This past week, a video project was working on, the relative “greenness” of the Toyota Prius gas/electric hybrid versus the BMW Mini Cooper.
Renault-Nissan and Mitsubishi both made major EV announcements last week, so it’s going to be more difficult for high-mileage gasoline engine-makers like Mini, hybrid-makers like Toyota and clean-diesel car-makers like Mercedes to make strong “green” claims once EVs start hitting showrooms in a big way. Which looks it may be a lot sooner than any of us thought.
Here are some hard numbers, from the base Mini Cooper and Toyota Prius for 2009:
Mini Cooper uses a slightly larger engine than Prius, an all-gasoline four-cylinder unit 1.6 liters in size which makes 118 horsepower and 114 ft. lbs. of torque. The base car use a conventional six-speed standard (stick shift) transmission.
Mini averages a combined 29mpg, in-town and on-highway, Prius a hearty-for-today 46. Prius can get 493 miles on one tank of gas; Mini 345. Prius weighs 2,932 pounds, Mini 2,546 (so there’s more “stuff” making-up a Prius, all of which has to be dealt with when the car is “recycled”).
Bottom line:
Common sense would tell us that the Prius is probably the greener of the two. It gets 14mpg more on average than Mini, is larger inside and out, can haul more people and stuff, but it also weighs almost 400 pounds more than the Cooper; never a positive in the green world.
Prius is slow, lumpy and looks like a high school auto shop project from the future (and just for the record, Honda’s new Insight hybrid seems based entirely on Prius as far as styling, so Honda has nothing to crow about in that department, either).
Mini, on the other hand, makes a lot more horsepower, has a much better suspension set-up, is infinitely more fun to look at and drive than Prius (or most any other car in any price range) and it’s made by BMW, never a negative.
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