Hybrid car manufacturers becoming more environmentally friendly
Hybrid car manufacturers must do more than produce environmentally friendly cars. They must also be green themselves in all their business practices. The first hybrid to hit the market was the Prius and Toyota soon came under a lot of criticism about how bad for the environment the building and transporting of their hybrid car was. Many people believed it was better for the environment to keep an old car than buy a new Toyota hybrid. Toyota soon took this criticism on board and have progressively made building the world's first hybrid more and more environmentally friendly. Lets take a look at what Toyota did in this area.Its not only their petrol electric hybrid production that Toyota have been making more green. Toyota have worked hard over the past few years to make the construction of all their vehicles as green as possible. Since 2003 Toyota have reduced water usage for manufacturing all cars by 20%. Even more impressive they've reduced landfill waste from their manufacturing plants by 96% since 1999! Today, all Toyota cars are 90% recyclable and by 2015 they want this figure to be 95%. All hybrid car manufacturers are going to have to go down the same route as Toyota have done or risk losing sales. And its not just production processes that Toyota improved. Their Portland Vehicle Distribution Center in the U.S. is one of their most environmentally friendly locations. The building is 100% powered by wind energy and 99% of construction waste was diverted from landfill.
Car transportation has been considered too. Many Prius cars will be shipped on a boat that is part solar powered. The Auriga Leader is a ship with 328 solar panels generating 40 kilowatts of electricity in bright sunshine. This results in lower fuel use and therefore lower emissions. Toyota say, 'It is yet another example of how the new Prius benefits from clever use of renewable energy sources throughout its life cycle'.
All hybrid car manufacturers are trying to become more green and its a really great unforeseen benefit of hybrid cars. The car industry is shaping up and getting cleaner because they have to in order to sell their cars. Of course all car makers will tell you they've always been green but this is plainly untrue. They're only now interested because sales are on the line. The hybrid car manufacturer that is kindest to the planet will have a massive marketing advantage over the others and will sell more. No longer does it only come down to who produces the best hybrid car.