Mini and Fiat have been found to be the cleanest car manufacturers in a league table which provides the first comprehensive analysis of overall emission performance rather than just focusing on CO2 emissions.
Producing by website, Clean Green Cars, the league table analyses the carmakers’ performances across three environmental factors; CO2 emissions, NOx emissions and particulate emissions to produce a more rounded conclusion of environmental performance.
Explains Richard Bremner, editor of Clean Green Cars: “CO2 is hugely important, but it is not the whole story. A car that is good for CO2 can be bad for other pollutants and vice versa.”
The website analysed the performance of every car sold in the UK so far this year to complete its findings, correlating sales and pollution data to produce a sales-weighted performance for all manufacturers.
Fiat and Mini came joint first in overall performance across the three pollution sectors, while Toyota lead in producing the least CO2 emissions and Suzuki came top in minimising NOX emissions. For particulates (small sooty particles, responsible for causing respiratory problems and long term lung disease), Mini and Fiat once again lead the way, proving two of the least harmful manufacturers.
Thanks to the car industry’s focus on CO2 emissions, the website found that while CO2 performance varied by a factor of less than three from best to worst, NOx varies by a factor of seven and particulates by a factor of more than 50. In the hall of shame, Jeep and Land Rover were found to have the worst environmental performances overall.
Overall ranking was calculated by adding the positions for all three criteria and then dividing by three to obtain an average. The reason there is a ranking for pollution rather than a single overall figure is that there is no generally accepted way of comparing damage from CO2 to damage from NOx or particulates. They cause different problems in different circumstances. By creating a ranking, Clean Green Cars combined manufacturers performance into a meaningful league table, but leave it open to people to concentrate on whichever measure they regard as the most important.
