Yet ANOTHER inconvenient truth!

CNW Marketing Research Inc., an Oregon-based auto research spent two years collecting data on the energy necessary to plan, build, sell, drive and dispose of a vehicle from initial concept to scrappage. They call it a dust-to-dust analysis of the environmental impact of a car.
You may be surprised if you thought hybrids were the obvious winners.
The Honda Accord Hybrid has an Energy Cost per Mile of $3.29 while the conventional Honda Accord is $2.18. Put simply, over the “Dust to Dust” lifetime of the Accord Hybrid, it will require about 50 percent more energy than the non-hybrid version, CNW claims.
And you may do a doubletake after reading this:
For example, while the industry average of all vehicles sold in the U.S. in 2005 was $2.28 cents per mile, the Hummer H3 (among most SUVs) was only $1.949 cents per mile. That figure is also lower than all currently offered hybrids and Honda Civics at $2.42 per mile.
Basically, when considering all relevant variables such as materials, fabrication, plastics, carpets, chemicals, shipping, and transportation, gas mileage turns out to be significantly less relevant than many people assume.

What I like about this study – and of course it’s just one study – is that it looks at the total cost/impact of creation, ownership, and disposal. It’s easy for the media, politicians, the globally aware public, to focus almost exclusively on miles per gallon and their ideals of environmental correctness. However, as is usually the case, reality points in a different direction than what’s politically correct. And isn't that the "inconvenient truth."