Green claims for hybrid cars fail to add up, says Which? survey

Green claims for hybrid cars fail to add up, says Which? survey

David Cameron has just got one, cabinet ministers Gordon Brown and John Prescott already own them, and the actor Nicole Kidman was an early pioneer. But new tests suggest that hybrid cars are not quite as green as buyers may have been led to believe.

The consumer magazine Which? has put three of the most popular hybrid cars through their paces and yesterday published its results showing fuel consumption figures well short of those claimed by the manufacturers.

Hybrid cars, which feature a self-charging electric motor for use in town alongside a petrol engine, have until now been seen as the most environmentally friendly option for those who cannot or will not give up their vehicles. They are 10-20% more expensive to buy but enjoy super-low road tax (£40 a year) and are exempted from the £8 a day congestion charge in London.

However, according to Which? the recently launched Honda Civic hybrid only managed between 28mpg and 34mpg on its test, well below the most fuel efficient petrol and diesel cars and nowhere near the 54mpg being claimed in Honda's literature. Tory leader David Cameron's new hybrid car, the Toyota Lexus RX400, recorded 25-34mpg during testing and consumed around twice as much fuel as the most fuel-efficient diesel car.

The consumer body noted that its greenhouse gas emissions were 27% lower than a petrol Lexus, but said it was no less harmful to the environment than a standard family estate car.

Which?.....continued below

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found that the UK's bestselling hybrid and government ministers' favourite, the Prius, only averaged 45-50mpg compared with the official figure of 66mpg. It said the car produces 44% less CO2 than its standard equivalent. George Marshall-Thornhill, a Which? senior researcher, said he was "surprised" at the results.

"We didn't do a highly technical laboratory test and simply drove them around on a mixture of roads in a normal way. It should be noted that all cars will struggle to get near the official mpg figures, but we feel that some of these should have done better. The Honda was nice to drive but as a fuel-saving hybrid, though, we're not sure that the figures add up."

He said the cars' emissions figures were in part calculated according to fuel consumption.

A spokesman for Toyota said the "claimed" figures were produced by the vehicle certification agency rather than the manufacturer. "All cars are tested in the same way - and the published figures come from those tests. Which?'s figures would have been greatly influenced by the road conditions at the time."

Meanwhile, Which? said that motorists wanting to go green have a range of options beyond hybrids. It pointed to the success of bio-fuels which, while no more fuel efficient than petrol cars, can cut CO2 emissions by up to 70% because the gas is absorbed during the growing cycle.

In Sweden 13% of new cars sold now run on bio-ethanol which once mixed with 15% petrol can be used as a petrol substitute.

Ford and Saab now sell models in the UK that will run on it. They cost little more to buy than their conventional counterparts but there are very few garages selling the special E85 fuel.