Does anyone know if a modern car doing 55mpg uses more energy to build and run than an older car without EFI, A/C, swathes of sound deadening, central locking, etc, etc, etc doing, say 30mpg, or have manufacturing processes developed as well as engine designs?
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I highly doubt modern manufacturing can make up for the enormous energy required, put it this way, the Nissan plant here have several on site wind turbines, they are full scale ones as used in wind farms owned by power companies, they supply just 10% of the energy used at the plant....
Should also point out that's before you take into account the enormous "carbon footpprint" of getting the turbines built and installed in the first place.
The only answer IMO at this stage is nuclear seeing as everybody's convinced reducing carbon emmissions will save the planet.
Blue
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It depends on the car really. The abd's website has a dust to dust study that a US firm did independantly which showed hybrid cars are some of the most polluting in cost per mile. The same firm are studying european cars. Ultimately a car which is reasonably economical and doesn't need great deals of maintenance/repair and which lasts 250k or more miles will be about the most environmentally responsible vehicle compared to continually buying newer but smaller engined cars.
teabelly
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nissan wind farm is just a tax fiddle, only viable due to the nonsense tax rules from this govt, they wouldnt be commercially viable in any sensible tax regime, they are not the environmental nirvarna due to cost to build and noise etc
energy to build car is only one aspect, many cars are built by workers on slave wages, the human cost can be great
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It depends on the car really. The abd's website has a dust to dust study that a US firm did independantly which showed hybrid cars are some of the most polluting in cost per mile.
I laughed when I saw Jeep quoting that in British papers - trying to make out that because it had been shown that the basic Jeep was very 'green' in the USA, it must also be here. But it didn't add the cost of transporting it the few thousand miles here! Looking forward to the European version.
I had a big row with the head of environment at Volvo, who tried to claim that the carbon footprint of a car was 10% in manufacture, 80% in use and 10% at disposal. That can't be right surely!
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mss1tw
Not sure that your central premise; that modern cars do 55mpg and older cars did 30mpg is valid. There may even be a case to say that modern engines are far less efficient than some of the older ones. Certainly the forcible addition of the, already failed, exhaust cat technology means that fuel is wasted just keeping those "lit."
If governments hadn't fallen for the hyped-up "campaigns" we'd have a mature lean-burn engine technology by now - that would have been "real" progress. Reputedly; even in prototype form they could do a real-world 100mpg at 100mph.
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