Sure driving a hybrid is good on saving in terms of overall emissions of pollutants into the air. But what about many years down the road when your NiMH batteries are out of warranty and finally need replacement. How much will it cost? But more importantly will you end up creating a lot of highly carcinogenic landfill waste that will leach into your drinking water? The link recyling batteries Paints a positive outlook on recycling batteries. It seems that of all the kinds of recharchable batteries NiMH and Lithium are amongst the least toxic if they were to end up in a landfill. But even better NiMH costs no more to extract the Nickel metal than other processes to get Nickel. So at the moment it's economical to recycle into raw Nickel metal. Then as more people turn in NiMH batteries for recycle it will only become more profitable to recycle the batteries as opposed to landfilling them. One of the most toxic of rechargeable batteries that is used in every automobile is the lead-acid battery. But the industry has successfully achieved about a 98% recycle rate. So it seems that the same will hold for your Prius car battery. Possibly, by the time it comes to replacing your NiMH they'll be selling aftermarket NiMH batteries for your vintage hybrid car at PepBoys.
Related article from the following link... http://www.hybridcars.com/blogs/hybrid-daze/hybriddivorce --- forwarded --- Here's the 2004 Toyota Prius Green Report (life cycle assessment): http://www.toyota.co.jp/en/k_forum/tenji/pdf/pgr_e.pdf (you'll need to download the Japanese fonts for your PDF reader in order to read it, but the entire document is written in English.) --- end forwarded --- Ken@Japan
