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Tuesday, March 21, 2017

Don't believe the propaganda, hybrid vehicles ARE better for the environment.

Maybe this happened to you like I remember it happening to me. About 10 years ago I was talking about the Prius and it's reduced emissions with a friend before I got a stern rebuke along the lines of "but the Prius is actually worse for the environment!"

I asked how and I got some long explanation about the dangers of Nickel mines and how shipping the Prius was so bad for the environment it actually negated the reduced emissions of the Prius.

And I believed it.

After that I saw that same argument against the Prius on social media many times. Facebook posts with titles like "DID YOU KNOW?!" with fancy graphics illustrating how the Prius was worse for the environment than a hummer. Sensationalist but, it seemed like it could be true, right?

Wrong. In fact, that's an argument started by Oil Industry intended to specifically discredit hybrid cars, which around 10 years ago, were becoming increasingly popular.

According to this post on reddit the viral post about Prius batteries was entirely propaganda.



The supposed incredibly toxic nickel mines were actually just incidents that had occurred decades before the creation of the Prius.



And the environmental cost of shipping cars? Completely overstated.

Hybrid cars are in fact better for the environment than normal cars, something many people believed but others, like myself, questioned due to oil industry propaganda. Nevertheless the moral here should be "do the research yourself!" 

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