What' your opinion on Hybrids, Electric Cars, Hydrogen Fuel Cells, Clean Diesels, Ethanol or Used Cars?

Question

I currently drive a '01 Volvo wagon and get 19/22 mpg. My husband and I are researching greener choice cars and are stumped on which route to go. I want to reduce my gas consumption but we are also concerned about our human footprint; that dumping an older car for a new one may create additional waste and are also concerned about long term biohazard effects of alternative fuel/batteries on the environment.

BTW, we live in a rural mountainous are. Not a whole lot of alternative fuel choices.

Answer 1

I have a 2008 Ford Escape Hybrid. I average 30 mph. I decided not to go the alternative fuel route, but the electric hybrid works great for me. I have the sun-moonroof/satellite radio package and really enjoy it. One plus ... you can run out of gas and still drive 20 mph to the next exit and get gas! Ok....Dont want to admit how I KNOW this to be true. :) I like that it also tells you how many miles you have left before empty, leather seats, seat warmers, adjustable driver seat that adjusts great for my short stature. If you are short like me though I recommend getting running boards, trying to climb up into it can be a challenge in harsh weather conditions or tight skirts! :)

Answer 2

I think they're good, but hard to get if you're not rich.

If you really want to make a difference, go vegan. It does more for the environment than quitting driving all together.

Answer 3

NO do not go hybrid its a gimic a civic gets better gas mileage

Answer 4

I drive an '02 VW Jetta TDI (turbo diesel) that gets 47mpg on the highway.  Clean?  Well, it doesn't smell as much as all the untuned gas cars where the drivers accelerate beyond necessity while they have their airconditioners on.  I live in rural northeast Texas, and I'd drive nothing but a diesel because I know how to drive a diesel right, and not try to drive it like a gas car, which produces much excessive exhaust fumes.  But then, all the gas guzzling gasoline powered engines that are untuned or are beyond their expected lifetimes are much worse than my finely tuned, well driven diesels.  And don't worry about your "human footprint".  Your parents already put your "human footprint" on this good ol' planet back when you were born, and there ain't nothing you can do about it.  And I can't stand the color green.  God Bless you.

Oh, and the '04 VW Jetta TDI I bought my son as he returned home from Iraq gets 53mph because it's standard transmission.  and the '00 VW Jetta TDI my engineer friend in Ohio bought also got between 53 and 55 mpg.  Being a railroad engineer, he DEFINITELY knew how to drive a diesel.  And the '03 VW Jetta TDI my stepson bought also got in the upper 40mpgs because it was automatic  transmission like mine.  He was one of these "up-and-coming" wannabee young ones, as is his wife, so they found a job that provided them with gas guzzling SUV's so they sold their Jetta TDI.  Dumb.

Answer 5

If you live in a mountainous area I would suggest an SUV Hybrid if you need 4 wheel drivel for snow slippery roads ect I would chose the Ford Escape Hybrid it gets 29-34mpg and even more for city driving however  if you dont whant an SUV toyota has really fuel efficent cars it all comes down to what you relly need it for

Answer 6

http://www.pricequotes.com/cars/newcars-...

if you look at the list, the Prius is the obvious choice.

i'd think that if you do a lot of hills, that would be even more important.

as for batteries, i think it won't be very long before battery recycling will be a major industry.

Answer 7

If you want fuel efficient, Get a Gee Whiz. its a "quadracycle" that is incredibly dangerous and small, but its fuel efficient. Ethanol is the worst thing for the country. It uses more energy to make it than it produces, 25% more infact.. Farmers find it more profitable to make Ethanol than food so it drives the price of fuel up.

Dont be worried about cars hurting the environment.

Unfortunatly it has no effect on it.

Answer 8

I'm not going to comment about hydrogen fuel cells, except to say that I think they'll be out of reach (unless and until they solve the platinum problem) but I've owned both a 2003 honda civic hybrid and a 2006 peugeot diesel (1.6 Litre HDi -- not sold in the USA). The diesel got 60 mpg. The hybrid started out at 55 and dropped to 46, even with careful driving. For hilly areas, hybrids are good on the downhill, annoying on the uphill. Diesels on the other hand, are very zippy.

Until recently I thought that diesel was go, and that the only problem was that US wasn't mandating for the use of ultra low-sulphur the way that Europe is... (see the wikipedia article below)

But then I found the Union of Concerned Scientists report, which contains the following information "Diesel vehicles can help a car travel 30 to more than 40 percent farther on a gallon of diesel fuel. However, this advantage is only partly due to the higher efficiency of diesel engines, which offer a 15 to 25 percent improvement over gasoline. The remaining increase is due to the fact that diesel fuel contains 13 percent

more energy than a gallon of gasoline."

so, unless we mandate that ALL new cars be super efficient (whether hybrid-gasoline, hybrid-diesel, plug-in electric, or veggie oil) , the cost factors are going to be very high. I think that, if the priority for ALL new car manufacturers was efficiency, then the economy of scale rule would mean that the retooling costs would be lower, and we could afford to have more highly processed fuel, or different types of engines.

Lots to think about!

Answer 9

Hybrids are a good and simple way to reduce your gas consumption.

Electric cars are even better, but there are a lot fewer options.  A wiki article I wrote on the subject:

http://greenhome.huddler.com/wiki/electr...

Hydrogen fuel cells are not a good choice.  For one thing they're simply not available, except in a few select areas where there are hydrogen fuel stations.  There are also many problems with hydrogen cars which will prevent them from being a significant fraction of our transportation for at least a few decades, as I discuss here:

http://greenhome.huddler.com/wiki/hydrog...

Diesels are okay.  They're starting to bring some clean diesels to the USA which have addressed the issues diesels normally have with NOx and particulate emissions, but in the process they've lost much of their fuel efficiency advantage.  So while this is a decent option, I don't think it's one of the better ones.  Nice discussion here:

http://greenhome.huddler.com/forum/threa...

Ethanol right now is a poor option because all we have is corn-based ethanol, which has serious issues.  Mostly that it's an inefficient process.  Once we have better ethanol options like from switchgrass and algae, this might become a good option, but right now it's not.  Discussed here:

http://greenhome.huddler.com/wiki/are-al...

Used cars are fine if you can find a fuel efficient one.  The footprint from building a new car is relatively small though.  80-90% of a car's lifetime energy use comes during the operational phase (while driving) vs. just 5-10% during construction, so the best way to lower your carbon footprint is to get the most fuel efficient car possible.

Basically the easiest solution is to get a hybrid, but the most environmentally friendly is to get a fully electric vehicle if possible.