Green Car Award 2012

This year’s green car of the year award was bagged by the natural gas powered Honda Civic. Introduced as a fleet vehicle in 1998, the car is in currently the fifth generation model and has entered assembly line production.

According to the Green Car Journal, natural gas is a clean fuel that is almost exclusively domestically sourced and is typically priced 30% less than gasoline. The Civic Natural Gas is the cleanest internal-combustion vehicle as certified by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

“There is no other vehicle like the Civic Natural Gas on American highways, and this recognition has been a long time coming for Honda,” said Ron Cogan, editor and publisher of Green Car Journal and editor of GreenCar.com.

The six-judge panel on Green Car of the Year jury selected Civic Natural Gas from five contenders: Volkswagen Passat TDI, Ford Focus Electric, Toyota Prius V and Mitsubishi I.

A competition between car companies to come up with better car models may see the price of such green cars go down substantially.

A list of past winners;

2006 — Mercury Mariner Hybrid

2007 — Toyota Camry Hybrid

2008 — Chevrolet Tahoe Hybrid

2009 — Volkswagen Jetta TDI Clean Diesel

2010 — Audi A3 TDI Clean Diesel

2011 — Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrid.

2012 — Honda Civic GX natural gas vehicle

Know more about –

National Mission on Hybrid and Electric Vehicles

Philippines first step towards electric vehicles

Image credit- http://www.laautoshow.com/GreenCars.aspx