Tuesday 8 November. The Green Piece Column.
With just a week to go until the opening of the Los Angeles Auto Show (the show opens to the press on November 17 and 18th) the show looks set to be a veritable feast of greenness.
The final big US motoring show of 2011, the show will provide a tantalising glimpse of the wealth of new models that tend to launch early in the New Year as well as prove an important ground for the big auto makers to show their new concepts and future production plans for 2013 and beyond.
Electric i
One of the most important first appearances will be the US debut of BMW’s i electric sub-brand. Both the fully electric i3 supermini and the hybrid i8 will be there as the German car brand hopes to excite as much enthusiasm for its electric models as it stirred earlier in the year at the Frankfurt Motor Show.
Cadillac will make its auto show debut of its Ciel concept, a massive and not very green hybrid, four seat, drop-top luxury car.
More excitingly will be the worldwide debut of the new CR-V hybrid, a coupe which actually qualifies as a real low emission model and the US debut of the new Insight, which launches early next year.
The third-generation Toyota Yaris will make its auto show debut too, while Mazda’s new compact crossover, the CX-5 will appear in the US for the first time. Finally tiny Croatian firm Dok-Ing, which specialises in producing remote controlled vehicles designed for dangerous jobs like demining and firefighting, will debut its first consumer car in the form of a three seat electric city car called the Dok-ing XD.
But of course it is not just first-timers which will delight and amuse green car fans, as seen-before models there to woo the crowds include the Audi A3 eTron, Coda’s electric sedan, Chevrolet Volt, Hyundai Tucson fuel cell vehicle, Kia Optima hybrid, Lexus CT 200h, Mazda3 with Skyactiv technology, Mercedes-Benz B-Class F-Cell, Toyota Prius v and Toyota Camry hybrid.
Green goes MOR
According to official L.A Auto Show media releases, the show serves as proof that ‘green has gone mainstream’ as virtually every car maker at the show will exhibit a solution for making vehicles run cleaner and use less fuel.
As part of this push for greener cars, many manufacturers won’t just be pushing low-emission gasoline (petrol) models but also trying to stir more interest from US customers in diesel models with cars such as the Audi A3 TDI, a previous Green Car of the Year winner, the Volkswagen Passat TDi and Mercedes Benz S35 BlueTec.
Electrified models, with BMW’s i brand joined by the Toyota Prius Plug-in (widely expected to be rated with efficiency of around 112mpge by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)), start up firms Fisker Automotive and CODA Automotive, the Ford Focus Electric (2012), and the C-MAX Energi Plug-in Hybrid.
Natural gas cars such as Honda Civic NGV will quell US thirst for natural gas (something more widely explored over there, than here) as fuel cell models such as the Honda FCX Clarity reappear to show that the hydrogen dream is still alive and kicking.
Our verdict: next year will be even greener
The show will be like a closing statement for 2011, the widely dubbed ‘year of the electric car’. While such a statement may have some truth in Europe, in the US, electric cars are more likely to be overlooked. But nonetheless even Stateside, there is no getting away from the motor industry’s efforts to reduce carbon footprints and improve efficiency. It even looks like our American cousins might start to consider diesel cars more, in a bid to avoid getting hit at the pumps. Despite lower fuel prices than we pay here, US citizens typically have longer commutes so efforts to stretch fuel further apply here too.
Looking ahead to 2012, it looks like next year will be even ‘greener’ than this one with more electric, hybrid, and range-extended models yet to come. Both Toyota and Ford have big plans, with Ford launching its Focus Electric next year (order books in the US are already open) and C-MAX hybrid and C-MAX Energi Plug-in Hybrid and Toyota launching its first models of its ‘family’ of Prius cars in the form of the new the new, bigger and family friendly Prius V and the Prius plug-in. Orders are already been taken for both. 2012-definitely to be our greenest year yet.
Faye Sunderland.
