Thursday, October 11, 2007

Lexus SUV Hybrid - "Green" or "Less Evil"?

I've been puzzling this week over the newspaper adverts for the new Lexus hybrid range. If you take the SUV, the hybrid does 35mpg and emits 192g/km* compared to the standard SUV performance of 25mpg and 264g/km. On carbon, that's a 27% saving - not bad, but the Toyota Prius does 104g/km...

There are two ways of looking at this:

1. there will always be a market for huge luxury vehicles, so it is better to be able to offer a substantially more efficient model to cut carbon emissions.

2. These guys are fooling themselves, if they really want to be green, they're going to have to compete with the best - luxury marque or not.

I'm tending towards 2. myself - it is very misleading to tell people that having a luxury vehicle with emissions no better than a family saloon is somehow "green". Manufacturers would probably say I'm not comparing like with like, to which I would reply "Exactly!"


* apologies for the mix of imperial and metric units -us Brits have never worked this metrification through!

Labels: , ,

1 Comments:

At 6:38 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

apologies for the mix of imperial and metric units -us Brits have never worked this metrification through!

Appology not accepted. You want to communicate with the world, you work in metric units. (Is that miles per uk or us gallon btw). Give us a l/100 km and I'll know what you're talking about

 

Post a Comment

<< Home