The Green Car Initiative

We first started seeing it with Toyota and its Prius. It slowly started to trickle to other car manufacturers who wanted to show their ability to commit to a green agenda and the demand of an ever growing generation of environmentally friendly consumers.  Now, it has become somewhat of a race to the finish line – economically viable, environmentally friendly, and socially desired by the people.  It is the zero emission initiative by car manufacturers.

The initiative to sell green technology takes us to Los Angeles for the Annual L.A. Auto show where a press conference was held to commemorate Honda for one of their newest models released for 2012.  It is the Honda Civic Natural Gas and, as implied by its name, runs completely off of natural gas. According to Environmental News Services, this model is not only Honda’s greenest, but it is “powered by the cleanest running internal combustion engine offered by the U.S. EPA”.  And with natural gas becoming more economically viable and readily available to the public, Honda took the appropriate leap by introducing this to the American market. 

Not only will this car produce far less emissions, but it will also reduce our dependency on foreign countries for oil.  Although natural gas is not entirely favorable in the eyes of all environmentalists, it does reduce our impeding reliance on a resource that has caused much more harm to our environment through extraction and emission.  Over the past several decades, we have seen detrimental occasions where oil has spilled into the natural environment. We have fought wars for oil. People have died and continue to die every day overseas to supply our demanding country with petroleum. 

With gas powered vehicles being one of our main consumers of oil, automobile industries are moving in the right direction by shifting reliance from oil to alternative fuels.  Other finalists were the Ford Focus Electric, the Mitsubishi I, the Toyota Prius v, and the Volks Wagon Passat TDI. As noted at the press conference, the finalists this year present an initiative that is broad in content.  Electric vehicles, hybrids, and natural gas vehicles all will lead to the end goal of zero emissions and with low cost to the consumer.