Regarding the March 4 news article “The ‘greenest’ car in America may not be the one you expect”:
What fresh hell did the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy unleash by calling the Toyota Prius plug-in the “greenest” car in America? There is nothing green about a car that uses any gasoline.
Plug-in hybrids still release carbon dioxide that stays in the atmosphere for hundreds of years. Carbon emissions drive climate change, and the world is literally on fire because of it. Releasing less carbon dioxide does not make the Prius green.
And emissions aren’t the only terrible health impact gas has on our communities. A gas station in my town is still leaking chemicals such as benzene from an underground storage tank spill that happened 30 years ago. Benzene exposure is linked to leukemia, and children living near gas stations have a higher risk of developing that cancer. Do children matter in this “greenest car” contest?
We don’t have the luxury of using less gas. We need to go to no gas. We needed to do that decades ago.
Susannah Saunders, San Anselmo, Calif.
Sadly, policy from the Biden administration takes a much harsher view of hybrids than a recent Greener Cars report that named Toyota’s Prius Prime SE the most environmentally friendly vehicle on the road today.
Both the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed standards for passenger vehicles and California’s proposed ban on sales of new gas, diesel, flex fuel and traditional hybrid vehicles ignore the life-cycle impact of vehicles, focusing on tailpipe emissions only rather than emissions from materials, manufacturing, fueling and charging, recycling and decommissioning. There is no such thing as a zero-emission or zero-impact car.
The Post noted: “While a gigantic electric truck weighing thousands of pounds might be better than a gas truck of the same size, both will be outmatched by a smaller, efficient gas vehicle.”
That honest approach and assessment is missing from the Biden administration’s policies that seek to eliminate new gas cars. Under the EPA’s proposal, the entire vehicle fleet could be made of Cybertrucks and electric Hummers and it would score as having zero emissions impact. A fleet composed of Prius Primes, traditional Priuses and small gas cars would struggle to make the EPA’s cut.
Chet Thompson, Washington
The author is president and chief executive of the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers.
Having read the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy report and methodology online, I think this article should have questioned some of the underlying assumptions that informed the final rankings. Many electric vehicle owners charge their cars with electricity generated by solar power. Instead of acknowledging that, the group just used the average carbon footprint of electricity delivered by the grid to calculate the environmental impact of electric vehicles.
Warren Riess, Bristol, Maine