (Coln 2.8 V6s would have been better anyway as the 3.0L Essex V6 was crap).
We built 4 wheel drive Reliant Scimitars and Triumph Stags as well.

 

size 12

 

Article below gives a figure of 600 - 800 kgs not including raw materials.

Goes on to suggests a tonne of steel needs 19 billion joules of energy to manufacture (?)

Article http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/mar/12/greenwash-fred-pearce-cash-back-cars

Unrelated article on merits of using your old car vs getting new "green one"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/aug/17/car-scrap-energy-efficiency

 

I think they built a couple of prototypes as rallycross cars. I knew a guy who had an ex-works prototype one and did autocrosses in it. There were supposed to be 2, or maybe 4, in total. Long time ago.

 

the fact is - new car purchases are never going to stop. So it is a given that older cars will drop out and be filled at the top with new vehicles. So the arguement that we should run a 15yr old car as it causes less carbon footprint than a new prius is irrelivant.

If a 'green' car has a massive carbon footprint over a run of the mill new vehicle which it will never 'pay' back with its greenness then thats the issue. But I doubt a prius wont pay it back compared to the 2.5BMW's that are common as much nowadays

 

Blah blah blah blah, I'm sick to death of all the bs on both sides of this argument, it's just more social control dressed up as caring for the planet and they're even going to commodify carbon trading to create more wealth out of literally thin air. Just going out to detune my valver...

 

Yep! Stan Clark, brother to Roger, rallycrossed them. The nicest 4 WD rallycross car at the time was Jan De Roy's Daf. Engine in the passenger seat.

We also built a lot of prototype overdrive systems, where, in effect, by you had a six speed box. OD 3rd and OD 4th. Operated by a switch on top of the gear knob. These could have save lots of petrol. We used to make overdrives for about 25. I know this because I once did an exercise whereby I looked at the cost of each components' manufacturing process and tried to find more cost effective ways to manufacture each. We are talking about small fractions of pennies saved on each. I think Ford charged about 150 extra for an overdrive on cars which cost about 800 new. No wonder they did not sell many. The fuel savings and performance increase were quite good, but no one sold cars on economy in those days. My last dealings with overdrives was about 12 years ago. A chap called Al, who owns a small workshop in Sheffield, he actually specialises in VWs, knew that I had worked at Laycocks, and he phoned me to re-fit a D-Type OD to a Trumph Spitfire gearbox. They had been trying for a couple of days with no sucess. Turns out the retaining ring on the input shaft was damaged. No spares avaiable. I made a new one out of a strip of spring steel.

I used to do some test driving of the cars, and the 4 WD Capri was fantastic for its time. Was it 1970 or 1971ish, can't remember. Shame the car was ****. Would have been better to have used the Mk2 Cortina Lotus, then we could have fitted alloy doors, bonnet and boot, together with the magnesium bits and Minilite wheels straight out of the Ford Performance catalogue.
My favourite was a Morris Marina TC 6 speed. Don't laugh, the Marina handled better than an MGB. You could hang the back end out with confidence. The only worry was the front lever arm shocker/upper suspension link. They used to break, and you would end up with a wheel up in the arch. Used to see lots of BMC cars at the side of the road with one front corner on the ground in the old days.

 

You're right. The oil can't last forever...I'm guessing there's still quite a bit left as I've not heard of any military or civilian aircraft/vehicles trying fuel other than oil based stuff? If the A380 has a service life of 30+ years then there's got to be enough to keep that going?
We do need other fuel sources for sure but all the scare stories on the news make it sound worse than it is.
I'd also guess that the oil companies have good ideas on where to make profits once the oil goes.

 

Smart cars ftw

 

Fewer children FTW.

***NOT SAFE FOR WORK*** by the way!

[YOUTUBE]QjsikRTIX28[/YOUTUBE]

 

Just brilliant

 

That is class!

 

Pmsl

 

He makes a f*cking fair point...

 

very true, unfortunately it doesn't work like that. only a totalitarian state like china can enforce a policy like that, because people won't stop breeding of their own free will. this is why we need something like, oh i don't know, a massive flood to reduce the numbers, starting with the poorest first.

 

Yeah, tbh since we're doing such a sterling job of f*cking the planet up, perhaps we're heading for an almighty man-made "population correction".

The sad thing is that it needn't have to be this way if people were more responsible and aware of the consiquences of their actions. As it stands, we have an average man on the street who gives more of a sh*t about football and a new car than politics and the environment, and a wholly economy driven govenment that appears to go out of it's way to promote irresponsible population growth