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I strongly suspect the most environmentally friendly car a person can drive nowadays is, ironically, the Volkswagen dieselgate scandal recall vehicles. For exa
by _yb2s 3y ago
I strongly suspect the most environmentally friendly car a person can drive nowadays is, ironically, the Volkswagen dieselgate scandal recall vehicles.
For example, a manual transmission 2015 VW Golf TDI gets an EPA rated 44mpg highway, and can run on renewable diesel (now available at most fuel stations in California) which has roughly only 1/4 the carbon footprint of petroleum diesel. With the VW post-recall fixes, it also has extremely low diesel soot and NOx emissions, like it was claiming to have before the scandal.
I suspect the total carbon footprint and emissions are much lower than EVs or plug-in hybrids. Now if only VW hadn't messed everything up, we'd probably have plug in hybrid diesels on the market that would beat everything else out.
That said, Aptera Motors is about to release a true practical solar car that requires neither power grid energy, or fuel... which will surely beat just about anything else.
- fancyfredbot 3y agoI don't think there's any reason to think those VW cars are the most environmentally friendly. There are diesel vehicles which get more than 44mpg highway (for example Chevy Cruz gets more than 50). They certainly are above average though
- _yb2s 3y agoI actually wasn't aware there were any other small economy diesel cars with modern emissions tech in the US market, not alone from a US company, but the same point would likely apply to the Cruz. Other diesel cars I am aware of from BMW, Mercedes, and Jaguar are much bigger and less fuel efficient vehicles, or much older models with very poor emissions.
- BenjiWiebe 3y agoIIRC, the diesel Chevy Cruze hasn't been made for a couple of years. I was somewhat interested in buying one for a while but I already have a 03 VW Jetta diesel which satisfies my desire for a manual diesel car.