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Dennis,
You missed my point entirely! People that are serious about green don't drive motorhomes! Simple enough. A motorhome is a selfish mode of transportation for those that can afford the luxury, yet the same chassis would haul over 80 passengers if it were a bus. (a much better use of a hybrid drive)
Its a reactionist design that is no more green than Al Gores private jet! I support the implementation of hybrid drives, but only when the gains far outweighs the hazardous waste it generates! Your Prius is a good example of where the gain will most likely outweigh the eventual cost to our environment it will cause manufacturing and disposing of those batteries. But a motorhome would require a power cell that would power a dozen of your Prius's and for what real gain? Imagine how far that couple could go in that motorhome if it were powered with a nuclear fission reactor! But would you be willing to accept the environmental impact their reactor causes at the end of it's life cycle? Probably not.
I'm not opposed to change, but we need to think first! The US doesn't even manufacture these batteries yet, let alone have provisions to recycle them or dispose of the chemicals. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in CO is in a panic and ready to spend over 1-billion dollars to figure out what the heck to do with all of these batteries if they actually catch on as a viable alternative to fossil fuel, but the lab won't even be completed for another 5 years. In the meantime we just dig a hole like we did with our spent nuclear fuels for the last 50 years.
A smarter alternative to a hybrid motorhome would be standard motorhome towing a Prius on a towbar for use once the couple gets where they are going.
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