Top 5 Visionary Green Cars Compete for Top 2009 Honor

Advanced ‘green’ cars like high efficiency gasoline-electric hybrids didn’t just appear at new car showrooms. They are the result of visionary work that occurred years in advance of their introduction to the market, at no small cost in research, development, and heavy financial investment. Clearly, this investment is a worthy one considering the huge difference such cars can make in emissions reductions and petroleum displacement over time.

It’s important to recognize the achievement – the vision – embodied in advanced cars on their way to market that are destined to shape the future of transportation in the short years ahead. This is what drives Green Car Journal’s Green Car Vision Award™ program, which acknowledges a vehicle that best envisions the road ahead.

Five visionary ‘green’ cars have been identified as nominees for Green Car Journal’s 2009 Green Car Vision Award™. One of these five finalists – the Chevrolet Volt, Fisker Karma, Honda FCX Clarity, MINI E, or Mitsubishi i-MiEV – will be honored as the 2009 Green Car Vision Award winner during a press conference on February 3 at the Washington Auto Show in Washington D.C.

Vehicles offering dramatically improved environmental performance are crucial to helping us move beyond today’s challenges of oil dependence and growing environmental impacts. While not yet widely available in new car showrooms, these vehicles each inspire in important ways with their advanced powertrains, use of cleaner or more sustainable fuels, vastly improved efficiencies, or a combination of these attributes.

Unlike concept cars, which tantalize us with wild designs or features that may or may not ever make it to the highway, these five vehicles are real. They are either in limited production or in demonstration programs now, or are in development and on the road to commercialization.

Dispelling the myth that innovation will only come from outside the traditional automotive industry, four of the 2009 Green Car Vision Award™ finalists are products from major auto manufacturers. The fifth is from a new car company, Fisker Automotive, headed by Henrik Fisker, formerly director of Ford’s Global Advanced Design Studio and before that president of BMW division DesignWorks USA.

Chevrolet’s Volt is a range-extended, plug-in electric car with a scheduled introduction in late 2010. The Fisker Karma, to be shown in production form next month, is a plug-in hybrid luxury sedan that’s set for sale in late 2009. The FCX Clarity, Honda’s innovative hydrogen fuel cell sedan, is in very limited production and being leased to a small number of consumers now. The recently unveiled battery electric MINI E will be leased to 500 select consumers in three states. Mitsubishi i-MiEV electric cars are on the highway in a demonstration program with Southern California Edison and PG&E. All five are exceptional examples of innovation at work.

Along with hosting Green Car Journal’s 2009 Green Car Vision Award™, the 2009 Washington Auto Show (www.washingtonautoshow.com) will expand its growing ‘green’ theme with an array of advanced technology and clean fuel vehicles displayed in a Green Car Pavilion and throughout the show floor. The show will be preceded on February 2 by Green Car Journal’s second annual Green Car Summit on Capitol Hill.