Right now, Toyota Prius is the most economic hybrid car available on the US auto market rivaled by a Honda Civic hybrid. Also, the Honda Insight is a much more fuel efficient car, given that you actually manage to find one for sale. Neither of these 3 cars really qualify to be a “green” car, as they still produce CO2 and other green-house gases by burning gasoline in their internal combustion engine.
There used to be truly green, all-electric cars in the US available for lease 10-11 years ago, but corporate greed of Oil Companies, GM, and others involved, as well as unwise decisions by Energy Conversion Devices to sell NiMH battery technology to Texaco, effectively killed that effort, put the working technology in the locked-up back room and crushed the beautiful machines. They would not even sell them to people falling in love with 100% green transportation.
But that was 10 years ago. Today we are living in the worst financial and economic crisis since the Great Depression and it is only the beginning. With the current state of our economy, we can see oil prices going up from $80 to $147 and then falling back to $52 per barrel, all within a 12-month period. We are living in times when corporate greed brought the Big Three American automakers to their knees and now the Biggest one of them – GM, is on the brink of bankruptcy, with Chrysler not far behind.
Today, we have more options than we did 10 years ago. Car companies are desperately looking to sell their products, and Green is hotter than ever. Unfortunately, there is still very few choices for an Ultimate Green Machine – we have a multitude of hybrids, which are not all that green. We also have a couple of fuel-cell models, but they are so costly to produce that you can’t really get one, and even if you do, it is only a 3 year lease. Another problem is the lack of infrastructure, as was the case with electric cars, so you are pretty much limited to getting one ONLY in California.
