Mirror, mirror on the wall… which is the greenest car of all? Why the Toyota Prius of course.
That’s the verdict of Germany’s VCD Automobile Club’s annual list of the most environmentally friendly vehicles, which only served to highlight Toyota’s dominance in the sector.
The Japanese car maker not only took first place in the results, but second place too thanks to its Toyota iQ model. Honda took the bronze medal place with its Insight Hybrid.
The VCD has been rating 300 car models each year for the last 20 years and measures fuel used and the emissions released per kilometre driven.
According to Gerd Lottsiepen, the spokesman of the German VCD Automobile Club, hybrid cars are proving cheap to run and very quiet.
But what about the European car makers?
Well, both Daimler and VW are featured in the top 10 but their failure to focus on hybrid cars may be preventing them from breaking into the higher places on the list. Alexander Heintzel, a spokesman for Honda, commented that demand for hybrid vehicles is growing strongly worldwide yet in Europe the technology hasn’t received much attention even as more drivers look to buy greener cars.
