Why Hybrid Cars Are A Waste

Here's me in front of a 3rd generation Toyota Prius on the floor of the 2010 San Jose Auto Show (luckily, I'm not in it and it isn't moving). I figured a Prius would be an appropriate backdrop given that where I live in California, they are all over the damn place. Hybrid powertrain technology -- namely, the ability to blend electric and gasoline motors together and the ability to turn an engine off at idle -- is hugely fascinating. I'm sure this technology can help in many transportation scenarios, but I'm not convinced that consumer passenger vehicles is one of them as I'll explain below. As the Prius is the most ubiquitous of the hybrids, I'll use it as an example but my points apply to other hybrids as well.

The short version
Would you buy a gasoline-only Prius? I wouldn't and I'd wager that most other people wouldn't either. In other words, you buy a Prius because it's a hybrid which means the vehicle itself has no other redeeming characteristics.

• Gas mileage? It varies according to terrain and driving style, but it's generally at least 40 mpg combined I think. Good, but not great. There are diesel options (like a VW Jetta TDI or Polo Bluemotion) available as well as some compact gasoline cars (e.g. Chevy Cobalt, Honda Civic, etc) that get only marginally worse gas mileage.

• Horsepower and torque? Sorry, the gas and electric motor are both minutely small.

• Handling? Terrible in the gen 2 Prius, at least. I blame the low-rolling resistance tires that allegedly help with gas mileage.

• Price? If you're in the market for a new car anyway, the Prius is priced pretty reasonably in the mid $20K range. However, if you want a Prius as an additional car to help save gas, you'd end up spending WAYYY more than you'd likely save. However, that doesn't stop consumers from looking to the Prius anyway when gas gets expensive. Interest in scooters and motorcycles also soar when gas prices go up for the same reason.

• Good for the environment? Not really. Yes, you might be saving some gasoline (assuming you don't drive more miles), but that gasoline is just going to be burned by someone else, possibly in a country where the government subsidizes gasoline. On top of that, making batteries is a filthy business (lots of mining, waste, chemicals, etc) and there's a huge global supply chain behind the Prius' NiMH batteries. Toyota has sold over a million Priuses (Prii?) so the infrastructure to make the batteries needed for those cars alone is way more than just marginal.

Personally, I don't like how the Prius looks. Looks depend on individual taste, of course, and I understand how aerodynamics dictate the Prius' shape, but still, it's not a good looking car.

The long version
Let's work through an example with figures and data and look at a car Volkswagen makes called the Polo Bluemotion. Yes, it's not sold in the United States, but neither was the Mini Cooper, Smart Car, or Ford Transit Connect until the makers of those cars responded to consumer demand.

Gas mileage versus price versus power/torque
According to Toyota's US website, the EPA rates the 3rd generation Prius at 51 mpg city, 48 mpg highway, and 50 mpg combined. The Prius starts at an MSRP of $22,400 for a "Prius I" but goes all the way to $27,670 for a "Prius V". Of course, you can get your Prius for less or more depending on incentives and options. Lastly, the Prius comes with a 1.8 liter 4 cylinder engine making 98 hp and 105 lb-ft of torque.

In contrast, according to Volkswagen's UK website, the Bluemotion turbo diesel version of the Polo has these stats:

• A rating of 3.8 liters of diesel fuel consumed per 100 kilometers traveled. The mathematically-inclined amongst you will realize that that works out to 62 mpg, with no fancy-ass hybrid electric system or battery pack. Being for Europe, that's most likely 62 miles per imperial gallon which equates to 51.7 miles per US gallon (An imperial gallon is 1.2 US gallons). Even the non-mathematically inclined amongst you should realize that 51.7 mpg is MORE than 50 mpg, although in the real world, those mileage figures are most likely equal. It gets better too: while the Prius is rated at 51/48 in the city and highway respectively, the Bluemotion engine is rated at 52.3 mpg in the city and 78.5 mpg on the highway. Those are, again, most likely imperial gallons so converting to US gallons yields 43.6 mpg city and 65.4 mpg highway -- or 8 less mpg in the city and 17 more on the highway. The conclusion still remains that for all it's fancy-ass technology, hybrids like the Prius likely only meet the mpgs you get from a diesel engine.
      As an aside, I have a friend with a gen 2 Prius that he bought a few years ago when California gave out stickers allowing singly-occupied hybrid cars to go in the carpool lane. You know all the hypermiling techniques you can use to get really good gas mileage? Yeah, he doesn't do any of those and his mpg figures are routinely in the low 40s.

• This price list from Volkswagen UK lists 2010 Bluemotion prices from £13,275 pounds for a 3 door SE model to £15,775 pounds for a 5 door SEL model. As of this writing (1/10/2010), one British pound equals $1.60, which means the 3 door SE model is equivalent to $21,282.48 and the 5 door SEL is equivalent to $25,290.48. This is just slightly cheaper than the Prius range, but I do concede that pricing it in US dollars involves more than just a straight currency conversion. My point, however, is that if the Polo Bluemotion were to be sold in the US, it would be price-competitive with the Prius.

• This page shows that the Polo Bluemotion's 1.6 L delivers roughly either 75 or 90 horsepower, while the Prius makes 98. For torque, though, the Bluemotion's engine absolutely kicks the Prius engine's ass with either 144 or 170 lb-ft of torque comared to just 105 for the Prius.

So to summarize then, the Polo Bluemotion is apples-to-apples cheaper than the Prius, very likely gets better gas mileage than the Prius, and produces WAAAY more torque than the Prius. The Prius does, however, produce either 8 or 23 more horsepower.

Diesel VW Touareg vs. Hybrid VW Touareg
For the 2011 model year, Volkswagen is bringing out a gas-electric hybrid of it's Touareg SUV thing as well as a new diesel version. Unlike the Polo, the Touareg is actually sold in the US in diesel form currently (rated at 18 mpg city and 25 mpg highway) and the new one most likely will as well.

I'd bet that the hybrid Touareg will be sold in the US, which makes this even more hilarious. Ready? Here goes: the new hybrid Touareg is less efficient than the new diesel Touareg. I'm not making that up --- the hybrid Touareg is rated at 28.68 mpg combined. The new diesel Touareg is rated at 31.68 mpg, largely due to losing about 460 lbs in weight.

Granted that's close, but the fact still remains that for all their fancy technology, diesels still get better mileage.

Ford Escape Hybrid vs. Chevy Equinox
This comparison illustrates another problem with hybrids -- their effect is severely attenuated by the fact that most people drive both in the city and on the highway. According to Ford's website, a front wheel drive 2010 Escape hybrid with a 2.4L engine is rated at 34 mpg in the city and 31 on the highway. According to Chevrolet's website, a gasoline-only front wheel drive 2010 Equinox with a 2.4L direct-injection engine is rated at 22 mpg in the city and 32 on the highway. That's right -- the gasoline only Equinox gets better highway mileage than the hybrid Escape. Theoretically, at least -- remember, it depends on the driver and terrain too -- but it stands to reason then that under many highway circumstances, the Escape's hybrid system is completely useless.

And therein lies another problem with hybrids -- their mileage benefit is only at low speed. Go fast enough or for long enough of a distance and it's the gasoline engine that provides the propulsion to haul the deadweight that is the hybrid drivetrain. In the city, however, is another story as the hybrid is able to move on electric power only, shut off it's engines at red lights, etc. If you only drive in the city, then by all means, go for the Escape hybrid and get your 12 mpg advantage over the Equinox. If you drive a combination of both city and highway miles, however, I'd advise you to consider the Equinox. Why? Two reasons:

1. The Equinox has a bigger gas tank than the Escape hybrid (18.8 gallons vs. 15 gallons).

2. The Equinox also costs about 25% less than the Escape hybrid (MSRP $22,615 vs. MSRP $29,860). With the $7,245 you save, you can buy, oh, roughly 3 years of gas. At roughly 28 mpg in the Equinox, that will get you about 65,000 miles.

An Australian example:
If you need more convincing that hybrids suck versus diesels or direct-injected engines, consider this video I found describing a gas mileage test done in Australia with a diesel Kia Sportage SUV and a diesel Kia Sorento SUV on a 1330 km (~825 miles) between Adelaide and Sydney. The challenge was to for both vehicles to make it all the way on 1 tank of diesel (15.3 gallons for the Sportage, 21.1 gallons for the Sorento). The result? Both vehicles made it, of course. The Sportage averaged 65 mpg (see the video at 5:36) and the Sorento averaged 55 mpg (see the video at 5:55).

Handling
I drove a Prius once -- a gen 2 -- and do not remember being impressed with it's handling, particularly doing a cloverleaf highway interchange ramp on a rainy day. I've done some research since then and I believe that particular Prius I nearly crashed did not have stability control on it -- in other words, stability control was optional. Anyway, the power -- as I mentioned above for the gen 3 -- is not impressive, but I think my problem with the handling came from the low-rolling resistance tires. Designed to increase fuel economy, the grip you get from them is terrible, especially in the rain.

Everything but the powertrain
Speaking of low-rolling resistance tires, here's another point: what gas mileage improvement could you get if you took an ordinary gas car and gave it all the non-hybrid technology of a hybrid (i.e. low-rolling resistance tires, improved aerodynamics, engine turns off at red lights, CVT transmission, etc) except the fancy gas-electric powertrain? For example, if you did that to a gen 3 Prius, you probably wouldn't get 50 mpg combined, but would you get 45? 48? How much cheaper would the Prius be if you did that? How many more people would buy it and, summed over all of those people, how much gas would be saved? (Dan Neil - automotive columnist for the Los Angeles Times - brought up this idea of giving a non-hybrid car all of the technology in a hybrid except the powertrain when he wrote his review of the Chevrolet Tahoe hybrid in 2007.)

Environmental damage due to battery manufacturing
Far be it from me to use the British television show Top Gear to prove my point, but here is a small clip describing the global supply chain involved in making the gen 2 Prius' NiMH batteries. The clip also shows the closing of a fuel economy race Top Gear did from Basel, Switzerland to Blackpool, England in a Subaru Legacy diesel, a Jaguar XJ TDVI, and a Polo Bluemotion. (Top Gear fans: this was series 12, episode 4)

Caveats
Obviously, I've generalized a lot above and I readily admit that there are some cases in which a Prius (or any hybrid vehicle) may actually get astronomical gas mileage, such as if you're only going a very short distance or stuck in stop-n-go traffic for hours. Still, it seems to me that those cases would be the exception and that for the majority of car trips, hybrid vehicles -- even with all their fancy technology -- do not beat the gas mileage provided by diesel cars.

Would I buy a hybrid?
Most likely not. I keep my cars for a long time (~10 years at least) and while saving the environment is important, having to live with a small underpowered ugly car for 10 years to do it is not worth it. At least to me.

There are only four situations in which I can think of for buying a hybrid vehicle, none of them related to the environment.

1. The first is any special tax credit or deduction for buying a hybrid vehicle.

2. The second is any special benefit your state or city may have for hybrids, like solo access to carpool lanes as in California.

3. The third is what, ironically, Toyota does with some of its Lexus hybrids, like the RX and GS (see page 6): use the hybrid system primarily to get more power instead of better fuel economy.

4. Lastly, I can see a weaker argument for buying a hybrid as a political statement to automakers -- namely, "Build more efficient cars, jerks" -- but I can see that same argument being made more effectively by demanding smaller cars (as is happening with the 2011 Ford Fiesta) and diesel cars, like the BMW 335d and Jetta TDI.

Other ways to save gas:
If you genuinely want to save gas, there are ways to do so besides going for a hybrid car. To begin with, here are 12 things you could do:

1. Keeping your tires inflated properly
2. Don't carry unnecessary weight in your car
3. For God's sake, if you have a roof rack for your car (e.g. Yakima, Thule, etc), take the damn thing off. No one believes that you ride your bike that often anyway.
4. If you have a truck or SUV, don't lift it and put gigantic tires on it. Bigger tires = higher moment of inertia = takes more gas to turn the tire.
5. Coast when you can.
6. Avoid sudden stops. Brake gradually and have smooth starts and stops.
7. Learn when to change to higher gears
8. Be judicious on the accelerator
9. Slow down to 55 on the highway (just not in front of me). Apparently aerodynamics are such that your gas mileage really begins to drop when you go above 55.
10. Combine trips
11. Carpool
12. If you like paying a lot of money and taking a long time to get places, you can take public transit.