subject: Green Car of the Year Finalists: Hybrid, Electric, and Gas Models [print this page] Green Car of the Year Finalists: Hybrid, Electric, and Gas Models
Since Green Car Journal's launch 18 years ago, the magazine has focused on the crucial intersection of automobiles, energy, and the environment. This was relatively new back in the early 1990s, but no less important than today.
In fact, it was the groundwork laid back then that's led to the current generation of advanced and efficient vehicles available to us now, and those coming in the short years ahead cars with electric drive, and vehicles with high efficiency gasoline and diesel internal combustion engines offering truly astonishing fuel economy. Plus, models that achieve ever-higher miles-per-gallon and lower CO2 greenhouse gases due to lightweighting, more sophisticated computer control, or technologies like electro-hydraulic steering and brakes that relieve parasitic load on an engine and allow more efficient operation.
What we're witnessing today is an auto industry that's rising to the challenge of providing vehicles that meet increasingly stringent emissions and fuel economy goals, while listening to the voice of the customer and offering these attributes in vehicles they want to buy.
Green Car Journal's Green Car of the Year award program honors these vehicles and the environmental leadership they bring to this field. Each year, five finalists are selected to be considered for the award, with dozens of potential nominees weighing in during the selection process.
Green Car Journal editors consider vehicles employing all fuels and technologies in the effort to raise the bar in environmental performance, including high efficiency gasoline internal combustion, advanced diesel, hybrids, electrics, and vehicles capable of running on alternative fuels. Ultimately, five outstanding models make the final cut as nominees.
These nominees rise above the crowd as outstanding examples that forward environmental performance in meaningful and quantifiable ways. Market significance and newness' are also factors. All nominees must also be on sale by January 1st of the award year.
Finalists will be considered by jurors that include leaders of the nation's top environmental organizations, including Carl Pope, chairman of the Sierra Club; Frances Beinecke, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council; Jean-Michel Cousteau, president of Ocean Futures Society, and Matt Petersen, president of Global Green USA. Also, Jay Leno, noted auto enthusiast and host of the Tonight Show,' as well as automotive icon Carroll Shelby, will join Green Car Journal editors on the Green Car of the Year 2011 jury.
For the first time, the Green Car of the Year finalists include two primarily electric-drive vehicles in addition to two hybrids and a high mile-per-gallon, gasoline internal combustion model. The nominees for the 2011 Green Car of the Year are the 2011 Chevrolet Volt, Ford Fiesta, Hyundai Sonata Hybrid, Lincoln MKZ Hybrid, and the Nissan LEAF.
Making the cut to become finalists for the 2011 Green Car of the Year amid a field replete with notable 'green' models is an honor in itself. To acknowledge this, these exemplary vehicles are further distinguished as Green Car Journal's 'TOP 5 GREEN CARS FOR 2011.'
These five 2011 Green Car of the Year finalists reflect an auto industry in transition. It wasn't long ago when electric drive was a novelty. Now, it's expected that most auto manufacturers will include electric drive in some form among their model offerings. While four of the five Green Car of the Year finalists do incorporate some form of electric drive, the Ford Fiesta nominee reminds us that internal combustion continues to evolve in important ways that bring new levels of fuel efficiency and environmental performance to conventionally powered models.
The 2011 Green Car of the Year will be announced at the L.A. Auto Show during the show's second press day on November 18.
