Your Questions About Green Living

The Expert answers:

Hybrids capture potential energy in their batteries whenever the car stops. These cars get great gas mileage–around 60 mpg for highway and they are quiet and run on traditional gas, so can be refueled like normal cars, although less frequently.

The point is to cut down emissions to help with global warming, which is heating the earth at an alarming rate. This is melting glaciers and destroying habitats for animals.

There is also biodiesel fuel and ethenol.

WIKIPEDIA INFO:

Reduced noise emissions resulting from substantial use of the electric motor at idling and low speeds, leading to roadway noise reduction, in comparison to conventional gasoline or diesel powered engine vehicles, resulting in beneficial noise health effects (although road noise from tires and wind, the loudest noises at highway speeds from the interior of most vehicles, are not affected by the hybrid design alone). Reduced noise may not be considered an advantage by some; for example, some people who are blind or visually-impaired consider the noise of combustion engines a helpful aid while crossing streets and feel quiet hybrids could pose an unexpected hazard.

Reduced air pollution emissions, due to lower fuel consumption, lead improved human health with regard to respiratory problems and other illnesses. Pollution reduction in urban environments may be particularly significant due to elimination of idle-at-rest.

One common misconception is that HEV batteries must be replaced on a regular basis and should be treated as extremely hazardous waste. This is not entirely true. Battery toxicity is a concern, although today’s hybrids use NiMH batteries, not the environmentally problematic rechargeable nickel cadmium. “Nickel metal hydride batteries are benign. They can be fully recycled,” says Ron Cogan, editor of the Green Car Journal. Toyota and Honda say that they will recycle dead batteries and that disposal will pose no toxic hazards. Toyota puts a phone number on each battery, and they pay a $200 “bounty” for each battery to help ensure that it will be properly recycled.

The Expert answers:

The party of no and the channel of noise have only one goal now days and that is to be thumbs down on anything and everything that might at all be accepted by the democrats as a good idea.Fear is all they have left and are playing it to the hilt! The car story was ridiculous. The same result will happen if a Hummer was hit by a Semi truck but they didn’t mention that.A fool and his friends deserve each other! The GOP in partnership with Farce(fox!) are in a sad state. The standard of god, guns and gays is all your going to get out of them from now on over and over again.

The Expert answers:

None

there is no eco-freindly car, only less ecologically/environmentally damaging car.
Eg bodywork, tyres, road building, etc all have to damage the eco-systems and the environment to a greater or lesser extent

the big car makers have received substantial grant funding for many years for fuel cell research etc, but have not brought anything to market.

I suspect any sustainable research budget is much less than the advertising budget and jollies for fossil head journalists to persuade us to keep buying clunky, smelly, noisy, high maintenance cars that lock us into buying fuel from their global oil corp “friends”

GM have crushed all their electric vehicles & stacked them up in the desert, http://www.whokilledtheelectriccar.com, not very environmentally friendly. Anything else like the Volt is just greenwash, so is really a form of advertising, because they want to associate themselves with the idea of eco-friendlierer, which they know most of us want, without actually doing anything. It also stops any new companies getting started because who is going to fund your business if GM are going to undercut you as soon as you start.

The Expert answers:

Eco, green and more powerful faster is an oxymoron. More powerful and faster means more energy, more energy means not green and not eco friendly.

The Tesla is a fast powerful car, but today it burns coal, so its not real eco friendly or green. It is made from petroleum based composites, just like the Corvette.

No eco friendly green dragster will ever beat a top fuel dragster.

The Expert answers:

I find it difficult to answer this question because I’m not sure what you’re looking for. Eco-friendly may mean the car that does the least damage to the environment, or you may just be referring to getting the best gas mileage, (there is a difference!)

The Toyota Prius is probably the most fuel efficient car out on the roads in the USA right now. Having said that however, consider for a moment what it takes to produce such high gas mileage numbers; mainly batteries. I’ve read conflicting arguments that say it actually produces more toxins and eco-harming agents to produce the batteries that run the Prius than a normal gasoline car will produce over it’s lifetime. If there’s any truth to these stories you may want to avoid the prius, or most hybrids for that matter.

Flex fuel vehicles are also a bit of a joke…sort of. Sure, ethanol burns cleaner, but it takes a lot more ethanol to get where you’re going than it does gasoline. Does ethanol end up polluting more…I’m honestly not sure. I’ve looked into it before and again found conflicting opinions.

My advice would be to get the most fuel efficient regular gas-powered car you can find. No batteries, no extra ethanol burning, just a regular gasoline engine.

Just my 2 cents…