Go Greener, Australia

Last weekend we took a Prius, a hybrid petrol-electric car, for a test-drive as part of our plan to buy a green car. Treehugger explains how hybrids work in it’s Green Basics article on hybrids. They’ve got both a petrol and an electric engine, can use either one (or both) depending on which one is more efficient for the type of driving you’re doing, and can switch off both if you’re coasting or just sitting at the lights. They also have really low greenhouse-gas emissions and pollution emissions compared to other cars.

Dave did the driving, and says the Prius handles much the same as any medium-sized car. I thought it’d be a bit spooky when the engines switched off as we were driving, but after a while I barely noticed it. There’s a computer display that shows you everything from your rate of fuel-efficiency to how long it’s been since your last oil change.

I really enjoyed our ride, but I’m wondering if that was because of the new-car smell and swish features as much as the eco-friendly advantages

Pros:

• it’s the best car for the environment that’s available in Australia: the Green Vehicle Guide rates it as number one in the Top 10 Performers, considering it’s fuel-efficiency, greenhouse-gas emissions and air-pollution.
• as a hybrid fuel-electric car, it could maybe be converted to an all-electric vehicle later on.
• by being early-adopters, we create a market for environmentally-friendly cars - the more people buy them, the more manufacturers will be encouraged to make models at different (i.e. cheaper) price points.
• it’s the right size for us - we could go smaller, but we wouldn’t go larger than this.

Cons:

• it’s expensive: the basic model, which is what we’d buy if we get one, costs $37,400 plus on-road costs (can anyone give me a rough estimate of on-road costs?).

So for us it comes down to whether or not we want to spend the money on the Prius. We can afford it, although we wouldn’t normally spend that kind of money on a car - we’ve always been the types to get secondhand cars. But as the Union of Concerned Scientists says:

“In some cases, a purchase of one item can reduce your consumption of other more environmentally damaging materials, especially fossil fuels. In other cases, you can be a leader who helps new environmentally beneficial products gain a foothold in the marketplace.”

Next step: test drive a standard fuel-efficient car, like the Toyota Yaris or Holden Astra.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 30th, 2007 at 5:50 pm and is filed under transport. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.