The economics of hybrid cars

A recent article by Shikha Dalmia at the Reason Foundation website finds that hybrid cars are less economical than their conventional counterparts:

But despite all these drawbacks, hybrids are at least better for the environment than say . . . a Hummer, right? Nope.

Spinella spent two years on the most comprehensive study to date — dubbed "Dust to Dust" — collecting data on the energy necessary to plan, build, sell, drive and dispose of a car from the initial conception to scrappage. He even included in the study such minutia as plant-to-dealer fuel costs of each vehicle, employee driving distances, and electricity usage per pound of material. All this data was then boiled down to an "energy cost per mile" figure for each car (see here and here).

Comparing this data, the study concludes that overall hybrids cost more in terms of overall energy consumed than comparable non-hybrid vehicles. But even more surprising, smaller hybrids' energy costs are greater than many large, non-hybrid SUVs.

For instance, the dust-to-dust energy cost of the bunny-sized Honda Civic hybrid is $3.238 per mile. This is quite a bit more than the $1.949 per mile that the elephantine Hummer costs. The energy cots of SUVs such as the Tahoe, Escalade, and Navigator are similarly far less than the Civic hybrid.

This, on top of the news that hybrid sales, "every month this year have been down compared to the same time last year. Even sales of the Toyota Prius — the darling of the greens — have dropped significantly." It definitely won't please the folks who are happily giving the finger to the H2.