Posted by George Monbiot and Merrick Godhaven, updated 10th May 2007 on turnuptheheat.org

In just about every serious magazine published in the United Kingdom this autumn is an advertisement showing a tree whose roots turn into a human hand. It’s an odd kind of tree: as far as I can tell, the trunk belongs to a tropical kapok and the fruit and foliage to a tropical acacia, while the backdrop suggests it is growing at about 60 degrees of latitude. But I know I’m being boring, and that natural history has never been a strong point in the creative industries (witness, for example, the Guardian’s mortifying wallcharts: one third of its “butterflies” were actually moths). I’m more concerned about the advert’s other misleading features.

It is headlined “aim: zero emissions”, and maintains that “we believe in preserving the delicate balance between man and nature”. Well the company that placed it – Toyota – might well believe in it, in the sense that you can believe in fairies or John Bolton’s hairpiece; and it might well imagine that zero emissions is its “ultimate aim”. But it is doing precious little to turn either proposition into a reality.

Toyota’s claims are built around the hybrid-electric drive it uses in its green market leader, the Prius. Powered primarily by liquid fuel, a hybrid car turns some of the energy it would otherwise lose when braking into electricity, which is then used to drive an electric motor. Partly by this means, the Prius has become the second most efficient car on the mass market (after the Honda Insight), with an official rating of 104 grams of carbon dioxide per kilometre, or 51 miles per gallon on the highway[1]. This compares with an official average emission of new cars in the United Kingdom of 170 grams per kilometre[2]. The official figures are misleading: a survey by Which? Magazine in early 2006 found that the Prius managed only 68-76% of its official mileage under real driving conditions, rather than on the testers’ mechanical rolling road[3].

Is this the best Toyota can do?

This is pretty typical: other surveys, published in Auto Express magazine and Detroit News, suggest that most cars manage only 75 or 80% of the official efficiency figures[4,5]. It turns out that the motor manufactucters tune their engines to the requirements of the official test cycle, in order to improve their results. But even if we put this to one side, 51 mpg is hardly cause for celebration. In 1983, the standard Peugeot 205 managed 72 mpg on highways[6]. Since then there has been a significant improvement in the energy efficiency of car engines. Unfortunately it has been used not to reduce the consumption of fuel but to boost performance. There is a direct relationship between performance and energy consumption. I don’t own a car, but if I did I would like to buy a low-performance, high-efficiency model. I don’t believe I am alone in my frustration that no such thing exists.

But even if we have to accept the constraints imposed by the demand for cars which can manage 0-60 in minus 10 seconds and a top speed twice as high as the maximum legal limit, I know Toyota can do better than this. How? Because it did, then quickly shelved the results.

In 2001 Toyota unveiled its “Earth-friendly ES3 Concept Car” at the International Frankfurt Motor Show. The ES3, it maintained, could travel for 100 kilometres on 2.7 litres of fuel[7], which means 104 miles to the gallon, or twice the efficiency of the Toyota Prius. The press loved it, and carried scores of articles about how the company had managed to reconcile fuel economy with a snazzy design. It did much to position Toyota as the great green hope of the car industry.

And then? The ES3 was never seen again. It appears to have been nothing more than a stunt.

Their publicity has won them plaudits from many who should know better; Chris Huhne, the Liberal Democrats’ Shadow Environment Minister, fetes Toyota as being a ‘climate change dynamo not a dinosaur’ simply because of its investment in hybrids[8].

But over 97% of Toyota’s sales are not Priuses. Toyota export more than three times as many of their gas guzzling SUVs, such as the RAV4.[9] They’re currently advertising a new model in responsible carbon-conscious style: ‘The New XT-R - A RAV4, But Meaner’[10].

At the end of February they announced plans to open a new factory in the USA producing 150,000 of their Highlander SUV a year, starting in 2010.[11]

The Highlander is now available as a hybrid, yet compared to a normal car its fuel economy is appalling, achieving only around 30mpg.[12]

Next year’s Highlander model has just been unveiled, and Toyota has made use of its ability to improve fuel economy. By making the same vehicle consume less? ‘The 2008 Highlander is significantly larger, roomier and more powerful than the vehicle it replaces. Yet its fuel efficiency will be virtually unchanged,’ cooed the press release.[13]

A company that was a ‘climate change dynamo’ wouldn’t be creating over a million SUVs a year and building factories to make even more, let alone using improvements in efficiency to make even bigger SUVs instead of reducing consumption.

Toyota, as we’ve seen, claims that its “ultimate aim” is “zero emissions”. But to aim at a target you have to be facing in the right direction. Toyota has turned its back on a genuininely efficient design and built its green image around the Prius, a car that’s 40% greyer than an ordinary, mass produced model manufactured 23 years ago. Its stated aim is thus about as realistic as that other Toyota hybrid – the tropical-boreal kapok-acacia growing from a human hand that’s pictured in its advertisements.

Action to Take

Write to:

Chris O’Keefe Head of Government and Corporate Affairs Toyota Europe Avenue du Bourget 60 1140 Brussels, Belgium

Or: chris.o.keefe@toyota-europe.com Or: pr@toyota-europe.com

Ask him, politely, when Toyota intends to produce cars which are more efficient than models available in 1983.

Link up with:

Transport 2000 - http://www.transport2000.org.uk/

Road Block - http://www.roadblock.org.uk/

Rising Tide - http://www.risingtide.org.uk/

DEAR TOYOTA

Please feel free to respond if you wish, by emailing me at George@TurnUpTheHeat.org. If you do, I’ll post your letter here.

References:

1. US Environmental Protection Agency, 2006. Green Vehicle Guide. http://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/all-rank-06.htm

2. HM Treasury, 2006. Budget 2006, Chapter 7, Chart 7.3, p17. http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/media/20F/1D/bud06_ch7_161.pdf

3. No author, May 2006. Green Machines. Which? magazine.

4. David Johns, quoted by GuardianUnlimited, 26th October 2005. Car efficiency figures ‘misleading’. http://money.guardian.co.uk/cars/story/0,11944,1600941,00.html

5. Ann Job, 19th May 2004. Blame the feds for fuel economy figures that don’t match real world. The Detroit News.

6. Peugeot, 20th October 1983. A New Number to Be Reckoned With. Advertisement in the Daily Telegraph, p9.

7. Toyota, 12th September 2001. Toyota Displays Earth-friendly ES3 Concept Car at International Frankfurt Motor Show 2001 http://www.toyota.co.jp/en/news/01/0912.html

8. Speech to Campaign Against Climate Change public meeting, School of African and Oriental Studies, London, 5th March 2007.

9. 2005 figures, ‘Toyota In The World Databook’ 2005, p3-4. http://www.toyota.co.jp/en/about_toyota/pdf2005/index.html

10. The Independent, 8 March 2007 (an issue that had climate change take up the first two pages!), page 30.

11. ‘Toyota To Build Highlanders in Mississippi’, Toyota website, 27 Feb 2007

http://www.toyota.com/about/news/manufacturing/2007/02/27-1-tema.html

12. 31 mpg city/27 mpg highway. http://www.forbesautos.com/spec/2007/toyota/highlander_hybrid/

Spec confirmed as maintained by the new model in press release (see 13)

13. ‘Toyota Launches 2008 Highlander And Highlander Hybrid At The 2007 Chicago Auto Show’, Toyota press release, 7 Feb 2007. http://www.toyota.com/vehicles/minisite/highlander/pr.pdf