- Tesla cars consume the least fuel when converted to the miles per gallon metric.
- It is followed by Japanese or Korean brands like Subaru, Kia, Hyundai, Toyota, Honda, and Mazda.
- Then come the German automakers, while the gas-guzzling trend puts GM, Ford, or Stellantis, at a disadvantage.
Despite the consumer trend towards bigger and heavier vehicles with more horsepower in the past few years, most manufacturers managed to improve the fuel economy of their fleets, hence lowering the overall emissions footprint significantly. In its latest 2022 Annual Automotive Trends Report, it marked the absolute lowest level of real-world new car emissions of 347 grams per mile.
Consuming Lesser Fuel
Compared to the models that came out in 2004, new cars now consume 32% less fuel on average, leading to a real-world average of 26.4 mpg that the EPA estimates will be the final 2022 figure. Leading the pack in the US is the purely electric play Tesla with its whopping 123.9 mpg equivalent, followed by Subaru with 28.8 mpg and Kia with 28.7 mpg, then all the other brands out of Japan or Korea, neither of which has aggregate fleet consumption lower than 27 mpg.
The performance German brands like BMW or Mercedes are next, while VW and Mazda are the ones with the worst year-on-year performance change as they both increased the average fuel consumption of their fleets, and their CO2 emissions rather drastically.
Best Performers
The best performers are Toyota and Kia, which significantly lowered their sizable fleets’ emissions by increasing their fuel efficiency up to 20%. Needless to say, some of the positive change is due to the shift to hybrids and pure electric vehicles which more than offset the preference for larger SUVs rather than sedans that has been trending for a good while now. Still, the EPA notes that vehicles are now heavier, to the tune of 4,289 lbs on average, larger, and with the most aggregate amount of horsepower ever.
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Source: Notebookcheck
