With Toyota coming in with a three way tie for third. Hyundai-Kia takes title as greenest automaker | Detroit Free Press | freep.com
The real good news is that all of the top automakers improved their scores. Eventually, people will realize they don't need to drive themselves around in 3 ton, 8 cylinder SUV's to get to work.
It is easy to be at the top of this list (http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/clean_vehicles/Automaker-Rankings-2014.pdf) if you don't produce any gas-guzzlers. Of the top five only Toyota is a "full line" producer.
Yes that list is deeply flawed. They could easily produce a list of best at each catagory. compact and smaller cars, midsize and larger cars, small and medium suvs, smaller than full size pick-ups, full size truck, ginormous money sucking SUVs,. Hyundai only really sells volume in the first two catagories which are most efficient, I don't particularly think its good that toyota produces things in that last catagory -Toyota has the Sequoia and Land Cruiser (13city /18 highway) but there are good and legitimate uses for all the other categories.
Bigger vehicles get lower mpg, and are allowed lower mpg on cafe. Toyota sell a lot of trucks and SUVs, ford and gm even a higher percentage in the US. Hyundai mainly sells cars. Cafe is weighted by sales volume. IMHO cafe could be greatly improved, but its the list that is flawed here, by not accounting for the different vehicle mix at each company.
The advantage of CAFE is purely political in that it targets "big bad business" and "leaves the little guy alone." The reality is that CAFE gets passed along in the price and hidden from the consumer. I expect that some sort of (in)efficiency tax paid by the purchaser would influence what they buy and the Hummer would not have seen the light of day.
I would agree that cafe is purely political. It should be remembered that Chrysler, gm, and the UAW had there way (big business + big labor) and cafe was not increased under clinton/gore or first term bush/chaney and as a result not only was OPEC rewarded, but the inefficient cars these produced led to bankruptcies and the US taxpayer bailout of GM, Chrysler, and the UAW along with more oil imported from opec to help fund terrorism (al quida, hezballah, hamas, ISiS all are funded by petro dollars). I don't think our too big to fail auto companies should be unregulated when it comes to fuel economy. CAFE may not be as effective as other methods, but it sure beats the hell out of taxing engine size and PNGV and freedom car. Second term bush cheany promoted plug-ins and cafe and biofuels. Obama/Biden strengthened these policies. We now are seeing decreasing consumption of oil in the US because of these policies. They are far from perfect, but new cafe rules are a step in the right direction. Finally they have rules to cover the SUV loophole that has been stuck in cafe accidentally by ford, and kept around all these years. We still have many states such as virginia and california that tax cars based on their value. This discourages buying more efficient cars. We also have gas taxes that have not risen since 1993, so that roads are payed for by the general fund. Higher gas taxes and less punishment for the purchase of new cars. or perhaps lower registration fees for new low consumption cars (cars with mpg greater than 30 getting taxed less and cars less than 20 more ;-) would be good changes. Even forbes advocates a bigger gas tax, (although to reduce other taxes not as some democrats want to support some new program) as it would make the need to reduce oil consumption built into car buying decisions. On the Hummer, the future Governator pushed that. I remember seeing lots of hummer limos in atlanta. I don't think a guzzler tax would have stopped the hummer. Let's face it, very little of our fuel problems today are hummer related. They never sold that many. Cafe loopholes and cheap oil in the 90s led to the large number of SUVs, and many of the old ones are still on the road, gulping much more gas than the stationwagons they replaced. The SUV phenominon peaked in 2004, but still sell in much higher numbers than if we had higher fuel taxes.
