2 years, 4 months ago
What is the real carbon footprint of the Toyota Prius including battery manufacturing, shipping of battery materials, and vehical shipping?
How does it compare to the average suv in total carbon footprint?
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It is really difficult to accurately estimate the "real carbon footprint" or life cycle CO2 emissions for a manufactured product as complex as the Toyota Prius. However, according to one estimate from the car manufacturing industry, in general, about 79% of the energy that is consumed by a car is consumed by burning gasoline to drive it. About 14.5% is used to produce the steel and other materials that the car is made of, and only 4.5% is used in assembling and shipping it (the final 2% goes to recycling/disposing the car at the end of its life cycle). Basically we can consider that the carbon footprint is proportional to the energy usage.
A SUV will have more steel and other energy intensive materials, which increases the carbon footprint of the materials of the automobile. And even if it took twice as much energy to assemble and ship the Prius, that would still be just 2 or 3% of the total carbon footprint, which is tiny in comparison to the effect of fuel efficiency that the Prius gets on the 79% carbon footprint accumulated during its operational life time.
A SUV will have more steel and other energy intensive materials, which increases the carbon footprint of the materials of the automobile. And even if it took twice as much energy to assemble and ship the Prius, that would still be just 2 or 3% of the total carbon footprint, which is tiny in comparison to the effect of fuel efficiency that the Prius gets on the 79% carbon footprint accumulated during its operational life time.
source(s):
Some research I did a while back.
Some research I did a while back.
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