[Editors Note: You know hybrids have gone mainstream when the author of a review article in the NYTimes doesn't know the difference between global warming and ozone depletion.]

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November 28, 2004


2005 Honda Accord Hybrid: Greening Without the Preening
By JOHN M. BRODER


The Honda Accord Hybrid is a terrific car. Of course, so is the Accord EX V-6 on which it is closely based.


So what do you get for the $3,400 premium that Honda charges for the hybrid version?


The tangible benefits are relatively small: the hybrid delivers modestly better performance, improved mileage and slightly more space (the sunroof was eliminated to save weight) than the conventional V-6 Accord. You lose some trunk space, the folding rear seatback and the spare tire, all in the interest of shaving weight and making room for additional hybrid components.


There is little on the outside to distinguish the hybrid model from a conventional Accord. The gas-electric version has a small spoiler on the deck lid, darker accents in the grille, special five-spoke alloy wheels and a single Hybrid badge on the trunk. There is a small array of gauges in the instrument panel to indicate when the electric motor is providing a boost or being recharged, and when the car is being driven for maximum fuel efficiency.


But Honda is betting that the intangible and invisible benefits of hybrid ownership will drive discriminating upper-middle-income buyers to its showrooms to do their bit for the ozone layer. Honda says its hybrid buyers are a conservative bunch, not the sort to advertise their virtue like owners of the Toyota Prius, who may want everyone to think their cars can run on egg whites and organic chardonnay.


Buyers of the $30,000 Accord Hybrid can bask in the self-satisfaction of owning an efficient state-of-the-art hybrid while the neighbors are still waiting for the leases to expire on their Excursions and Escalades.


The Accord Hybrid is rated at 29 miles per gallon in town and 37 on the highway, compared with 21 and 30 for the V-6 Accord. The Hybrid's fuel economy is comparable to that of a gasoline-powered four-cylinder Civic, which has roughly half the horsepower, but it will still take several years and many miles to recoup the $3,400 difference.


But at least you will not sacrifice performance. The hybrid Accord, which mates an electric motor to the exceedingly smooth 240-horsepower 3-liter V-6 that powers conventional Accords, produces an additional 15 horsepower and 20 pounds-feet of torque.


Honda says the gas-electric combination moves the sedan - which seats 5 and weighs 3,500 pounds - from a stop to 60 m.p.h. in 7.5 seconds, a half-second faster than the regular V-6 model. The test pilots at Car and Driver magazine recorded a 0-60 time of 6.7 seconds. For an "economy car," that is serious punch.


The hybrid also employs a system that shuts down half the cylinders at cruising speeds, delivering improved mileage at no cost in acceleration. The audio system automatically compensates for the vibration inherent in an engine with an uneven number of cylinders by producing "negative noise" in the cabin that eliminates the three-cylinder hum.


On the road, the complicated choreography of adding and subtracting cylinders and electric-motor boost is all but unnoticeable unless you study the gauges. Like other hybrids, the engine shuts down at stoplights. But when the air-conditioner is on, an electric compressor continues to power the unit, so unlike most hybrids the Accord is not eerily still when stopped.


The car has a conventional five-speed automatic, unlike the continuously variable transmissions that Toyota and Ford use in their hybrids. The car thus upshifts and downshifts in a reassuringly familiar manner, a deliberate effort by Honda to make the hybrid simply another powertrain option, not a jolting exercise in futurism like the company's first hybrid car, the Insight. That weird-looking and relatively impractical coupe is still the nation's fuel economy leader.


Even the name of Honda's new hybrid system, Integrated Motor Assist, implies that it is an evolutionary change, not an entirely new species.


Like the Accord EX, the hybrid comes with a full complement of luxury touches, including leather upholstery; heated front seats; power seats, locks and mirrors; dual-zone climate control; an audio system with CD changer and XM satellite radio receiver; and cruise control. Safety equipment includes antilock brakes, front and side air bags for the front row and side curtain bags in front and back. The only option is a $2,000 navigation system.


The 2005 Accord Hybrid goes on sale on Dec. 10, a week later than planned because an earthquake in Japan slowed production at the only plant making the new model. Honda will build only 20,000 Accord Hybrids a year, a small fraction of the 400,000 Accords sold annually. Waiting lists are forming, Honda says.


Robert Bienenfeld, senior manager for product planning at Honda, said the $3,400 price premium over the regular Accord was offset by the better performance and fuel efficiency, as well as by a federal tax break for hybrid vehicles.


"Unfortunately, as was the case with the Civic Hybrid, the incremental cost still exceeds the fuel savings," Mr. Bienenfeld said. "That's the reality of the hybrid."


He said Honda was moving in a deliberate way toward offering hybrid technology and improved fuel efficiency on a range of vehicles without sacrificing comfort or performance.


"We are pushing hard to provide a benefit to society beyond what the individual gets," he said. "It's a tough calculus. In a certain sense, it doesn't add up, but in another sense it does. You can feel good about owning it. How do you put a price on that?"


INSIDE TRACK: Power, comfort, space and a warm and fuzzy feeling.


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/28/automobiles/28AUTO.html

Published Sunday, October 31, 2004; Page A08


The most comprehensive international assessment of Arctic climate change has concluded that Earth's upper latitudes are experiencing unprecedented increases in temperature, glacial melting and weather pattern changes, with most of those changes attributable to the human generation of greenhouse gases from automobiles, power plants and other sources.


The 144-page report is the work of a coalition of eight nations that have Arctic territories -- including the United States, which has hosted and financed the coalition's secretariat at the University of Alaska.


The findings, which reflect four years of study, confirm earlier evidence that the Arctic is warming far more quickly than the earth overall, with temperature increases in some northern regions exceeding by tenfold the average 1 degree Fahrenheit increase experienced on Earth in the past 100 years.


"For the past 30 years, there's been a dramatic increase in temperature and a decrease in the thickness of ice," said Robert W. Corell, a senior fellow with the American Meteorological Society and chairman of the Arctic climate impact assessment group, which produced the report.


Those changes are already having practical impacts, including a reduction in the number of days each year that the tundra is hard enough to be driven on or drilled safely for oil. They can be expected to have even greater impact in the near future, the report predicts, in terms of agriculture, wildlife ranges for terrestrial and marine plants and animals, and global shoreline flooding because of increases in sea level caused by melting ice.


Warming could benefit certain sectors, the report said, by easing marine shipping and improving access to offshore oil and gas resources in the Arctic.


The report is scheduled to be released Nov. 9, but its summary findings were reported yesterday by the New York Times.


Gunnar Palsson, Icelandic chairman of the Arctic Council, predicted in an interview last week that the report "is going to generate a great deal of attention throughout the world."


"Climate change is not something that's going to happen -- it is happening all over the Arctic," Palsson said. "The Arctic is sort of a bellwether" for the rest of the earth.


Iceland has had much warmer summers recently and not much snow in Reykjavik the past two years, Iceland Ambassador Helgi Agustsson said. Palsson said Icelanders fear two of their most commercially valuable fish -- capelin and herring -- are migrating to cooler waters, which "would have a pretty big economic impact."


The report's authors believe Arctic temperatures will rise several degrees in the coming decades, according to a summary prepared by Gunn-Britt Retter, a technical adviser with the council's Indigenous People's Secretariat. Winters are expected to become warmer, and wet periods in the Arctic are expected to become longer, more frequent or both.


If nations want to temper or reverse that trend, Corell said, they will need to act quickly because carbon dioxide, the gas that is the prime culprit in global warming, typically lingers in the atmosphere 100 years before being recycled.


"If you were to put the brakes on right away, it's still going to take a long time for that supertanker to slow down," he said. "So there's a time scale issue here that does relate to how you decide what to do and how quickly."


Palsson said that while his country and a few others are suffering the most immediate effects from warming, other nations would have to take steps to curb climate change. "In order to contain these problems, we cannot think in terms of regional solutions," he said.


The Bush administration has consistently resisted calls for mandatory curbs on carbon dioxide emissions, saying that it would cost too many American jobs. A coalition headed by Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) is pushing legislation that would establish a pollution trading system aimed at cutting carbon dioxide emissions to 2000 levels by 2010, but it lacks the votes for passage.


Dana Perino, spokeswoman for the White House Council on Environmental Quality, said the council's work "is part of the $8 billion the Bush administration has committed since taking office to climate change research. It reaffirms the importance of moving forward with the president's sensible strategy to address emissions in a way that keeps our economy strong."


Several sources said State Department officials had questioned some of the council's policy recommendations, which are to be released Nov. 24.


Palsson would not address possible administration resistance to aspects of the report, saying, "the Arctic Council is not a political forum for negotiating policies." But he added, "This is a highly political subject."


It is not entirely clear why the Arctic is warming much more quickly than other areas. One factor is probably albedo, or the heat-reflecting value of ice. Once icepacks melt and that reflective power is lost, temperature increases can accelerate more quickly than while icepacks are intact.


Scientists have found that melting icepacks are more porous than previously believed, a factor that speeds their melt rate once melting begins.


Of particular concern is the rate of melting of Greenland's ice, Corell said. Scientists have estimated that a total melt of that icepack would increase global sea levels by more than 25 feet.

Cars, Not Crops, Should Be Chief Targets In Reducing Greenhouse Gases, Ecologists Say


DURHAM, N.C. -- Retiring croplands and switching to no-till agriculture can contribute in a modest way to reducing the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, but doubling fuel efficiencies of cars and light trucks would achieve much greater results, according to two Duke University ecologists.


In an analysis to be published the week of Oct. 25, 2004, in the online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Robert Jackson and William Schlesinger of Duke's Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences and Department of Biology examined how far "carbon sequestration" versus increased fuel efficiency would go toward a goal of reducing net U.S. carbon dioxide emissions by 10 percent.


Carbon sequestration steps include adopting no-till agriculture to retain crop wastes in the soil rather than letting them decay after plowing, and retiring croplands by paying farmers to revert them to grassland or forests.


Carbon dioxide has been implicated in global warming because it can trap heat in the atmosphere much like a greenhouse.


"We emit a quarter of the world's carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere, even though we constitute only 5 percent of the world's population," said Jackson, a professor of environmental science and biology who is also director of Duke's Center on Global Change.


"Our goal was to compare two different scenarios – biological sequestration and reduced auto emissions – to give a sense of what we could do to lessen carbon dioxide emissions."


Said Schlesinger, who is a professor of biogeochemistry and dean of the Nicholas School, "We chose a 10 percent reduction as the basis of our analysis to place it in the realm of possibility."


Their calculations showed that converting all U.S. croplands to no-till agriculture, or even taking the unthinkable step of retiring all croplands, would yield only a reduction of less than 4 percent in carbon dioxide emissions. Achieving a 10 percent reduction would require converting one third of all croplands to carbon-storing forest plantations, they calculated.


In contrast, they noted that cars and light trucks emit roughly 20 percent of carbon dioxide emissions. Thus, a doubling of fuel efficiency in such vehicles – for example through hybrid gas-electric vehicles – could achieve the goal of a 10 percent carbon dioxide reduction.


Reducing carbon dioxide emissions through more efficient vehicles makes more sense strategically, said Schlesinger. "It's as if you have marbles leaking out of a bag," he said. "It's easier to figure out a way to stitch up the bag than to attempt to gather up the marbles after they have escaped.


"I think our analysis reinforces the view that it is very difficult, short of taking very large areas of land out of production to soak up carbon dioxide that's escaped, compared to cutting down on the emissions as you might with simple technologies like driving hybrid cars that get twice the mileage.


"Taking a third of our crop land out of production and using it to sequester carbon would mean very high prices for food in this country and a lot of hungry people around the world," Schlesinger said.


He and Jackson concluded, however, that all possible strategies should be considered in plans to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.


"Reducing emissions is the step that's simplest and most directly under our control," Jackson said. "But we need to examine all carbon sequestration technologies wherever they're cost-effective, and to evaluate the suite of consequences that would arise if they were implemented."


Other solutions include the use of renewable energy sources, decarbonization and geological sequestration, said the researchers.


The researchers concluded in their article that: "a doubling in fuel efficiency through hybrid technology, advanced diesel engines and light-weight materials could precede a transition to hydrogen vehicles, which now require fossil fuels or other sources of energy to generate the hydrogen. Coupled with changes in the way that agricultural lands are managed, doubling the fuel efficiency of our nation's vehicles seems a logical first step in balancing the carbon budget."


Schlesinger emphasized that national leadership will be needed to address the problem of carbon dioxide emissions. Regardless of which candidate wins the presidential election, he said, "the climate change issue is not going to go away. The international community is going to make sure that it doesn't go away. This country is going to have to come up with solutions, and our paper aims to begin to identify some of the changes that can be made without vastly changing the lifestyle of the citizens of the country."


Both Jackson and Schlesinger also said that one implication of their paper is that the budgets for environmental research and monitoring, and development of alternative energy sources, will have to increase drastically for the country to meet the challenges of reducing its impact on global climate and achieving a more energy-efficient economy.




http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/10/041027144859.htm