From Guest Blogger Nathan Shedroff:
Nathan is an entrepreneur, experience designer, sustainability expert. He is the Program Chair of the MBA in Design Strategy program at California Center for the Arts and the author of numerous books on design, meaning and business. You can learn more about him at www.nathan.com. You can reach him at nathan at nathan dot com.

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If you’re ever looking to stir up the controversy, there’s no easier way than to tell the owner of a Prius (or any other hybrid car) that studies show the Hummer is actually better for the environment than what they’re driving. In most cases, after the incredulous shock, you’ll either get a wrath of righteous indignation or simply be ignored.

BTW, if you tell the Hummer owner that they’re car is better for the environment than a Prius, do they develop the smugness that Prius owners are accused of? Of course not! They don’t care—they do drive a Hummer, right?

All provocation aside, this is probably the clearest example of an endless list of comparisons that highlight how difficult it is for anyone—even engineers—to determine which is more sustainable. Paper or Plastic? Same problem.

The only easy answer is: drive less! Beyond that, consumers are helpless to figure-out these questions on their own—as are most experts, too! Take the Prius/Hummer issue, for example. A report published by CNW Marketing last year of the environmental impact of most cars sold in the US gave the Prius a worse overall impact than the Hummer. This is what set-off the controversy.

The ”Dust to Dust” report attempts to compare all materials and energy over the entire lifecycle (*see footnotes for further explanation) of the cars in order to assess the total environmental impact (social impact issues were not addressed). What is surprising to most hybrid owners (but shouldn’t be to anyone familiar with engineering, manufacturing, or cars in general) is that the hybrid is heavier, more complicated, and has a greater environmental impact than a comparable non-hybrid car. This is because it has two drivetrains (a gasoline engine and an electric engine), a regenerative braking system, and huge, heavy, and expensive battery pack, and a myriad of other related parts to support these systems. Overall, it’s a great deal more expensive and heavier than a comparable 5-person sedan. This fact should be the first tip-off that it can’t possibly be better for the environment than, say, a comparable Toyota Camry.

The problem for the public is in the hidden costs–which is all of them except for driving mileage. What consumers see is the money they put into the car via the gas pump. Without a doubt, the Prius gets better mileage than the Hummer or other sedans in its class. This, of course, depends on how and where you drive it (city is better than highway mileage, for example). What is hidden for most drivers are the costs associated with manufacturing, transporting, and disposing of the car once it’s done and here Is where the hybrids really take their toll. Because they are heavier and more complicated, they score worse than a traditional car—even many SUVs—in these categories and (here’s the rub…) what they make up in operating efficiency (mileage) isn’t enough to compensate for the extra financial and environmental costs in all of the other categories.

But before you conclude that all hybrids are bad, you should download the report and look up your own car (sorry, people outside the US, this report only covers US cars).

But wait! Or do they? If you look at the CNW study, they rate the Prius at only 100,000 miles and the Hummer at 300,000 miles of their lifetimes. If you normalize them (make them both 100,000 or 300,000) they are very close in impact. Could the study be biased against hybrids? Could it be a conspiracy perpetrated by the car industry (who pays CNW for such reports)? Quite possibly. In fact, it’s probable that the car industry is looking to fight hybrids with negative statistics—and for good reasons. But it’s also possible that the 100,000 mile figure is more appropriate—especially if you

take into account the unconfirmed rumor that the entire battery pack on a Prius is only good for 100,000 miles anyway and would need to be entirely replaced by then.

Hybrids are just a bad solution. They’re too heavy and costly, compared with other cars. They just aren’t the eventually right solution. Of course, they’re the only real solution we have and I don’t blame hybrid owners at all for trying to do something. If they do nothing more than “send a message to Detroit,” they’re probably worth it. However, eventually, an all electric car is probably a vastly better solution (hello Tesla!) than a hybrid or even plug-in hybrid and we really do need to do something about traditional cars. But the Prius is no panacea. CNW explains their 100,000 mile decision in another report, BTW.

Are there other problems with the report’s methods? Quite possibly. You should also read this article in the Telegraph about the findings as it explains some of the details of the report and answers questions about the Prius. By no means is either definitive. Also interesting is Toyota’s rebuttal which is just as unhelpfully devoid of detail as the original report. For sure, there are many other questions:

• How sensitive are these figures to the price for gasoline (which is considerably higher now than in 2005)?
• How long do the Prius batteries last?
• How much of a factor is the amortization of new technologies (like the hybrid technologies) compared with the fact that “traditional” automotive technologies have been mostly amortized many years ago.
• Just how bad are the batteries used in hybrids? Is the issue toxicity, recyclability, manufacturing, disposal, or all of the above?
• What’s the trade-off between heavier steel and lighter aluminum in a car chassis given that the embodied energy of aluminum manufacturing is much greater than steel.
• What is the impact of emissions in all of this (it’s not addressed much in the CNW report at all)?
• Did earlier studies by MIT, GM, Argonne National Laboratory, and international government administrations in Australia and Sweden (which gave hybrids high marks) take into account the manufacturing and disposal impact or just the operating/use portion of the lifecycle?

Back to the Controversy

To make matters even more complicated, no one can really say if this suspicious study (or Toyota’s equally suspicious rebuttals) are right because no one has the data. In order to get a definitive answer, we would need an exhaustive Life Cycle Analysis, which requires an intense amount of data on the manufacturing of the product (as well as transportation, use, and disposal) and no one even has this data. It’s likely that Toyota (and every other car manufacturer) could generate it but not easily and not quickly and, most likely, they’re not willing to share it (partly because it might divulge some valuable IP and partly for fear of what the results might be). So, if industry experts can’t calculate which is better and even the manufacturers might not be able to, how are you supposed to?

This is the quintessential problem in the sustainability field at the moment. All of the seals, labels, and certification programs don’t mean a thing if they aren’t measuring the complete data–and making it clearly available to consumers. Unfortunately, there is no incentive at the moment for manufacturers to do this and no consistent or standard way for them to report it even if they were inclined to do so. Most likely, the only way this will happen is if the government steps in and forces a standard (hopefully, it’s the right one) and mandates that it be disclosed (much like it has with the Nutrition Facts label). You may not like government regulation, but there are few other ways this can be accomplished. It’s NOT coming from industry.

Without these kinds of calculations, we may very well be saddled with more corn-based ethanol or, worse, Hydrogen fuel-cells and all manner of other bad solutions (** see footnotes for more) in the future because they’re politically or economically beneficial to somebody but not to the whole of society or the planet.

* Products (and services) don’t just appear in our lives, ready to be used. They go through a huge amount of development even before manufacturing begins. Manufacturing, itself, requires the procurement of raw materials and parts (also made from raw materials), series and levels of production, most with a surprising and astounding amount of transportation of materials, energy, and parts along the way. By the time a product makes it to a store, the energy and materials used to create it will be several times more than the energy and materials you need when using it. And, this isn’t the end of the story yet. When you discard the product and its packaging, more energy and materials are consumed in the process of reusing it, recycling it, or disposing of it. The entire timeline, from product concept and development, through raw material and parts procurement, through manufacturing and transportation, finally through use and disposal is called the product lifecycle. The more complicated the product or service and the more parts involved, the more data to track in order to accurately understand and portray the costs throughout this lifecycle.

** Despite the hype around ethanol, hydrogen, and many other fuel and energy solutions, most are just that: hype. For example, corn-based ethanol is one of the least efficient biofuels and creates significant competitive problems with corn in the food supply (just look at Mexico’s skyrocketing tortilla prices). Similarly, hydrogen fuel is only promoted by the big, centralized energy industry because it extends their model and promotes their businesses. The truth is that we’ve found no way to make hydrogen fuel that doesn’t use more energy than it ultimately releases. In other words, it takes more energy (usually through traditional, dirty, and unsustainable power plants) to make hydrogen fuel than the fuel burns in cars or generators. There is no way to make that a smart equation for most applications.