If Consumer Reports' auto editors cared about our environment, every car on their annual Top 10 list would be a hybrid or EV

COVER STORY OR COVER UP? Consumer Reports' annual Auto Issue lists only 4 gas-electric hybrids or electric cars among its Top 10 vehicles for 2022.

 

Gas hits average of $4.32 a gallon

as tailpipe emissions are killing

53,000 Americans every year

By VICTOR E. SASSON

EDITOR

HACKENSACK, N.J. -- Consumer Reports boasts about a full-time auto testing staff of "about 30" who "work to deliver exclusive insights to our members," but none of them claim to be environmentalists.

And for yet another year, the non-profit's Top 10 list in its annual Auto Issue ignores the premature deaths of 53,000 people every year from tailpipe emissions, as measured by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

That compares to 34,000 a year who die in traffic accidents (based on a 2013 MIT study).

Two Toyota gas-electric hybrids, a Lexus hybrid, a Honda Accord hybrid and Ford's Mustang Mach-E -- an electric vehicle -- are the only low or zero emissions entries on CR's Top 10 list for 2022.

It's a Top 10 list, but a total of 13 vehicles are listed for some reason in the April 2022 issue of the magazine.

Safety first

"Our ratings now reward automakers that install driver monitoring systems in their cars," Marta L. Tellado, president and CEO of Consumer Reports, says in her monthly column.

Tellado makes no mention of auto tailpipe emissions and their role in global warming or impact on life expectancy.

'Green Choice'

Just last year, Consumer Reports started designating some vehicles as "our Green Choice" -- the top 20 percent of vehicles on the market with the cleanest emissions.

Unfortunately, the "Green Choice" designation came more than 20 years after the first gas-electric hybrid or green cars went on sale in the United States.

And being "clean" or "cleaner" doesn't come close to earning a vehicle a spot on the annual Top 10 list.

NO TESLAS IN SIGHT: Even though Tesla has been the best selling electric car in the United States since 2012, none are listed on Consumer Reports' Top 10 list for 2022.

Top 10 Picks

The Top 10 list in the annual Auto Issue includes a midsize SUV, Kia's Telluride, that gets 21 mpg; and a compact pickup truck, the Honda Ridgeline, which is rated at 20 mpg -- less than half the mileage of most gas-electric hybrids. 

But instead of the Honda, the so-called auto experts at the magazine should have chosen the 2022 Ford F-150 hybrid pickup truck, which is rated at 25 mpg city/highway.

And is the Kia Telluride so special that it eclipses all of the midsize SUVs with hybrid power and lower emissions sold by competitors?

Gas hits $4.32 a gallon

This year, the Top 10 list includes a total of 13 vehicles: 

Both the Toyota Prius, a gas-electric hybrid, and the Prius Prime, a plug-in hybrid with an electric range of 25 miles, are listed.

Consumer Reports also lists the Honda Accord and Accord Hybrid as well as the Lexus RX and Lexus RX Hybrid.

The Top 10 list could have done without the gasoline versions of the Honda and Lexus. 

In fact, a Top 10 list of only gas-electric hybrids and EVs makes even more sense as the average price of a gallon of gasoline in the United States hit $4.32 this week.

Deadly air pollution

All in all, Consumer Reports' annual Auto Issue continues to disappoint, and ignore the elephant in the room:

Premature deaths from air pollution caused by vehicle tailpipe emissions.

READ: First EV on Top 10 list

 didn't appear until 2018

Editors of Consumer Reports can't shake addiction to gasoline cars, SUVs, pickups

KILLER CARS: Once again, the editors of Consumer Reports' widely anticipated Auto Issue seem to be ignoring climate change and the deadly impact of tailpipe emissions.

 

Only 3 environmentally friendly

cars make annual Top 10 list

 

Editor's note: I've revised and corrected the lead paragraph to indicate that the first gas-electric hybrid car sold in the United States, a Honda, arrived in 1999, and that Toyota introduced the Prius hybrid in 2000.

By VICTOR E. SASSON

EDITOR

HACKENSACK, N.J. -- More than 20 years after the first gas-electric hybrid car arrived from Japan, Consumer Reports is introducing readers to "our Green Choice designation."

In her column on Page 8 of the annual Auto Issue, a smiling Marta L. Tellado, CR's president and CEO, tells readers about "our Green Choice designations" -- dubbed "clean-air cars" -- denoted by a green leaf in the ratings pages.

"We will now incorporate data to identify how vehicles stack up when it comes to the amount of greenhouse gas and other pollutants they emit," which damage our health and the environment.

Leafing through the issue, all of the vehicles marked with that green leaf are either gas-electric hybrids like the Toyota Prius or fully electric, like the Tesla Model 3.

But only two hybrids, both from Toyota, and that lone Tesla Model 3 are among CR's Top 10 in the April 2021 Auto Issue.

The 2018 Auto Issue from Consumer Reports was the first to include an all-electric vehicle, even though a 2010 MIT study concluded 58,000 Americans die prematurely every year from tailpipe emissions.

And Tesla's Model 3 was the only fully electric vehicle on the 2020 Top 10 list.

Addicted to gasoline

Every single vehicle in the Top 10 should be either a gas-electric hybrid or electric, which have the least impact on our health and our climate.

Yet, for some unfathomable reason, the editors of Consumer Reports continue to recommend cars with gasoline engines, and large gas-guzzling SUVs and pickups, when there is a wide range of hybrids and electric cars available.

The magazine boasts the staff of its Auto Test Center "anonymously buy the vehicles, just like a consumer would, and we never base our ratings on models borrowed from the manufacturer."

Nor does Consumer Reports accept any advertising, so an auto issue that goes completely green won't affect the bottom line at the nonprofit Consumers Union, publisher of CR.

Caving in to Big Auto

Still, the magazine's auto testers cave in to automakers who have been slow to introduce hybrid and electric cars and trucks.

For example, the 2021 Toyota Sienna Minivan is being sold in the United States only as a gas-electric hybrid, and a gas-electric version of the 2021 Ford F-150 pickup -- the best-selling U.S. vehicle -- gets raves in an online CR report, but neither is on the Auto Issue's Top 10 list.  

The cover of the April Auto Issue shows three vehicles, including the new and unproven electric Rivian RIT pickup truck, and the fully electric Ford Mustang Mach-E, an SUV, the first Mustang with 4 doors.

The third vehicle is the Toyota RAV4 Prime, a plug-in hybrid.

But the RAV4 hybrid doesn't make the Top 10 list, either.