The Whole Prius Family Receives GreenCarReports’ 2012 Best Green Car to Buy Award
Posted by John Dolan | Posted in Hybrids, News | Posted on 28-11-2011
Tags: Environment, Facebook, Green Drive Expo, Hybrid, Prius, Smart Motors, twitter
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<img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-529" src="http://blog.smartmotors.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/2012-toyota-prius_100350438_l-300×225.jpg"
GreenCarReports editors choose the most significant new ‘green’ car available to shoppers during each model year based on practicality, new technologies and their impact on the environment. The website’s “Best Green Car to Buy” award recognizes mass-market, environmentally-friendly vehicles. Utilizing the CarConnection’s ratings as a starting point for their evaluations, their editorial team applies their own criteria to select the winner that will carry the “Best Green Car to Buy” environmental message. “The Prius is more than just one car this year,” said GreenCarReports editor John Voelcker. “With a new Prius v and the Prius Plug-in Hybrid, it is now a family of vehicles with some of the highest gas mileage on the market today, and the Prius name is likely to help encourage buyers to take the plunge into plug-in vehicles.” The Prius vehicles that won the award were chosen from a very competitive field of environmentally sensitive cars that also included the Honda Civic Hybrid, Infiniti M35h, Mitsubishi i and the Volkswagen Passat TDI. And based GreenCarReports first drive review of the 2012 Toyota Prius V wagon, Voelcker said that Prius v’s 42 mpg mileage figure is real–and can be replicated by real-world drivers. The Prius v is every inch a Prius, but with more space. “That means that families with a couple of kids in car seats now have 34 to 40 cubic feet of load space behind the rear seat, or 67 cubic feet with the seat down. The rear seat of the Prius V also slides back and forth several inches, expanding and contracting the load bay as needed”, added the GreenCarReports editor. (By comparison, the five-door hatchback Prius offers 22 cubic feet with the seat up.) Concerning the Prius Plug-in Hybrid Voelcker said, “we think it will be viewed as the safest, least risky way for car buyers to experiment with plug-in vehicles. The production plug-in Prius carries an asset that neither the Volt nor the Leaf has: the Prius name, which for a decade now has stood for very high gas mileage and Toyota solidity.” For more info on the GreenCarReports Best Car To Buy 2012 award, see their dedicated page, Best Car To Buy 2012, which includes a profile of every nominee and more on the award itself (as well as last year’s winner, the 2011 Nissan Leaf–the first battery electric vehicle sold in volume in many decades). Sources: pressroom.toyota.com, greencarreports.com 
“Judging from the regular stream of e-mails asking us when someone will make a hybrid minivan or wagon”, Voelcker said, “Toyota should see a lot of interest in the 2012 Prius V wagon. It’s taller, longer, and has far more load space–and a much more flexible rear seat–than the standard 2012 Prius hatchback.”
