Well its a lazy Sunday afternoon and I have been catching up on my blogs, I just ran across a YouTube video of a Top Gear episode where they talk to what could be considered by some misconceptions about the Toyota Prius's environmental impact as well as its economy.
On environmental impact they talk primarily about the batteries focusing on the lifecycle of the nickel used in the batteries, it from mines in Canada, then goes to Europe for refinement, from there it goes to China for processing into a foam which then finds its way to Japan to be turned into batteries which in turn ultimately finds its way into the cards, they indicate that one report found that in the long term it does more environmental damage than the Land Rover Discovery.
I have heard reference to this report before, though I was unable to find it with just a couple of minutes of searching, I do know many environmentalists dispute the validity of the report.
They also do a short, non-scientific, mileage comparison (10 laps around a track) between a Prius and a BMW M3, the Prius only got around 17.2mpg while the M3 got 19.4mpg; to be fair they admit the conclusion from this test is not that the BMW is more fuel efficient, after all EPA says real world drivers on average get 36-56mpg in the Prius while the BMW shows only about 17.8mpg.
The conclusion they encourage folks to come to is that the biggest change when it comes to mileage is to be found from changing the way you drive.
I know many folks who have the Prius, most tell me they get closer to 30mpg for the kind of driving they are doing; for us I have been on a Diesel push, the new diesels are kinder to the environment than their gasoline counterparts, get pretty good mileage, for example the 2009 BMW 335d gets about 35mpg, the new 2009 Jeta TDI is looking at 29mpg to 40mpg and the 2009 Audi A4 TDI is shooting for 59mpg.
Going diesel has a number of up-sides, there is of course the torque but you now also have fully domestic and potentially self sufficient sources of diesel that can today be produced with both virgin oil as well as waste oil and in the future from many other sources.