What are the UK's Greenest Cars?
Your Informed Guide to Green Motoring
The debate about the affects of motoring on the environment is no longer a new. However it has only been in the last few years that manufacturers, consumers, and the government have started to take collective action to address the situation. Our informed guide to Green Motoring will give you:
A Recap on the Emergence of ‘Green Motoring’
The Attributes of ‘Green Cars’
There has been a mountain of press coverage and discussion about how the human dependency on cars is causing potentially irreversible damage to the atmosphere. Environmentalists argue that the Carbon Dioxide (CO2) emissions created when cars burn petrol have become so great that they are getting trapped in the atmosphere, causing it to heat up unnaturally. The environmental consequences of this are still to be fully discovered, however the changing weather systems and melting of the polar ice-caps are two very visible indications that there is a problem.
Even as the price of oil hit its highest level to date in summer 2008, pushing the cost of motoring to its highest level yet, people were still not fully prepared to abandon the ‘Car’. The collective reliance on cars around the globe has meant that manufacturers have had to develop new, ‘green’, motoring solutions.
What Are Green Cars?
Fuel efficiency and CO2 emissions are probably the two most common terms when discussing eco-friendly cars.
Fuel Efficiency
This is used to describe how much fuel – whether petrol, diesel or LPG – a car uses to travel a certain number of miles. The phraseology is ‘Mile Per Gallon’ – MPG for short. The more MPG a car does, the greater the fuel efficiency. Historically, cars with larger engines usually have a low MPG; the larger engine will give more power meaning the car goes faster, however it takes a lot of fuel to make this happen. Similarly, sports cars are notorious for their poor MPG record, burning a lot of fuel in the turbos, superchargers and other injector toys that make them go faster.
CO2 Emissions
This term is used to describe how much Carbon Dioxide there is in the car exhaust fumes. New car engines have been designed to create power for a car in a more efficient way. Consequently, the emissions from the fuel combustion contain smaller amounts of CO2, along with other hazardous gases. The government have introduced new Road Tax legislation meaning that cars will be given tax breaks if they have a good CO2 emissions record, measured in grams/kilometre.
Most new cars have been designed to include these two factors, and consumers should certainly take them into consideration when purchasing a new car, especially as second hand car. Second hand cars will almost certainly become more expensive to run due to their poor CO2 emissions records and bad fuel efficiency.
Which Cars are ‘Green’?
WhatCar? has created an excellent guide to Britain’s ‘Greenest’ cars. Listed below are highlights from the report, and you can click here to visit the article.
The results were:
City Cars:
Toyota Aygo
Smart fortwo
Citroen C3 1.4 stop & start
Small family car:
Honda Civic Hybrid
BMW 120d
Hyundai Accent 1.3
Family Car
Toyota Prius
Vauxhall Vectra 1.9CDTi 8v (120) estate
Peugeot 407 1.6HDi FAP
MPV
Vauxhall Zafira 1.9CDT1 (120)
Honda FRV 2.2 i-CTDi
Fiat Doblio 1.3 1.6v multi-jet
Compact Exect
Saab 9-3 1.9TD 120
Luxury
Saab 9.3 Biopower
4x4
Lexus RX4000h
Coupes
Smart Roadster
Open Tops
Vauxhall Tigra 1.3 CDTi 160
The government has put together a fantastic website to calculate the green credentials of your car, including the carbon footprint. Click here to visit
Have your Say
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