http://www.plugincars.com/chevy-volt-barely-makes-2011-list-top-12-...

The American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy’s Green Book is the bible of environmental rankings for cars and trucks. And the 2011 issue, the 14th annual edition, just hit the streets. “This is the most exciting Green Book in a decade for me, because there are so many vehicles in the running,” said Therese Langer, ACEEE’s Transportation Director, in an interview with PluginCars.com. The non-profit uses an exacting methodology for calculating the environmental impact of all cars and trucks.

Despite new competition from electric vehicles, such as the all-electric Nissan LEAF and the Chevy Volt plug-in hybrid, the winner for the 8th consecutive year is the Honda Civic GX, which runs on compressed natural gas. “The Chevy Volt came very close to not making the list,” said Shruti Vaidyanathan, ACEEE Vehicle analyst. The first negative mark against the Volt in ACEEE’s methodology is the weight, which provides an indication of how much energy went into producing the vehicle. The Volt weighs about 500 pounds more than the Nissan LEAF or Toyota Prius.

The non-profit also took a hard look at the Volt's operation on the road. “The Volt running on gasoline doesn’t have terribly impressive fuel economy. It’s rated at 35 mpg in the city and 40 highway,” said Therese Langer, ACEEE’s Transportation Director. “If you think of it as a vehicle that is roughly two-thirds electric and one-third gasoline, as an electric vehicle it does pretty well, but not quite as well as the LEAF.”

The "two-thirds EV and one-third gas" approach stems from data about typical driving patterns of American drivers, as used by the Society of Automotive Engineers and the Environmental Protection Agency.

“As a gasoline vehicle, the Volt does okay, but there are a whole lot of gasoline vehicles that beat it out," said Langer. "So when you take the fact of those two things together, it comes out about where you think.”

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