How can you tell whether a vehicle is eco-friendly? Since you can’t always trust the salesperson at the dealership or the manufacturer’s persuasive commercials, you have to go with the facts.
Along with the fuel economy, you have to analyze the greenhouse gas emissions, other air pollutants, where the car is made and what the car runs on. Assessing all of this information is the challenging part, and it requires intensive research and comparison shopping. However, in a couple years from now, establishing the eco-friendly cars from the bunch will be as easy as looking at a letter grade.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is proposing a letter grade system, which would be given to cars as an eco-friendly rating system. Basically, it would be like a test grade — each car would receive one of four letters (A, B, C or D). The vehicles would be rated on their mileage per gallon and gas emissions.
If you have ever been to a car dealership in the U.S., you’re already familiar with the window stickers or labels that are required for all new cars and light-duty trucks. This label provides basic information about the vehicle including city and highway miles per gallon (MPG). The proposed label would eventually include the letter grade, and it would be the first thing you notice. In addition, the label would include how much money a buyer could save in fuel expenses over the course of five years as well as the annual fuel cost.
Another interesting feature of the proposed labels would be a new web-based interactive tool. By accessing the website listed on the label, you can find out more about the vehicle’s performance. Since smartphones are widely uses, this web feature would make comparison shopping more convenient for technically savvy individuals.
If these labels are approved, they could be on cars by 2012, and they would make shopping for an eco-friendly mode of transportation easier for consumers, regardless of how much knowledge you have going into the purchase. Also, the EPA hopes this grading system will encourage car manufacturers to add more electric and hybrid vehicles to the market.
