WhatGreenCar.com
is a web site designed to help visitors assess the environmental impact of
different cars on sale in the UK.
Whereas the government tends to base its environmental assessments (and
taxes) purely on
fuel
economy and emissions, WhatGreenCar attempts to take a more holistic
approach. It awards each model a score between zero and 100, where zero is the
greenest, basing the score on a variety of weighted factors. These include the
type of fuel and the impact of extracting it; the environmental cost of building
and shipping the vehicle and its component parts; the overall emissions in use,
and the impact that those emissions have.
It’s impossible to assess the accuracy of WhatGreenCar’s data in terms of
real-world harm, but the site is brave enough to disclose its sources - it
references a plethora of academic papers and prior work such as the European
Cleaner Drive Programme. The site’s method produces results that may surprise
some:
Toyota’s
Prius - widely regarded as an environmental icon - achieves a worse score
than Ford’s similarly-sized
Focus
1.6 Econetic TDCi Estate (35 for the Prius and 33 for the Focus).
WhatGreenCar is run by a small Bristol-based consulting firm,
Ecolane, and the data
appears to be free of vendor bias.
The site allows visitors to search using a wide variety of factors, such as
vehicle size or type, or by fuel source. It provides top 10 lists in each
vehicle category, or according to selected user criteria, and also offers
background information to help visitors understand the differences between
different types of engine.
As well as an overall score, figures are provided for each model’s tax band,
CO2 emissions, miles per gallon and fuel costs per mile.
All in all, the site makes it very it simple to see how particular cars
compare to others in the same class. Our only criticism is that the
categorisation of cars into distinct segments such as small and large family
cars is poorly suited to the fuzzily divided reality. For example, the Focus
Estate is classed as a small family car and the Prius as a large family car,
although the Ford is actually longer, wider and taller.
Users will also have to look elsewhere for additional data if they wish to
compare the green credentials of models with similar performance, in terms of
acceleration or top speed. Overall, however, we felt WhatGreenCar provides a
very useful tool for choosing between the many different models of car offered
to UK buyers, helping to make sense of the various environmental claims of car
makers.
