Concerned "scientists?"... you should know better.

Check with some economists. Better autos will just support more autosprawl. This is not only NOT a solution to global warming, it is a disastrous diversion.

http://www.freepublictransit.org

Free public transit is the beginning of the end of autosprawl.

So ... is Treehugger going to post something against hybrids? Or is it just another corporate propaganda site?

Autos promote autosprawl. Better autos promote autosprawl better. The concerned scientists should know better. Anyone who crunches the numbers on the projected demand for energy knows that better autos will not have the slightest reduction effect...even if every one in the world could switch to an electric car tomorrow.

http://www.freepublictransit.org

Right, Socialscientist, because the whole world should ride on buses and will do so overnight. Why waste effort applauding progress, right? If you do, you're a corporate apologist.

Power to the people!

Socialscientist - I can see some of the logic in your train of thought, but I believe you skipped over some of the key points that relate to transportation of today. Certain limiting factors, habitual travel, infrastructure and necessity.

We travel to and from set locations for work, food, etc. These, in general, do not change. Just because you bought a new car that gets better gas mileage, it doesn't mean im going to look for a job 100 miles further away. Also, infarstructure is also a limiter (or, more so - time to travel). Speed limits are still in place and traffic is still there.

People who take road trips will still take them, the people who didn't, likely still wont.

So I don't see any big boom in travel as vehicles get more efficient. Nothing to offset the development of efficient vehicles.

I personally don't drive much further now that I own a hybrid. I still work just as much as I used to, and have just as little time to get away from the city. :)

Bottom line - this is treehuggable. It's also highly positive that some automakers are getting the thumbs up while others (all the American ones) are getting a big thumbs down for lack of leadership and foresight.

PS - the free public transit is a GREAT idea, and believe it or not, is already offerd in numerous areas. For example, in St.Catharines Ontario, where it's included with tuition at the local university.

A few thougts on the UCS ranking and article:

The ranking considered all vehicle categories, but was not weighted as such. It was weighted on sales volume only, so manufacturers were rewarded for absenses or failures in larger categories and punished for success, as illustrated by Toyota, who offer a "full line", ranked below Honda, who does not, their vehicles in like categories otherwise virtually identical, and Hyundai-Kia's respectable ranking despite their vehicles' mediocre efficiency compared to other vehicles in their classes.

The article goes on to say specifially that "Size is no excuse for a dirty fleet," noting that, "Toyota is a full-line manufacturer, producing vehicles in every class evaluated," but did not mention that Toyota's "full-sized" trucks and SUV's in 2005 (model year evaluated) were at the bottom of their class in sales volume. The Tundra only accounts for about 5% of the full-size pickup market, giving Toyota a significant advantage over domestics manufacturers without a significantly "greener" product.

I think it would have been of more value to normalize the data by comparing vehicles by class and ranking manufacturers as a composite, at least in addition to, if not instead of, the ranking that they did.

UCS has a history of making questionable statements respect to automotive technology. Most notably, they occasionally "design" a super-efficient vehicle on paper by layering existing technologies on top of each other, assume an efficiency for the design, and contend that manufacturers should build it. UCS, however, does not so much as attempt to build or comission a rudimentary prototype or bother with a real cost or market analysis or note that in some cases technologies used together in their model are capabilities of competing manufacturers. Their analysis should be noted but with some skepticism.

I'm all for public transit, but are you doing to run a subway down every street? Not everyone lives in a city, or even within walking or biking distance to another person, let alone a bus route, train, tram, subway, etc.

What do you plan to do about them? Force everyone, including out farmers to move to the city, or otherwise use dirty cars with no modern tech to make them cleaner?

I think Jon brings up a good point about sprawl. I recently moved and though I had lots of options about where I wanted to live, I chose a place very close to work and school, even though housing was more expensive. I did choose this partially for green reasons, but a big deciding factor was the length of the commute. I just didn't want to waste my life away in traffic and I think other people would seriously consider such a thing as well.

From socialscientist-
"It is a disastrous diversion"

The belief that incremental improvements in green technologies somehow divert us all from the larger goal of completely clean technologies is nothing but speculation. Very often, "diversions" like hybrid cars are available today, and can offer substantial reductions in emissions with very little increased cost. We need more "diversions" like hybrids so we can start making progress toward a greener future today--not a decade from now.

Free public transit for everyone is unfeasible, as a previous commenter noted because very many of us live in areas where that type of transportation is highly inefficient. Additionally, in order to accommodate a large increase in passenger, the nation's urban public transport systems would have to undergo lengthy infrastructure build-ups.

The time to create new subway and light-rail lines, or to establish new bus routes would likely exceed the lifetime of a new car purchased today anyway. So, go ahead, purchase that hybrid vehicle (and offset your emissions-but that's another debate) and reduce your impact today. Then, if you are lucky enough to live in an area with functional public transportation, take the bus/train/subway when it comes to your neighborhood.

Good to see them recognized.

Interesting how asians are really leading that market.

Ivan Minic: Efficiency technology is necessary to compete in Japan. Japan lacks a good supply structure for oil, which keeps fuel prices high. The high cost of fuel makes more efficient vehicles more appealing to Japanese consumers, which buoys the price of efficient vehicles, and competition from foreign manufacturers is effectively blocked, reducing the competition, so Japanese manufacturers get a good return on their investment to develop efficient technology for that market. Strong sales there subsidize the implementation of new product in other open markets.

In the US, decades of low fuel prices and a reasonably good economy had the opposite effect for US manufacturers. The demand for fuel efficient vehicles evaporated. Consumers' demand turned toward larger, more powerful vehicles, sparking a boom in the market for SUV's and high-horsepower vehicles. As demand for efficient vehicles decreased, their prices fell relative to the market. Some small domestic cars now sell for thousands of dollars less than what it costs to build them.

That isn't to say that domestic manufacturers haven't developed efficient technology. They've invested billions of dollars into improving efficiency and emissions, but increasing costs and decreasing demand have turned that into a financial drain rather than a benefit, hindering the implementation.

I personally don't see how the domestics will survive. US manufacturers are contracted to the unions to provide healthcare to their employees for life. Having been in business for about 100 years each, they now have almost 10 retirees for every worker. That puts US manufacturers at a cost disadvantage, even to the foreign manufacturers who build cars in the US. Even before fuel prices jumped, when they were “living large” on SUV’s, the constant increase of healthcare costs were eating into profits.

The sudden post-9/11 increase in fuel prices caused a slump in vehicle sales overall but especially in the larger segments, hitting the domestics right in their “bread and butter”, yet it hasn’t significantly effected pricing of smaller vehicles. People keep saying that if the US manufacturers would build more efficient cars that they would not be in financial trouble, but in fact the opposite is true. The more efficient cars they build, the worse it would get.

Now they are losing money, leaving them even less capital to develop product. At this rate it won’t take long before they burn through their assets and collapse altogether.