I just read a disturbing thread from someone on another forum that the effects on the environment from manufacturing the NIMH batteries for the hybrids are worse than what we save by utilizing them to save fuel. I have no data to back this up, but it sparked my curiosity. Can anyone speak to this?

 

My god. Will these myths never cease to resurface????

In short....
1. the plant in canada this myth talks about was cleaned up years ago.
2. the percentage of nickel used to make NiMh batteries for Hybrids is miniscule. Nickel is used to produce numerous other metal products....especially Stainless Steel. The average NON-hybrid vehicle contains more than twice the nickel in stainless steel than a hybird does in its battery. Overall there is probably more nickel in american kitchen appliances these days than in Hybrid batteries.....Nickel is used in tons of other products outside of the auto industry.
3. Hybrid battery packs are all set for recycling. First of all, they are too valuable at this point to end up in a junk yard, and I am pretty sure that in the case of a replacement, the mfg takes back the original.

There are a number of threads on this forum addressing this MYTH....as well as on priuschat.com

https://www.greenhybrid.com/discuss/...steland-11994/

 

I can't speak to it directly but it's an established discussion topic related to all hybrids and may be elsewhere on a more generalized board. I remember seeing lots of discussion about this concern back in '03 and '04 when the Gen 2 Prius came out and people started buying them in significant numbers.

There are hidden costs to everything. Another example of this is the Ethanol debate, where people often question how much diesel fuel is burned cultivating the corn or other products that go into it.

It's usually the nickel mining industry that gets spotlighted in the battery discussion, since mining is always seen as bad for the environment.

 

From the reading I have done I recall that a major reason for the choice of using NIMH batteries for hybrids is that they are the safest choice for environmental reasons. The nickel in the battery is easy to extract, as opposed to the NiCAD battery, which also has Cadmium as a toxic pollutant.

I don't know how the LiON batteries do.

 

I don't know about our batteries, but there is an abandoned car battery plant near me, that has been uninhabited now for like 12 years.

 

And there is a huge car battery plant not to far from you....East Penn isn't to far...that place is huge and looks pretty clean to me I've been there a couple times and don't see any killer smoke stacks or dead trees like people make battery plants out to be.....

 

I knew it was all blown out of proportion. Now I feel better about my feh..... thanks for the replies folks! (latest avg mpg 34.5)

 

There are people who wont be satisfied untill we are all walking, riding bikes and eating uncooked food in our cold unheated homes.