By Gina Inman

You’ve heard of green cars, you know a bit about them, but what would it take for you buy one or pay to turn your own car into a green car? Call it global warming or the greenhouse effect: transport emissions account for 30% of destructive climate change. You don’t need to fully understand green issues or what is contained in the Kyoto Protocol to know what is best for your children’s health and for the environment today and tomorrow. If no CO2 emissions was your priority you would not be buying a car, you’d probably buy a bicycle. So, car manufacturers are balancing what is important with what is realistic. And back in the real world we still need a car.

There are a number of different types of Green Cars (defined as low carbon emitting cars): cars powered by LPG, by Natural Gas, by Bio Gas or a fuel cell; battery or electric cars; or the easiest ones to get hold of, Hybrids, which use both an electric motor and a petrol engine.

Cleaner cars currently represent less than 1% of all car sales. The Government has set a target that green cars should represent 10% of all car sales by 2010 and are offering incentives to get you to buy one. You can save up to £100 a year on your tax disc: cars are now banded A to F by the DVLA based on CO2 emissions and fuel tax is set to favour the use of cleaner fuels such as LPG, natural gas and biofuels. But best of all, there is a 100% exemption on the congestion charge. Yes, it’s true, you pay a £10 registration fee to have your car on the so called Power Shift Register which includes all vehicles powered by an alternative fuel such as Liquid Propane Gas (LPG), all electric cars and most hybrid cars and you avoid the congestion charge. So if your child is at school in the zone, and you live just outside, that is a saving of £1,600 a year. Although here’s an anomaly: not all Band A cars, i.e. really low CO2 emissions, get congestion charge exemption. I don’t know why, I didn’t make up the Register of exempt cars.

The Hybrids

There are currently three hybrid cars available for sale in the UK. All run on petrol and electricity. The Honda Civic IMAS, the Toyota Prius (pronounced Preeus) and the Lexus RX 400h. I drove all three.

Honda Civic IMAS

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The Honda looks very nice and sporty from the front. It’s a four-door saloon, but the boot is roomy enough for a week’s worth of shopping or a buggy plus a load. Available in metallic colours with leather interiors, comfy in the back. Electric windows are standard, with a locking feature in the driver’s door. ISOfix as standard for easy fitting of car seats (this is a bar that is integral to the backseat in the car, but can be raised to enable you to click in a child’s car seat.) It’s only available as a manual.

The engine is so quiet I thought I had stalled several times. It doesn’t pretend to be a racy car but drives as a 1.4 should. The IMAS works by using petrol until you idle when it switches to electric or battery power and turns the engine off. As soon as you start off again it goes back to using petrol. When decelerating or braking the engine cleverly converts the energy to recharge the battery. A gauge on the dash shows you when you’re charging and when the engine has stopped. It’s DVLA Band B, so you will save £90 on your Tax Disc and best of all it is 100% exempt from the congestion charge.

Toyota Prius

The Toyota Prius looks fantastic in the brochure. There are three versions with a variety of accessories. The top of the range T Spirit Hybrid comes with everything you’d expect from the Car of the Year 2005 winner. It costs £20,000 on the road with all the extras including: Satellite Navigation, 6 CD autochanger, ABS, electric windows. There is a push button brake and a really easy to operate, space-saving gear stick. The top of the range T spirit has a voice recognition system as standard to control the sat nav, air con and radio. It drives well and Toyota claim 0-62 (100kph) in 10.9 seconds. There is a 7 inch screen above the dash to show you fuel consumption, warning messages, air con details and importantly whether you are using the engine or the electric motor to turn the wheels.

A flashing arrow shows how the car is driving and that it is recharging the battery when you decelerate or brake. So when you are idling in traffic or crawling at a snail’s pace your Prius will be completely quiet as the engine runs off the electric motor. This is tax disc Band is A, only £65 per year (£100 off), due to the low CO2 emissions (104 g/km) and 100% exempt from congestion charge. I fitted two boosters and a child seat in the back. Without the children you can fold the seats down to get an enormous 408 litres of boot space.

Lexus RX 400h

The third hybrid available on the market is the Lexus RX 400h which was just fantastic and so it should be for a £45,000 SE-L top of the range. The basic model without extras is £35,000 on the road. Toyota and Lexus are brother and sister as such, the technology for driving the Lexus is similar to the Toyota and is displayed on the dash screen using similar graphics. You can crawl under 30mph off your electric motor saving you fuel but put your foot down on the open road and the 3.3 litre V6 engine roars to life. It was a complete pleasure to drive. Very smooth and easy to handle on urban and fast roads. 0-62mph in 7.6 seconds. Again 2 boosters and a baby seat in the raised rear seats with the sophisticated electric motor underneath. Infra-red headphones in the back for the in-car DVD which comes as standard in the top of the range.

Congestion charge exemption is a grey area I’m told by Lexus. They are waiting to hear if the car will be included in the Register of exempt cars. The only drawback I can think of is the 6+month waiting list to get one of these beauties.

LPG's

The range of cars that run on LPG or Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) is getting bigger all the time: Vauxhall Corsa, New Astra, Vectra and Zafira; Volvo V40, V70, S70, S80 and a fabulous sporty 3CC Concept Car (for a life without children).

If you’re not in line for a new car, you can have your car adapted to run on LPG for a fee (£1,800 + VAT for a Mercedes Estate). The conversion adds a second independent fuel system to your car so that it can run on either petrol or LPG. This can take up a considerable part of your boot space, where the large LPG cylinder will sit, or you can have a doughnut tank fitted underneath your car near the petrol tank, or the second tank can be installed in the spare wheel well. If you are unlucky enough to get a puncture, all conversions using the spare tyre well give you a fully approved tyre foam. This reflates the tyre and seals the puncture until you can get it properly repaired. If you run out of LPG you can still use your petrol engine.

The adaptation must be done by a registered garage. The cost of changing your car should be recouped in the savings on a year’s fuel. The cost to recharge an LPG canister is approximately £25 compared to £50 or £60 to fill up on petrol. Once your car is adapted where can you refuel? Currently there are over 1,400 garages where you can fill up with LPG in the UK including a number in central London.

At the moment EuroTunnel does not allow gas-powered vehicles through the Channel Tunnel. All other UK tunnels do allow gas cars. The EuroTunnel ban is being reviewed and this will hopefully lead to a reversal of the current ruling. Also some privately owned under-ground car parks have restrictions on gas cars. Another drawback is that at the moment the resale value of cars converted to run on LPG is low.

Other alternatives

Diesel cars are being developed to be as environmentally friendly as possible. Kia prides itself on its green company ethos. All their cars are made using recycled and recyclable materials. The cars are made to be as economic as possible and so that CO2 emissions are low. Lots of Kia cars fall into the A Band Car tax, which means £100 off car tax each year. These are small cars and they do not qualify for congestion charge exemption.

Mercedes have developed fuel-cell cars but they are not available in the UK as the manufacturing bases are abroad and it would be too costly to fly in Herr Fuel Cell expert from Stuttgart whenever there was a problem. So, Mercedes have, they reckon, the lowest carbon emission diesels available here. Also they are developing a hybrid electric and diesel S class which will be available here within 5 years.

All of Honda's manufacturing plants are committed to reducing landfill waste to zero and follow their ‘3R’ concept – ‘reduce, reuse, recycle”, Honda claims that it’s i-series petrol and diesel engines are among the cleanest and most efficient conventional engines ever made, in most cases meeting worldwide exhaust emission and fuel consumption targets well ahead of required deadlines.

New on the market this month, the battery-powered G Whiz. Not a family option (two seats in the back for very small children). This plugs into a standard 13amp socket and will travel up to 40 miles from one charge. You must charge it once a week and it has a top speed of 40mph.

Given all of the above it would appear that going green is not as difficult as you might think. Setting us all a good example are the Queen (she has four), the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister (presumably either one of or in addition to his two Jags) and the American President, all of whom use LPG fuelled cars. So there’s no excuse. You can have any car you like, as long as it’s Green.