I agree the benefits of hybrids (Prius or Honda Insight in the case of my family's fleet) seem to outweigh the slightly heavier eco-footprint of the manufacturing.   Dissers of hybrids tend to assume the batteries will be directly disposed to leaking landfills when they are spent, rather than being recycled in an ecologically sound manner.  Nickel has value as a metal for recycling, it is false to assume it would not be reclaimed-- I'm sure the amount in a battery is much more concentrated than in nickel ore, and thus that a market for reclaiming must exist.

Dont forget just because you own a car doesn't mean you need to drive it on every trip, be it a commute trip or short hop around your area-- the bicycle is often a great better option!! Time savings, cost and carbon footprint of bike travel often trumps all other forms of transport (personal vehicle or transit).  Go by bike whenever you can, folks!

"Umbra" and it's coterie of Grist Ecologists are the wrong people to ask.   They are clearly in the parvenu of the electric companies and foreign automakers and not the consumer.

They refuse to acknowledge hydrogen, natural gas and their associated fuel cells as superior alternative to gas guzzling and energy hogging hybrids.

I think if you asked 5 people, including Umbra, you'd get two different answers.   1 from Umbra and the same from the other 4: hybrids are a transitional energy wasting technology.

Yes indeedy folks. We can consume our way out of this environmental disaster.

What rubbish. If we are going to have a viable biosphere in 2100, we need to reduce our "carbon footprints" by 80-90% in the next fifteen to twenty years; follow Umbra to the tipping points at our planet's peril. Small reductions in gasoline usage just can't get us there from here. In fact, we are going to pretty much have to learn to live without gasoline and coal (so much for plug-in hybrids too.) It takes 3-5 years to pay down the production costs (in terms of GHG emissions) of a new Prius with its improved fuel economy. How about investing that time in limping along the old jalopy for a year or two while learning to go car-free or car-reduced with a co-op? If you are too much of a wimp to bicycle in from the exurbs, then either move or be honest enough to admit you would prefer to risk ending history rather than give up driving.

Have we really gotten so physically and mentally lazy that we cannot imagine living without fossil-fool powered wheelchairs and perfect interior temperatures? If so, we deserve extinction. However, do the people of Southern Asia, South America and Africa deserve to go first? It's our decision.

I can't find anything in the Grist website or "Wake Up and Smell the Planet" about recycling polystyrene
(trade name "Styrofoam" - see Wickipedia) instead of putting it into the garbage and landfill. We have many cubic yards of chunks of packaging materials and even more bags of pellets that we need to clean out of our home, but garbage/trash seems the wrong way to go. Our Allied Waste service in Lake Forest Park WA won't let us put it in the Recycling bin, and of course not in th garbage/yard waste one, so garbage is the only option. The King County website has no clue, and we're sure it isn't "hazardous waste" or "techno-trash." Do you know what our options are, and why web search (Google and Good Search) produce no useful links? Isn't this a problem for everyone on the planet?

This seems like the kind of thing Grist likes to attack, and that Ask Umbra and your supportive Comment fans might have good ideas about! can we do it, together, team?

@ jabailo,

Get your head out of your a$$. You're erroneously trying to dispute the messenger and not the source. Stop trying to put down Umbra, or any other authors on this site, until you have peer-reviewed sources to counter the information. Umbra listed many sources of information to verify the claims she made. Have you?

Then you make claims of being in the "parvenu"? Maybe I'm just misunderstanding your usage of the term but the meaning makes no sense at all in this context: "somebody who has recently gained wealth or social status but who is still considered as inferior."

And no one is disputing the fact that those alternative fuels are superior. This QA has NOTHING to do with alternative fuels. It's a comparison between a hybridized car and non-hybridized.

Then you state that hybrids are "gas guzzling" and "energy hogging." Based on what comparison? If you want to compare them to a bicycle then yes, they are. Compared the rest of the automotive industry they are superior automobiles when speaking in terms of fuel efficiency.

And transitional technologies are an essential technological step. You don't just snap your fingers and have a car running on water. Every piece of technology we have today were transitional technologies. A cell phone consists of a plastic case, microchips, LCD, li-ion batteries, etc... All these were independently developed and later adapted to make use for the cell phone. The same is true for cars. We make what products we can with the currently available technology. Not everyone can afford $100K to drop on a Tesla so we have to settle with a Prius. In addition, if consumers don't create a demand for a product then there is no reason for automakers to try and make a superior product like an EV or hydrogen car. Therefore, we have to show the automakers there is a demand for hybrids so they have the incentive to create the next leap in automotive technology.

You could make a line graph and plot the different models of cars according to their technological advances. Each era of the car advances with the technological and mental capabilities of that era. If you take out one of those plots the technological hurdles between each advance becomes near impossible to achieve. It would be like trying to make a fully functional PHEV or EV with no prior testing or data, from a decade of use, of advanced batteries in already in a car (aka the Hybrid).

In other words: hybrids are an essential step towards the future.

If you don't have a wad of cash to blow and/or or don't drive a ton, I'd suggest the used car route. The frustrating thing about new-non-hyrbids, is they've gone backwards on mileage since about 15 years ago. Honda made the Civic VX, which in 1992 was EPA rated (under current 2008 standards) at 49 mpg Highway/ 39 city (for the 49 state model, the CA model got 3 mpg less on both). Compare that to the 2008 Fit (5 spd) at 34/28, the 2008 Civic Hybrid at 45/40 or the 2008 Toyota Prius at 48/45. Of course, you're not likely to find one available now because people have snapped them up. But we got a regular old 1992 Civic LX sedan, which is rated at 36/30, and we only paid $2600 last spring.

If I did have a wad of cash, and owned my own home, I'd get a Honda Civic GX (i.e., Natural Gas) for a daily driver and a Phill (to fill it from my home's natural gas lines at utility consumer rates). This is far and away the cheapest per mile fuel cost, least dependent on foreign oil, and least polluting solution (although the carbon footprint is similar to a regular Civic).