Hummer v Prius

If you missed the stampede that the car manufacturers do their best to generate with their breathless 'we'll wait for no one' end of year run out deals, then fear not there are always a few bargains out there.

But say you have a little bit to spend and you fancy a new car, a real head turner. No no not a Maserati. I am talking about a car that says something about who you are. That's right the Hummer - that colossus of the four-wheel drives - that says, no screams: "I am confident about who I am. If you don't like it. Get out of the way or you are roadkill".

But, if a recent scientific report is to be believed, you no longer have to feel so defensive about buying what many believe has to be the very paragon of excess - a gas guzzling monster.
According to a lifecycle analysis study the Hummer is more environmentally friendly than the Toyota Prius, the current darling of the nascent hybrid car industry.

The organisation that conducted the research - a marketing firm - said that the amouunt of combined energy - that's the energy taken to extract the materials needed to make the car, the manufacturing and its disposal at the end of its life - needed to make a Prius was far greater than that of the Hummer.

And that the nickel needed for the batteries - the Prius bascially has two engines, one of which runs on batteries - is taken from a mine in Canada that is responsible for widescale environmental damage. The study went onto argue that because the Hummer is made from steel it is more easily able to be recycled than the Prius, which is more costly to produce and takes in many more different materials. To be fair the Prius hasn't been on the market long enough to be heading for the scrap heap quite yet. And the organisation behind this study was a marketing research firm (clearly desperate for a bit of PR) and not a scientific journal. Toyota has robustly defended its Prius and scientific bodies have backed it up. But it makes you sit up and think that making an ethical choice isn't an easy one. The most ethical choice of all would be to buy a second hand car but then we wouldn't be doing our job in helping the automobile industry here in Australia in its efforts to break the one million sales barrier last year.