system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
I read somewhere a while ago that Priuses do more damage to the environment than big SUVs because the battery is so huge and takes so much power to create. Is this true?
gpt
I was under the impression it was because of the way the batteries were manufactured. 

The article that kicked all of this off says : 

*"Building a Toyota Prius causes more environmental damage than a Hummer that is on the road for three times longer than a Prius. As already noted, the Prius is partly driven by a battery which contains nickel...*

*Dubbed the Superstack, the 
plague-factory has spread sulfur dioxide across northern Ontario, 
becoming every en vironmentalist's nightmare. "The acid rain around 
Sudbury was so bad it destroyed all the plants and the soil slid down 
off the hillside," said Canadian Greenpeace energy-coordinator David 
Martin during an interview with Mail, a British-based newspaper...*

*The nickel produced by this 
disastrous plant is shipped via massive container ship to the largest 
nickel refinery in Europe. From there, the nickel hops over to China 
to produce 'nickel foam.' From there, it goes to Japan. Finally, the 
completed batteries are shipped to the United States, finalizing the 
around-the-world trip required to produce a single Prius battery...*

*When you pool together all the combined energy it takes to drive and 
build a Toyota Prius, th e flagship car of energy fanatics, it takes 
almost 50 percent more energy than a Hummer - the Prius's arch 
nemesis.*

*Through a study by CNW Marketing called "Dust to Dust," the total 
combined energy is taken from all the electrical, fuel, 
transportation, materials (metal, plastic, etc) and hundreds of other 
factors over the expected lifetime of a vehicle. The Prius costs an 
average of $3.25 per mile driven over a lifetime of 100,000 miles - 
the expected lifespan of the Hybrid.*"

There's a lot of partisan fighting over all of this on the net, but here's a quick rundown from The Straight Dope:

"*What about the Prius and its allegedly grim environmental impact? The cause of the controversy seems to be a report called "Dust to Dust" by Oregon-based CNW Marketing Research. The report claims a Prius has a higher lifetime energy cost than a Hummer, an assertion cited by George Will in 2007 in his syndicated newspaper column. But the report is ludicrous. It evidently was self-published, lists no authors, quotes no technical literature, never explains its methodology, and contains numerous unsupported and often bizarre assertions. (Sample: a Prius will have a life span of only 109,000 miles whereas an H1 will last for 379,000 miles, apparently the basis for the contention that the Hummer’s per-mile costs are lower.) Only a fool or a commentator with an ax to grind would take such nonsense seriously.*

*The same can be said of another anti-Prius yarn circulating over the past year. It originated with an article last spring in the Mail on Sunday, a UK paper, blaming the Prius for devastating environmental damage around a plant in Sudbury, Ontario, that processes the nickel used in Prius batteries. The story was grossly wrong; the major damage occurred more than 30 years ago, long before the Prius. Pollution has since been reduced 90 percent and the region reforested. The Mail yanked the piece off its Web site with an apology, but not before the usual knuckleheads picked it up, folded in the "Dust to Dust" drivel, and spread the result everywhere. Rush Limbaugh is said to have read on the air a version of the story that appeared in a student newspaper.*"

Hope that sheds some light on it until a environmental scientist comes in and lays down the law. The above doesn't account for all the shipping costs of building a Prius battery, just the damage to the Ontario plant.