Prius is not the Savior we thought after all

File this under what you see is not what you get. I have railed against the Toyota Prius before. It looks like I have good reason to. Well other than the fact that it is not as green as Toyota and the Environmental nuts would have you believe.

I have said that the Prius doesn't get as high an MPG as the sticker says. Which is really kind of funny when you think about it. The reason is because many cars exceed their actual mpg than stated on the sticker in the showroom.

The reason being that the auto manufacturers prefer to understate their mpg so when people actually get better, they are happy. Prius has been proven the opposite. The mpg as stated on the sticker of the Prius says that the car will get a combined 46 mpg highway and city.

Drivers are getting far less than the sticker. Test upon test and actual drivers are getting around 40. In fact, as I have stated in the past, that there are other cars that get the same or nearly the same with far less devastating environmental impact.

Not to mention the fact that when the cars came on the market, they were going for a premium price and there were back orders.

Now comes this. The BMW 5 series deisel beats the Prius in actual driving test. Yes you read that correctly. The not so small BMW 520d got a stunning 41.9 mpg vs the Prius at 40.1 mpg. This is made more amazing that the BMW is 500 lbs heavier than the Prius and it obviously is not shaped to get the best mpg possible.

The BMW is classified as an executive car, which means it is far from the compact category of cars. Unfortunately this automobile is not available in the USA but it should be. This begs the question do hybrids have a place in saving the planet or are they just over hyped vehicles that should not be on the car lots of the world?

The point is, we can build cars that do not damage the environment as much as the Prius does. We don't need laws to tell us what to drive or how to drive. The market works and I would say that if the BMW 520d were to become available in the US, it would be a big hit.

Will a Prius Free Us, or Doom Us

Here we are. The 5^th anniversary of the beginning of the Battle of Iraq. And we still have lots of liberals saying that the battle, indeed the entire war on terror is nothing more than a war to control oil. It's all about the oil they tell us over and over.

They keep telling us we need to cut our dependency on oil that comes form the Middle East and elsewhere. They won't let us explore our own country for our own oil reserves even in areas in which countries like Mexico and Brazil are exploring. Yes I am talking about the Gulf of Mexico among other places.

They have convinced many people to downsize their cars and SUV's and they have even convinced many people to buy and drive the Toyota Prius. In fact they have screamed the praises of the Prius so much that they are now calling for the government to mandate that the rest of us begin to drive these “earth saving” cars.

They, the environmentalist, tell us that the Prius is a revolution in the storied history of the automobile. They praised this car. Told us how little fuel it used and that a person could get up to 60 mpg. People began buying these cars. So many bought them that there was a back order on them for the first 2 years of their production.

This changed the course of the mighty Toyota Corporation. They changed their goals for the Prius. Toyota has said they planned to have 1 million of these hybrid cars on the worlds road within the next few years.

Now I say hold a minute. What do we really know about this car? We know it doesn't get 60 mpg. In fact what is really happening on the road to the dismay of many is the Prius is getting about 40 mpg. Not a huge difference from some larger and better gas cars. In the Toyota line up, one can spend about half the price of a Prius and get a Corolla and get a consumer reported 35 mpg.

I know that one of my cars, the Scion tC gets me an average of 32 mpg and it has a 160 horse power engine. And it cost less than 18 thousand dollars. Not bad at all. But what is the total cost of this Prius that these loud wackos want the government to force us to drive. Well according to a number of reports (and growing) this thing is far from being environmentally friendly.

Environment NC is reporting that a Prius produces 44% MORE global warming green house gases over its life than a Toyota Avalon. And if you don't know what a Toyota Avalon is, it's the biggest car from Toyota without going SUV.

The Belmont Club reported just how bad the Prius is for the environment. And they have plenty of reports and listed documents to back up their article. In fact here is an excerpt from this article:

As already noted, the Prius is partly driven by a battery which contains nickel. The nickel is mined and smelted at a plant in Sudbury, Ontario. This plant has caused so much environmental damage to the surrounding environment that NASA has used the ‘dead zone’ around the plant to test moon rovers. The area around the plant is devoid of any life for miles.

Now what do you Prius owners think? You have help create an area on our own planet that NASA uses to train for roving on the Moon and Mars. That sounds like its a huge environmental friend, doesn't it.