The increasing awareness of the global community about the threat of global warming has spurred car buyers to opt for environment friendly vehicles. This in turn made car manufacturers develop and produce cars with a good fuel economy and cleaner emissions.
Recently, Forbes named the twelve greenest vehicles for the 2007 model year. The list includes six hybrid vehicles and the remaining six are powered by conventional gasoline engines which are designed to produce less greenhouse gases.
Forbes selected the twelve most environment friendly vehicles based on the data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The agency gives new vehicles with air pollution scores which Forbes used to select the twelve greenest cars for the 2007 model year. The EPA's rating system gives scores from zero to ten. In such a scale, the ten rating would be the highest. Of the twelve vehicles on Forbes' list, only two vehicles, the Prius and the Honda Civic Hybrid were given a score of ten by the EPA for greenhouse gas emissions.
Both the Honda Civic Hybrid and the Toyota Prius were named as co-leaders of the green vehicle revolution. The two hybrid vehicles from the Japanese car manufacturers shared the top spot. Another Toyota model, the hybrid version of the Camry, also made it to the list. The fourth hybrid on Forbes' list is the Ford Escape Hybrid. The Honda Accord hybrid is also considered as one of the twelve greenest vehicles as well as the Mercury Mariner Hybrid.
Completing the list are conventional gasoline engine powered vehicles. These are designed with greenhouse gas emission reduction in mind. The six non-hybrids are typically small cars. The Ford Focus is one of the six non-hybrid vehicles to make it to the list. The Hyundai Elantra is also named as one of the greenest vehicles. The Kia Spectra, a small car first released in 2001, makes it to the list as well. The Mazda3, a compact car produced by yet another Asian car company, is also included in this green list.
Another Asian brand which has a vehicle in the list is Nissan. The Nissan Altima sedan with its energy efficient components such as the is also named as one of the twelve greenest cars. Completing the lineup of the twelve greenest cars is the Saturn ION. While the ION is technically a compact car, it is currently the longest vehicle in its class.
Forbes furthermore reported that the average price of these cars on the list is $20,000. Last year, the average price of Forbes' list was $21,000.
