"Good Only for Parting the Smug from Their Money"

Thus the Honda Insight 1.3 IMA SE Hybrid, according to the (London) Times.

I cannot see how making a car with two motors costs the same in terms of resources as making a car with one.

The nickel for the battery has to come from somewhere. Canada, usually. It has to be shipped to Japan, not on a sailing boat, I presume. And then it must be converted, not in a tree house, into a battery, and then that battery must be transported, not on an ox cart, to the Insight production plant in Suzuka. And then the finished car has to be shipped, not by Thor Heyerdahl, to Britain, where it can be transported, not by wind, to the home of a man with a beard who thinks he’s doing the world a favour.

To make it worse, the car is just plain lousy. In fact

It’s terrible. Biblically terrible. Possibly the worst new car money can buy. It’s the first car I’ve ever considered crashing into a tree, on purpose, so I didn’t have to drive it any more.

As Kermit famously said, "It's not that easy bein' green." Nope, it's fallacious.

(Thanks to BCE.)