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The Best New Cars
BESTS 
Tags: New Car Deals, new cars, new car
TOP CARS FOR THE FAMILY AND THE ENVIRONMENT.
The environment is an important issue for all car buyers these days. Whether intent on doing your bit for our planet by trimming the old carbon footprint or your pocket by avoiding emissions-based taxation and high fuel costs, choosing the most efficient car you can makes sense.
| | Rather than getting into hybrid powertrains, bio fuels and hydrogen fuel cells, let’s keep this simple. The easiest way to drive greener is to drive something smaller. In simplistic terms, less size means less weight and less energy required to shift it. Of course, managing with a city car will be a challenge if you have three kids and a large, damp dog so we need to balance our need for efficiency with our need for capacity. The question is which are the environmentally-friendly cars with family-sized dimensions? |
| | We’ll start with the family hatchbacks. You might be able to go smaller but this is a sensible size of vehicle for those who intend to use the back seats on a regular basis. Most of the major manufacturers now have efficiency brands that they attach to their greenest cars to guide customers and you’ll see these attached to cars in the hatchback class. Ford’s Focus ECOnetic is a fine car that also happens to have emissions below 100g/km and 74mpg fuel economy, Volkswagen’s Golf Bluemotion offers almost identical figures to the Ford and SEAT’s Leon Ecomotive returns 62mpg. |
| | All of these models have diesel engines and as a general rule, diesel is the most efficient option at the moment but you do pay a premium for cars with diesel engines. If you must have petrol power, Toyota’s 1.33-litre Auris has Stop/Start technology and can return close to 50mpg. Otherwise, there’s the environmental poster child, the Toyota Prius, At its best, this petrol/electric hybrid manages 72mpg with 89g/km emissions. |
| | If you need something larger, how about these medium range models? A diesel-engined Citroen C5 can return over 50mpg as can Honda’s diesel Accord. Vauxhall’s Insignia ecoFLEX gets close to 55mpg while the Volkswagen Passat Bluemotion 2 manages an outstanding 57.6mpg. |
| | Family-sized 4x4 vehicles don’t have to be environmental catastrophes but the weight of their complex mechanicals does reduce fuel economy a little compared to conventional cars. BMW’s X3 can return 45.6mpg in xDrive18d form, you can get up to 43mpg from an Audi Q5 and 40mpg from the more affordable Suzuki Grand Vitara. |
| | If you want more than five seats, you probably want an MPV. Top of this pile are models like the Vauxhall Zafira ecoFLEX (53mpg), the Toyota Verso (51mpg) and Citroen’s C4 Picasso (49mpg). Volkswagen also does well with its 52mpg Touran Bluemotion. |
Lister:
greencars
Source:
New Car @BuyaCar
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