This week, TreeHugger published their ‘Best of Green’ awards for the cars and transportation category. Whilst we won’t run through each of the winners, we’d like to share those that especially inspired us:
Best electric car on the market:Nissan LEAF. The LEAF won the award because it’s a mass-produced family-friendly electric car which sells at a relatively low price – low enough to force other EV makers to try and match it, helping make electric cars more accessible.
Best Concept Car: Jaguar C-X75 Plug-In Hybrid. With four electric motors giving it a top speed of 330kmph, an electric range of 110km and two micro gas-turbines to serve as range-extender, it is certainly a memorable and interesting concept, while not necessarily the greenest.
Best Bike-Sharing Program: Vélib in Paris. With 20,000 plus bicycles and around 1,500 stations, Paris’ bike-sharing system is a model for the rest of the world. Big changes need big thinking, and the scale and ambition of Vélib gives it significant weight.
Best International City for Cyclists: Copenhagen (Denmark) Copenhagen remains the best city in the world for cyclists, where everybody wins (even those who aren’t riding bikes, thanks to reduced traffic, better air quality, lower noise levels, healthier citizens, etc).
Best Transportation Project: Guangzhou’s BRT+Bike-Share. The mega-city of Guanghzou, China, winner of this year’s International Sustainable Transportation award, is showing us what urban transportation should look like, with a modern Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system that carries 800,000 passengers a day and a bike-sharing program that has 130 stations and over 5,000 bicycles