US Car Market, Nearly Twice as Polluting as Europe and Japan

According to a recent study performed by JATO Dynamics, the US car market is still significantly behind Europe and Japan in terms of reducing vehicle CO2 output. Specifically, the light car market has an average CO2 figure of 268.5 g/km in the US, as opposed to Japan (130.8 g/km) and Europe (140.3 g/km).

Still, when compared to full year 2009, Japan is down 0.4 g/km, the USA is down 1.0 g/km and Europe is down 4.3 g/km year-to-date.

“It is still clear that American consumers need to undergo a fundamental re-think of their vehicle buying preferences, but the past period of economic upheaval is likely to have meant that other domestic issues have taken consumer’s priority,” said David Mitchell, President of JATO Americas. “The blame can’t just lie with consumers though, the OEM product offering in the US still does little to promote alternatives to the large engine capacity gasoline vehicles which still dominate the market.”

European average CO2 emissions have reduced most significantly thanks to the increase in diesel use, a fuel which has 48.9% of the market share. Currently, the US market is dominated by gasoline which has 81.9% market share, with only 1.7% being diesel.

“An interesting point to note, is that American consumers have been significantly more inclined to adopt Hybrid technology than the Europeans,” Mitchell said in a release. “Hybrids have 2.3% market share in the US, while in Europe it is still only 0.5%. Not surprisingly, Japan leads the way with 10.1% of market share going to Hybrids”.