Yahoo Autos The Greenest Car In America Isn’t An EV
Good morning! It’s Wednesday, March 13, 2024, and this is The Morning Shift, your daily roundup of the top automotive headlines from around the world, in one place. Here are the important stories you need to know.
1st Gear: Plug-In Hybrid Tops America’s Green List
Electric vehicles are here to save us, aren’t they? After all, they kick out zero emissions at the tailpipe and can be powered by electricity that’s generated by wind or water, right? Wrong; it turns out an EV isn’t the greenest car you can buy in America right now, it’s a plug-in hybrid instead.
That’s according to a new report from the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, which was brought to our attention by the folks at Automotive News. In the report, four out of the top five green cars you can buy right now are electric, but number one is, in fact, the Toyota Prius plug-in. As per Automotive News:
Despite the attention on dozens of new electric models, the Toyota Prius Prime SE plug-in hybrid is the greenest model of 2024, according to the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy’s annual GreenerCars ratings of the most environmentally friendly cars.
Still, of the six best-scoring vehicles this year, four are battery-electric vehicles and two are plug-in hybrids. Rounding out the top six are the Lexus RZ 300e EV, Mini Cooper SE EV, Nissan Leaf EV, Toyota bZ4X EV and Toyota RAV4 Prime PHEV.
The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy evaluated each 2024 model based on its cost to human health from air pollution associated with vehicle manufacturing and disposal, the production and distribution of fuel or electricity, and vehicle tailpipe emissions. The group also accounted for air pollution associated with EV battery manufacturing.
Across the top ten greenest cars in America, four are either hybrid or plug-in hybrid models. The remaining six are all EVs, including the Kia EV6 and the Hyundai Kona Electric.
The high ranking of hybrid and plug-in hybrid models was thanks, in part, to their relatively low weight compared to their battery-powered counterparts. According to Automotive News, the higher weight of EV battery packs makes them more environmentally intense to produce and transport around.
Additionally, there’s a mounting pile of evidence that heavier vehicles can pollute the Earth in other ways by kicking up brake dust and rubber from tires that wear away on the road.
2nd Gear: Toyota Agrees Massive Pay Raises
After the United Auto Workers union won massive pay raises for its members at U.S. automakers like Ford, Stellantis and General Motors, Toyota has now stepped up to the plate and offered employees in Japan the biggest wage hikes in more than 20 years.
According to a new report from Reuters, the Japanese automaker has offered employees at its sites across Japan monthly pay rises of as much as 28,440 yen, which is a little over $190 at today’s exchange rate. As Reuters reports:
Toyota, Panasonic, Nippon Steel and Nissan were among some of Japan Inc’s biggest names that agreed to fully meet union demands for pay hikes at annual wage negotiations that wrap on Wednesday.
The talks, long a defining feature of the usually collaborative relationship between Japanese management and labor, are being closely watched this year as the pay increases are expected to help clear the way for the central bank to end its years-long policy of negative interest rates as early as next week.
Unions across Japan were pushing for raises of up to 5.85 percent for workers at companies such as Toyota. After negotiating with bosses for weeks, the two parties are predicted to agree on across the board raises of around “4.2 percent to 4.3 percentbased on the quite strong responses so far,” reports Reuters.
The wage hikes at these companies come as Japan’s prime minister, Fumio Kishida, undertakes a push to encourage companies across the country to offer workers more in order to kick start spending across Japan.
