2009 Green Car Vision Award Finalists Announced

2009 Green Car Vision Award Finalists Announced

Five nominees have been identified for Green Car Journals 2009 Green Car Vision Award which recognizes vehicles that best envision the road ahead. 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 Public Policy Day, February 3, at The Washington Auto Show.

Vehicles offering dramatically improved environmental performance are crucial to helping us move beyond todays challenges of oil dependence and growing environmental impacts, says Ron Cogan, editor and publisher of the Green Car Journal and editor of GreenCar.com. While not yet widely available in new car showrooms, these vehicles each inspire the effort 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 excite the imagination with wild designs or features that may and may not ever make it to the highway, these five vehicles are real, here and now. They are either in limited production or in demonstration programs, or are in development and on the road to commercialization.

Dispelling the myth that innovation will only come from outside the traditional automobile 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, former head of Fords Global Advanced Design Studio, and before that president of BMW division DesignWorks USA.

Chevrolets 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 is set for sale later this year. The FCX Clarity, Hondas innovative hydrogen fuel-cell sedan, is in 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 Californias largest utilities providers, Pacific Gas & Electric and Southern California Edison.

The advanced technology vehicles now available at new car showrooms, like highly efficient gasoline-electric hybrids, are the result of visionary work that occurred years in advance of their introduction to the market, says Cogan. Its important to recognize the achievement – the vision – embodied in the cars on their way to market that are destined to shape the future of transportation in the short years ahead.

The 67th staging of The Washington Auto Show, The Automotive Seat of Power, will bring more than 700 new cars, trucks, mini-vans and sport utility vehicles from over 42 domestic and import automakers to the Walter E. Washington Convention Center from Feb. 4 – 8, 2009. Supporting its growing green theme, a wide array of advanced technology and clean fuel vehicles will be displayed in a Green Car Pavilion and throughout the show floor. For more information, visit The Washington Auto Show online at www.washingtonautoshow.com.