ETA's Green Car of the Year is the Toyota ...
Saturday will kick off the 2008 Green Transport Week in the UK. To gin up a little bit of discussion at the start of the week, the organizing group (the Environmental Transport Association) has released a list of the best and worst green cars after looking at 1,300 models that are sold in the UK "and examined their power, emissions, fuel efficiency and even the amount of noise they produce to create the definitive guide to buying the greenest vehicle." Your winner is the Toyota Yaris, which is the ETA's Green Car of the Year 2008. The Dodge SRT-10 sports car also made the list, but as the very least green car. A full list of other winners is after the jump and there's more information on all 1,300 vehicles at this site.
In a lot of ways, lists like this don't tell us too much (although actual data was used in this case, so we'll give 'em credit). ETA director Andrew Davis does make a very good point, though, when he says that, "The big problem is not the Dodge SRT-10s and Lamborghinis because there are not many of them on the road. The concern is that people are buying cars that are much too big for their real needs." Well said.
Press Release:
Green Car of the Year 2008 Announced - 1300 Cars Named and Shamed
LONDON, June 13/PRNewswire/ --
The Toyota Yaris has been named Green Car of the Year 2008 by the Environmental Transport Association. The least green car is the Dodge SRT-10 sports car. The announcements come ahead of the start of Green Transport Week (14th - 22nd June)
The Environmental Transport Association has looked at over 1300 models of car currently on sale in Britain and examined their power, emissions, fuel efficiency and even the amount of noise they produce to create the definitive guide to buying the greenest vehicle.
The Car Buyers' Guide was first published by the ETA in 1992 in response to requests from its growing membership and has since become the environmental benchmark for the car industry and the public, championing the greenest cars in Britain.
The results are as follows:
Overall Winner: Toyota Yaris
Overall worst: Dodge SRT-10
Category Winners
Supermini: Toyota Yaris
Small Family: Honda Civic Hybrid
Small MPV: Renault Modus
City: Citroen C1
Large Family: BMW 3 Series 320d Saloon
Sports: Vauxhall Tigra, MY2008 2-door Convertible
MPV: Peugeot 207 SW Outdoor
Executive: BMW 5 Series 520d Saloon
Off road: Toyota RAV4
Luxury: JAGUAR XJ 2.7L Diesel Saloon
A full list of best and worst cars will be available on Friday 13th June at http://www.greencarawards.co.uk
Andrew Davis, director at the Environmental Transport Association, said: "With the increasing costs of motoring and the threat to the environment there has never been a more important time to choose greener cars."
As well as recognising the best performers, the guide 'names and shames' the worst offenders in terms of damage to the environment with the 8-litre-engined Dodge SRT-10 being named overall worst car.
"The discrepancy between the best and worst - the greenest and the least green cars in Britain today - is striking, but the market is changing and a combination of consumer pressure alongside government leadership will result in an increasing choice of environmentally-sound cars."
"The big problem is not the Dodge SRT-10s and Lamborghinis because there are not many of them on the road," explains Andrew Davis, director of the ETA. "The concern is that people are buying cars that are much too big for their real needs."
The car buyers' guide can be viewed at http://www.eta.co.uk/car_buyers_guide
[Source: ETA Services Limited]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Pacman 11:07AM (6/13/2008)
Offroad = Rav4 - They must jest. Maybe rename to small CUV.
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Phil 11:53AM (6/13/2008)
Something not highlighted, but significant for those in the US, is the fuel used by the winners.
Of the 10 category winners there are:
1 hybrid gas engine;
1 gas engine;
8 diesel engines.
The only gas engine winner is a tiny city car with a 1.0 litre engine.
Hopefully one day US refineries and consumers will learn about DIESEL.
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MarcT 12:14PM (6/13/2008)
Congratulations to the Yaris, but all those dirty diesels???
Apparently tailpipe emissions are not a concern of the Brits, although based on the results here...
http://www.londonair.org.uk/london/reports/AirQualityInLondon2005andmid2006.pdf
maybe they should be.
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Phil 12:57PM (6/13/2008)
Typical ignorant view of diesels by MacT above. Euro 6 diesel emissions are virtually the same for gas and diesel (particulates and NOx)
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Peter 1:37PM (6/13/2008)
Perhaps, but Euro 6 doesn't kick in until 2014. Euro 5 is not as tough as Tier 2, Bin 5 for diesels in the USA and that is nowhere near the better gas cars for emissions.
Diesels are getting cleaner but they aren't clean. Many European cities have significant problems from diesel emissions.
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Der Alte 1:54PM (6/13/2008)
The problem with diesels in North America is two fold. The amount of emissions equipment needed to clean up the exhaust to bring it up to standard increases the price of the car dramatically. This means only large cars and trucks/SUVs will have enough margin built in to make any money off of it. A Jetta will be about as small and as cheap as you will see in North America with a diesel engine.
The second bigger problem is lack of refining capacity for diesel. Diesel is more expensive than gas right now simply because of that. The fuel itself is cheaper to refine (although ULSD standards have increased refining costs some). The trouble is that more people want the stuff than what can be provided and so the price goes up. Unless the current economic downturn will see significant decreases in the consumption of diesel by commercial truckers, the supply problem will continue. If the downturn gets that bad, nobody will be able to afford to buy any of the new diesels anyways. Building new refining capacity is not so easy either. Its terribly expensive and the regulatory loopholes make any sort of "quick" construction out of the question.
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stas peterson 6:56PM (6/13/2008)
Phil,
You ought to really upgrade your propaganda sources. If you think these dirty, stinky, diesels even those that meet that proposed but not met EU 6, results in a "clean" diesel.
EU 6 diesels emit as much pollution as a gasoline car WITHOUT an catalytic converter. So it is equivalent to about 990 to 1000 of such US gasoline powered cars.
Not a single one of these "phony green" diesels emit pollution at the reduced levels that they are capable of doing while conforming to T2B5.
The T2B5 genuine diesel standard, makes a diesel equivalent to the dirtiest (not cleanest) of the heavily controlled-emissions gasoline powered car. So a real diesel standard T2B5 is several hundred times as clean as the EU 6 nonsense.
All the vehicles are manufactured by auto builders that have promised to provide in the US in the 2010 model years starting in August 2009.
So these vehicles are already equipped with such emissions equipment as they undergo certificatiion tests that can take as long as 15-18 months, prior to commercial sale.
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Duodenum 3:25PM (6/13/2008)
I loved my New Beetle TDI when I had it, but with Diesel far more expensive than any grade of gasoline currently (saw it for $4.99/gallon this morning, while regular was 80 cents cheaper) I'm glad I don't have it any more.
Diesel is so much more expensive than regular gas that the increased fuel economy may not overcome the price difference.
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MarcT 3:46PM (6/13/2008)
Thank you, Peter. Typical diesel lies by Phil. I may be mistaken, but not one of those diesels on the list is of the new cleaner diesel variety, and not one would pass T2B5, nor Euro VI, and certainly not get PZEV, as Priuses, Civic Hybrids, Camry Hybrids, and Altima Hybrids do.
When these new cleaner diesels arrive (and boy it seems like we've been waiting an awful long time) we'll see how the new added technology affects the price, fuel efficiency, performance, and reliability. In the meantime, I'm glad they are all stuck in Europe. You can keep 'em, torque and all.
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GoodCheer 5:04PM (6/13/2008)
Wow, it's surprising it wasn't the Tahoe Hybrid eh?
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Karl-Uwe Strunzen 4:16AM (6/14/2008)
Just a couple of points folks...
(1) There are a great number of cars in Europe circulating today which are Euro5 compliant.
How many cars in the US today are Tier2 Bin5 compliant? I did a quick search on the net and came up with:
http://www.greenercars.org/highlights_greenest.htm
so we have a very long list made up of the Fortwo, the Yaris, Corolla, Civic and Fit.
Cars such as these represent the vast majority of cars on the streets in Europe (in Europe these are called segments A and B). They represent what fraction of cars, however, in the US???
(2) comparing this
http://www.dieselnet.com/standards/us/ld_t2.php#bins
with this (and transforming g/mi to g/km (?!?!) )
http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2007:171:0001:0016:EN:PDF
(page 12)
the CO limit in T2B5 is more than 5 times more lax than the Euro5.
(3) 2014 for Euro6 may indeed be some way away, but these are standards that in Europe are widely adopted. Not having the latest Euro standard in Europe TODAY affects how much tax you pay at purchase, for yearly registration, congestion and city entrance charges, parking and so on.
There's no point in making a stringent standard if only an insignificant number of vehicles are actually going to meet the standard.
I'm I the only one that has seen that chart showing Japan and the EU toughing it out for the best vehicle emissions, and with China already APPLYING more stringent emissions standards than the US ?
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nagmashot 8:00AM (6/16/2008)
@ to 11
bravo the first comment that tells the US boys the true about their useless emission ratings..
next to that fact...emission limits are the MINIUM a car have to reach .. means most diesel engines runs much much cleaner as a Euro4, 5 or 6 sticker tells..
just some numbers to think about
BMW X3 3.0d vs Lexus RX400h
both have equale power but the BMW is much much faster... it beat the Lexus 5 seconds 0-125mph
based on manufactor claims the
Lexus RX400h reach 192gr/km
BMW X3 3.0d reach 232gr/km
looks better for the Lexus..
but faced with real world traffic tested by Autozeitung the
Lexus RX400h
CO2 284.4gr/km
CO 0.300gr/km
HC 0.030gr/km
NOX 0.36 gr/km
dust 0 gr/km
BMW X3 3.0d
CO2 246.4gr/km
CO 0.109gr/km
HC 0.019gr/km
NOX 0.205gr/km
dust 0 gr/km
great the "clean" car is more dirty in every emission expect one.. and this BMW isn´t even build to be any kind of "green touched".. they have no start stop and all other fuel saving gismos BMW offers, added to that X3..
emission are not NOX only.. CO2 is according to the the world that surounds the USA, more important as NOX.. not only in Europe..
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Rick 2:03PM (6/16/2008)
How about a more useful to me US list for green car of the year? This list is informative but useless to those outside Europe.
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Karl-Uwe Strunzen 2:21PM (6/16/2008)
The comparison is pretty useless in Europe as well:
246 g CO2 is today considered a dinosaur and it won't be long before cars like these will be all but outlawed. The list of countries in Europe which slap a hefty surcharge for cars over 120 g CO2/km is already impressive. Then consider the kind of LCC and so on cars like this are facing....
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MarcT 2:37PM (6/16/2008)
nagmashot, I'm supposed to believe the results of a German publication pitting a Lexus against a German vehicle? Sure. I'll stick with the EPA ratings. And the RX400h kills the X5 diesel in 0-60mph. I dont know what morons are taking either of these vehicles to 125 mph.
Karl, you are WAY OFF if you think that most US cars are not meeting T2B5 standards. Almost every car sold meets the T2B5 standards. The list you linked are the best, not the only ones. Not surprisingly, the list of cars that dont meet T2B5 include diesels (like those from Mercedes) that are exempt from the standard because their mfrs have other cars meeting the standard to balance them out. (Also some HD vehicles that sell in small numbers are unfortunately exempt.) The VAST majority of vehicles sold are T2B5 and better. Eruo diesels, meeting only Euro IV standrds, cannot meet T2B5. Euro VI diesels are not on the road yet. How long have we been waiting for these??? And when they do arrive, they will be T2B5 compliant, but just barely. Meanwhile most hybrids sold, and many other gas engines are CARB PZEVs that are much cleaner than anything mandated by Euro VI or T2B5.
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Karl-Uwe Strunzen 3:16PM (6/16/2008)
The roman numeral IV corresponds to 4, while VI corresponds to 6.
Aaing, there are plenty of EURO5-compliant cars in Europe today on the streets, despite the norm not being introduced yet.
Segments A and B in Europe make the VAST MAJORITY of cars sold today in Europe (and this has been so for many years). Civic and Fit hatchbacks do exist in the US but, as is the case in Europe, do they make up the MAJORITY of cars in the US?
Is it not so that though SUVs also exist in Europe, they exist as a far greater proportion in the US and with models which are far larger and inefficient?
I've provided an example (carbon monoxide, which is poisonous) of the Euro5 standard outstripping T2B5 by more than 5 to 1.
Can you provide a link to a list of US car models which are T2B5-compliant ?
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MarcT 7:10PM (6/16/2008)
Yes I can...
http://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/download/all_alpha_08.pdf
Under heading "Stnd," you will need to look for anything B5 and below, you can ignore all the other letter combinations, as those are the California codes, which are at least as compliant, usually moreso that T2B5. Note how few vehicles are B6 and above, and note which ones they are. DIESELS and some heavy duty pick-ups.
And I certainly know what roman numerals stand for. Cars in Europe need only meet Euro VI (four) standards right now, which are lower (at least for diesels) that T2B5. I presume all the 2009 models, with Bluetec and all that injected pee, will be Euro V compliant. I keep referencing Euro VI because a previous poster said that all these diesels were already Euro VI compliant. Now maybe the new technology allows them to leap from IV to VI. Great!! But they're not there yet. Euro VI is not until 2014. We havent even hit Euro V yet, as there are very few 2009 vehicles yet released. I anxiously await the results of road tests of the 2009 diesels, with price, performance, mpg, emissions. Bring it on. And not just by German pubs.
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Karl-Uwe Strunzen 3:02PM (6/17/2008)
this is a joke, right?
Audi Q7, BMW X5, Mercedes M350 etc are Euro4 cars. They're not Euro5 and they're certainly not Euro6.
These are the cars that attract the most emission-based taxes and surcharges in Europe. I'm not sure what B5 really means in that list, but it certainly doesn't mean "green" or "efficient" vehicle.
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