Honda's Insight, a new family-sized hybrid car that is already providing stiff competition for the ubiquitous Toyota Prius, has been named Green Car of the Year 2009 by the Environmental Transport Association in the UK.
The least green car was found to be the 8-litre Dodge SRT-10 sports car which, if driven for a year, was said to emit the same amount of carbon dioxide absorbed by 322 mature trees - the equivalent of an acre of oak forest.
The Environmental Transport Association examined more than 1,300 models of car currently on sale in Britain and compared their power, emissions, fuel efficiency and the amount of noise they produce to create a guide to buying the greenest vehicle.
In the supermini category the Toyota Yaris 1.4 D-4-D 6-speed came top with the Renault Clio Renaultsport 200 languishing at the bottom. The Honda Insight 1.3 IMA ES (pictured) won the small family car sector with Volkswagen's Golf R32 4Motion bringing up the rear. The Ford S-Max 1.8 Duratorq TDCi was rated the most environmentally friendly small MPV with the Mercedes R-Class R63 AMG losing out in this category.
Andrew Davis, director at the Environmental Transport Association, said: "The discrepancy between the greenest and the least green cars in Britain today is striking, but the market is changing and a combination of consumer pressure alongside government leadership will result in an increasing choice of environmentally-sound cars."
He said the popularity of large 4x4s such as the Porsche Cayenne, which is said to be many times more damaging to the environment than for example a BMW 320d, winner in the large family car category, is falling. This trend is being encouraged by the new emissions-based road tax charges which mean owners of high polluting cars pay over £400 per year for Vehicle Excise Duty.
Despite diesel models doing well in the survey because of their lower average CO2 emissions, the ETA points out that diesel fumes can trigger a "stress response" in the brain, putting people in urban areas particularly at risk. But it says the advent of diesel particulate filters, such as those fitted to some of the category winners, herald a dramatic improvement in the environmental rating of diesels. DPFs are said to remove all traces of soot from exhaust gases.
