I'd possibly believe it for virgin batteries, but how about recycled ones.
Energy has a cost. That cost is built into the price of the things built with the energy. Unless you think the battery manufacturers are giving away their product, the real cost of energy to build and transport the batteries is built into their cost, and therefore built into the cost of the car.
The car could well be selling for less than the cost to build it, but not by more than $5000 or so. Toyota denies it.
There are not that many batteries, and they are standard nimh batteries, not unlike the millions being used to power all sorts of things these days. The battery in the Prius is essentially a pack of "D" cell batteries. There are 168 batteries in the pack.
You can buy the pack of batteries on e-bay for about $1400.
In the modern world, the cost of energy is pretty well reflected in the price of goods and services.
Now, the cost of POLLUTION is not captured in the cost of goods and services. If we did, we could largely solve our pollution problems through the free market. And it would be a good conservative principle for each person to pay the cost of the pollution generated to provide them the goods and services they use.
And, how is it these energy costs don't get into the price of the product? Is Canada being taxed to pay for it?
---There are some flaws in the study but why ignore the plant in Sudbury---
Well, maybe because 61% of first use nickel is used to produce stainless steel, and because most of the damage done by the Sudbury plant occured prior to the nineties when major upgrades were carried out.
This article is bogus. It seems like a college prank to me.
I'm reading a thread over in slashdot.
They're saying that the Sudbury plant hasn't been an environmental hazard since the early 80s.