now tell the other 8 billion on the planet.

However, you seem to ahve confised what i was saying. I wasn't saying
that I particularly cared. its the Prius and similar drivers that
care, not about what others drive (although that is used as a
introduction to 'well i drive a ...') but about what other people
think about the car they drive.

Personally, i don't care about what other people think about the car i
drive, so i have a ratty civic, a ratty caravan, a ratty volvo 340,
and a ratty *looking* MG metroTT. They all have dents, they all have
rust. They're all from 87-89, and i really don't care what people
think about me as i drive past. This is a concept that is very hard
for a hybrid owner to grasp. The wife cares, hence she got a saturn
SL1, Meanwhile i'll look at a caterham superlight, or an Atom2

I have a solution for you!
Don't worry about what other people drive.

oh dear, the old 'we're all familier with X, which is kinda like Y,
and so what we know happens with X, we also assume happens to y -
Sorry, thats complete and utter, unadulterated BULLSHIT. Save your
pop-psychology for the easily impressed - such as any children under
10 you might have.

NIcads and NIMH have lmited charge cycles. Why? conductive crystaline
formaton int he cell, producing an effectively 'shorter' cell. can you
fix this? yes you can, alsthough its tricky to do, and risky - you zap
the cells.

Whoopdie do. One has managed 200k miles, conrgatulations, pat on the
back there. I've a first gen caravan thats managed that too, doesn't
make it a particularly good van. Second, you keep making this song and
deal about a vehicle that is expensive to make, would have to be run
for over 300,000 miles before its actually more efficient in TOTAL
than a similarly sized conventional car, and which would probably be
more efficient if you just ran it as a straight petrol engine. Want to
be fuel efficient, two easy rules
1) be smooth with driving, and make speed ransitions smooth and slowly
2) remove any unneccesarry weight. - less weight = less fuel needed.
Take out the weighty electrical system, and you'll probably get around
the same mpg.

Lets look at it another way, EPA rating for prius 51mpg (very
optomistic rating, as with all EPA ratings) I've seen an Audi A8
(thats the big one) with a 4l V8 twin turbo engine (thats a big engine
too) return 40mpg. A car designed to be big, heavy, smooth,
comfortable - ANYTHING but fuel efficient - can get such figures
speaks volumes. i will admit that was highway driving, if you'd rather
have a small car, and think about fuel economy from the get-go, VW
group also make a lupo - agains non-hybrid - thats RATED at 65mpg.

People with hybrids can be described in one word - poser. "Look at me,
i'm driving a hybrid, aren't I trendy, trying to show i'm conserned
with the enviroment, but cool, and have money to waste" - what a right
old load of bollocks it is.

However, they are not failing. Try googling "prius battery fail" and you
will see about 10K hits with a ton of speculation about when the battery
will fail and about failures of the 12 volt aux battery (which is as
vulnerable as the 12 volt battery in conventional cars)... but good luck
finding a report of one that has actually died a natural death. Then google
"acura transmission fail" and you will get about 22K hits; why the
transmissions are failing, what to do about the transmissions failing. One
member of the Yahoo Prius group just had his150K mile service done on his
2001 and has done nothing but scheduled maintenance and tire replacement -
no battery failure yet. That figures since Toyota warranties the hybrid
system, including battery, for 8 years/100K miles (150K miles in CA).
Even the original Prius, sold since 1998 in Japan, has no battery failure
issues.

There is nothing in chemistry that limits the number of charge cycles for a
primary cell. Edison cells, for example, have no natural limitations on
charge/discharge cycles and usually last for decades but have poor energy
density. We are familiar with lead acid and NiCads which have serious life
limitations because of their particular chemistry so we assume all
rechargables do. Then we look at the batteries in portable electronics -
they are designed to charge as quickly as possible, have the highest
possible energy density and be profitable to replace - and we decide no
rechargable battery could last longer than a couple years... just as we
might watch sprinters and conclude no human can run more than a mile.

When it comes down to it, the experiment is on the roads and has been
successful for 7 years. At least one Prius has exceeded 200K miles
http://www.hybridexperience.ca/Reliability.htm

Mike

They get charged before they run completely down;partial charges,"topping
off".They still are charge cycles.

Well, a hybrids' certainly wouldn't need to unless it only got 3 miles per
charge.

NiMH and NiCd can only be recharged a number of times before their capacity
drops off,and L-A batteries suffer from sulfation,electrolyte loss,and
vibration/shock damage(material falls out of the lead grids,shorts the
cell). Hot environments like the Southwest and Florida will shorten battery
life further.
I don't know of any rechargeable battery chemistry that can be recharged
100,000 times.

....and?
That's it?

Please enlighten us with your wisdom on the subject.

Spun like a member of the Clinton family.

If you believe Toyota's PR spin 100%, you're in for a big surprise.

Maybe the author of the article should have done a little actual
research.  Here is what Toyota has to say about battery replacement
and recycling:

http://pressroom.toyota.com/photo_library/display_release.html?id=20040623

How long does the Prius battery last and what is the replacement cost?

The Prius battery (and the battery-power management system) has been
designed to maximize battery life. In part this is done by keeping the
battery at an optimum charge level - never fully draining it and never
fully recharging it. As a result, the Prius battery leads a pretty
easy life. We have lab data showing the equivalent of 180,000 miles
with no deterioration and expect it to last the life of the vehicle.
We also expect battery technology to continue to improve: the
second-generation model battery is 15% smaller, 25% lighter, and has
35% more specific power than the first. This is true of price as well.
Between the 2003 and 2004 models, service battery costs came down 36%
and we expect them to continue to drop so that by the time
replacements may be needed it won't be a much of an issue. Since the
car went on sale in 2000, Toyota has not replaced a single battery for
wear and tear.

Is there a recycling plan in place for nickel-metal hydride batteries?

Toyota has a comprehensive battery recycling program in place and has
been recycling nickel-metal hydride batteries since the RAV4 Electric
Vehicle was introduced in 1998. Every part of the battery, from the
precious metals to the plastic, plates, steel case and the wiring, is
recycled. To ensure that batteries come back to Toyota, each battery
has a phone number on it to call for recycling information and dealers
are paid a $200 "bounty" for each battery.

Elliot Richmond
Freelance Science Writer and Editor

The current edition of "Car and Driver" (magazine) has an interesting
article about the dark side of the hybrids on page 26. The date on the
cover is September 2005.

Many of the so called "greenies" have purchased hybrids because they
really care about the environment. I learned about something from the
article that I had never thought about before. What's going to happen to
those millions of batteries in hybrid vehicles after they wear out? They
will be placed in landfills. Imagine the harm that those batteries may do
to the enviroment after they are laying in a landfill for 50 years.

If you own or are planning to buy a hybrid vehicle, I advise you to read
the article.

Jason