Wisdom In Action

Showing posts with label Civic GX. Show all posts

Saturday, February 19, 2011

Surprises Galore from Annual ACEEE Green Book Ratings

The American Council for Energy Efficient Economy (ACEEE) has been publishing its Green Book ratings for year, so I looked forward to reading their rankings of green cars. The organization uses SAE standards and takes a wide range of pointers into consideration beyond mileage ratings. Surprisingly, the natural gas-powered Honda Civic GX narrowly beat out the Nissan Leaf for No. 1. Even more surprising , the Chevy Volt hit No. 12 on the list, after sweeping a few awards recently like Green Car of the Year from Green Car Journal. A large factor in the rating is the car's weight, and the Volt is a heavy car, sort of a muscle car PEV. They also factored in a ratio of the car typically running 64% of time on electricity and 36% on gasoline, and the gas part of the trip doesn't get great fuel economy.

Thursday, September 23, 2010

CODA Ain't Cheap, CNG Civics Sort of Popular

The CODA Sedan will be selling for $44,900 or $37,400 after federal tax credits. Consumers can reserve a CODA with a fully-refundable $499 deposit at www.codaautomotive.com. The first deliveries will begin at the end of 2010. The pure electric sedan will be able to go 100 to 120 miles on one charge of its lithium ion batteries. It will cost a bit more than $10,000 over the price of the Nissan LEAF, a competitive all electric sedan. The start-up company CODA Automotive will not be working through dealerships - it's starting with an online ordering system. Perhaps it will work with a limited audience.

In other alt car news...

Honda confirmed that its natural gas Civic GX model would still be offered when the next-generation Civic debuts for the 2012 year. The company is considering doubling sales of the CNG Civic in the next two-to-three years. However, that doesn't mean very much. Last year, about 2,000 were sold, so this means 4,000 could be the goal. That's more then test runs for concept cars, but way off from mass market. It's the only one like it out there in the retail market. A lot of fleet managers are true believers in natural gas conversions of their trucks, vans, and buses. They have a lot of positive results to share on the subject.