The 560SEL vs The Hybrid Part 2

Recently various governments have been enticing drivers to ditch their older gas guzzlers for new, more efficient and environmentally friendlier vehicles. Which is great if you actually must have a new car. However I'm one to believe sustainability is achieved not just through reducing air pollution. I do agree that global warming is a problem. I'm not running around waving my arms about over melting icecaps, but I realise something must be done. However, global warming is becoming trendy, and while it's great that others share my concern we tend to forget about other environmental issues.

The Hudson Bay Company, known to Canadians as simply the Bay department store, has been following the trendiness of global warming, using it with their current ad campaigns. Mannequins stand in the display windows with text behind featuring tips on how to be more friendly to the environment. You'll see sings like "don't idle" and such, but how about buying less? After all, their slogan years ago was "Shopping is Good". Of course, it is their best interest that you buy their products, but this new campaign promoting a greener way of living doesn't come off as being all too serious from a store that doesn't really promote sustainable products.

So how does that fit in with cars? Well sure, newer cars produce less harmful emissions, but think of what it took to create that car. The materials, the energy, the chemicals, land, not to mention the energy used to transport it from the factory on one continent to the buyer on another. This is where a proper old Mercedes becomes important. My car has been on the road for 18 years. I am one less person to build a new car for, simply because my current one is still in service and not littering a junk yard going to waste. I plan to drive my car at least for a decade. With my current amount of driving that will be about 50-80,000km. My car well then have well under 200,000km and just half way through the engine's life span despite being close to 30 years old. Where do you think a 2008 Prius will be in 30 years?

Mercedes looks at sustainability is other ways. Recently the German TÜV rated the current S-class as being more friendly to the environment than the Toyota Prius. So how could a large sedan with a 5.5 litre V8 beat what everyone falsely assumes is a green car? The TÜV were impressed with how cleanly it used its fuel, the amount of recycled material used in its construction and how ethically it had been made.

While during the life of a Prius little impact will be made on the environment, the birth and death of a hybrid creates some serious problems. The batteries contain nickel and while mining and smelting processes have improved, and they claim it isn't as bad as it used to be, a large amount of energy is required to mine and refine the material. However take note that more nickel is used for currency and stainless steel. Infact about 1% of the nickel that comes from Toyota's source, is actually purchased by Toyota, which is roughly 1000 tonnes. While this may be a drop in the bucket, you can't claim that the use of nickel in the battery is a good thing for the environment. Toyota does offer a recycling program when it's time to change the battery, which is good, if everyone actually follows it.

Overall a hybrid can be good in theory, but often in reality it's not quite as green as you'd think. What will really make a difference for sustainability is not getting everyone to discard their older cars, but finding a way to make the older cars more friendly to the environment.