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The Toyota Yaris (pictured) has won the Green Car of the Year award from the Environmental Transport Association (ETA), while Dodge's SRT-10 sports car has been deemed "the least green".
Announcing the winner to coincide with Green Transport Week next week (otherwise it's a strange time to announce a yearly winner, surely there are six months left for greener cars to come out?), the ETA looked at more than 1,300 models of cars on sale in Britain. It scored the vehicles on emissions, fuel efficiency and noise pollution.
There's a pretty large discrepancy between the best and worst. The Yaris' average fuel consumption is 62.8mpg, while the SRT-10 with its eight-litre engine manages 13.4mg and a miniscule 8.2mpg in urban areas. Even without the environmental impact, the current price of fuel should be enough to put people off.
The runner-up is the Honda Civic Hybrid in the best category, while second worst is Lamborghini's Murcielago -- hardly breaking news. You don't need to check out a Ferrari or Lamborghini's emissions to know it's not green.
The ETA aims to let you know how much CO2 a car emits and how much road tax you'll need to pay on it. Perhaps for its green awards it should have stuck to the most popular cars out of the 1,300, excluding the ones only Premiership footballers can afford?
My other quibble is that electric cars like the G-Wiz and NICE Mega City aren't in the list because only cars meeting Euro NCAP safety standards are included. It seems a shame to exclude potentially very green cars just because they haven't taken what is, ultimately, a voluntary safety test.
For an alternative view of the best green cars, check out SmartPlanet's transport reviews which includes round-ups like the 'best green family cars'.
The full list of ETA's winners and losers looks like this:
Winners:
Toyota Yaris
Honda Civic Hybrid
Toyota Prius
Renault Modus
Citroën C1
Toyota Aygo
Peugeot 107
Renault Clio
Toyota Auris
Suzuki Swift
Worst:
Dodge SRT10
Lamborghini Murcielago Model Year 2007
Ferrari 599 GTB Fiorano
Ferrari 612 Scaglietti
Bentley Motors Arnage (from 2007 model year)
Bentley Motors Azure (from 2007 model year)
Bentley Motors Continental (from 2007 model year)
Ferrari F430
Ferrari F430 Spider
Aston Martin Lagonda DBS
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