Each day 236.5 million cars in the United States get started and driven around to different locations. Some are left idling, some are get revved up on, and some get driven in eco mode. This is an alarming number of cars and statistically this equates to emitting 24 pounds of carbon dioxide per gallon of gas burned per car. To put this in a yearly perspective, one car can burn approximately 4.7 metric tons of carbon dioxide and if you add up all the cars, in one year 1.1115 billion metric tons of emissions are released into the air. This is just in the United States. Globally the number of cars is about 1.015 billion and this leads to an even alarming number. Using the same numbers as earlier, an estimated total of 4.7705 billion tons of carbon …show more content…
Since then Ford, Honda, Hyundai, Mercedes, BMW, Chevy and many other car companies challenged the design and effectiveness of the Prius and have been beaten in most categories. According the Esty, “The Prius made the competition irrelevant… this is the car that separated a hybrid from a car.” As the years progressed, the Prius has allowed Toyota to become the largest car manufacturer in the world and allowed research into making each model of hybrid’s faster and more reliable. For example, the 2017 model, the Prius can get an estimated 52 miles per gallon, compared to the 1997 model which got 41 miles per gallon. Esty stated, “A central part of the story behind Toyota’s rise turns on environmental innovation and the company’s long term vision of the marketplace… that’s what Eco-Advantage is all about” (Etsy, Green to Gold). Given its long term credibility and following, the Prius is very efficient and is one, if not the first car invented with the goal of green driving. Even though the Prius is not my taste and I will probably never own one, I give Toyota credit for going out of their comfort zone to bring us a car that has a great environmental …show more content…
national average electricity rate of 11 cents per kWh and energy consumption was estimated from their own tests. We also compared the Leaf with the most fuel-efficient hybrid and gasoline-powered cars and the analysis found that the Leaf operating cost is much less than half of the gasoline-powered cars for trips up to 110 km (70 miles), which is close to the Leaf's maximum range…the Leaf still cost about 20% less to operate than the Prius and around 50% less than the Corolla” (Consumer Reports, Wiki). The Leaf has a payback time of around seven years and a study was done by the Automotive Science Group in 2014 found, “among advanced automotive technologies, the Nissan Leaf holds the smallest life-cycle environmental footprint of any model year 2014 automobile available in the North American market with minimum four-person occupancy. The study concluded that the increased environmental impacts of manufacturing the battery electric technology is more than offset with increased environmental performance during operational life” (ASG