Mitsubishi Knocks Off Honda For Green Car Title

The greatest dynasty of all time? Good question. UCLA won 11 NCAA basketball championships from 1964 to 1975. The Boston Celtics won the 11 NBA titles from 1957 to 1969. In baseball, the Yankees won 10 World Series from 1947 to 1962. The best a hockey team has ever been able to do is the five Stanley Cups in a row that the Montreal Canadian won from 1955 to 1969. But for fuel efficient automobiles, a case could be made for the Honda Civic Natural Gas which, from 2004 until 2011 was named the “Greenest Vehicle of the Year” by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE).

But like all great dynasties, there comes a day when the winning streak ends and for the natural gas version of the Civic, that day just came. The ACEEE just released the 2012 award. Move over, Honda. Come on up, Mitsubishi!

image via ACEEE

The Japanese automaker’s super-efficient electric micro van, i-MIEV, is the new champ, and it was quite an impressive performance by the i-MIEV, a car making it’s debut in the United States in 2012.

ACEEE’s ranks cars on the basis of a “Green Score,” a singular measure that incorporates unhealthy tailpipe emissions, fuel consumptio and emissions of gases that contribute to climate change. This year, the group said a number of updates were made to the methodology to more accurately estimate vehicles’ environmental impacts. These include improved emissions estimates for the vehicle manufacturing process, changes reflecting current natural gas extraction practices, and consideration of upcoming shifts in the generation mix for the electricity used to power electric cars.

[source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Earthtechling/~3/71B2jUgcFqc/]