Cars.com Ranks the Greenest Cities

How does a car consumer website rank the greenest cities in the country? In Cars.com’s case, we measure the interest each locality expresses in hybrid vehicles. We built the list by evaluating the number of searches for hybrid vehicles as a percentage of overall car searches in each market.

The rankings aren’t very surprising. Hewing to stereotypes, the West Coast and Pacific Northwest had the greatest interest in hybrid vehicles, while the Deep South hardly expressed any interest in driving hybrids.

Also, college towns tend to rank high on the list of cities with an interest in greener cars. The Universities of Virginia, Florida and Wisconsin seem to have raised the interest in hybrid vehicles in their respective homes of Charlottesville, Va.; Gainsville, Fla.; and Madison, Wis., putting those cities toward the top of the list.

Read after the jump to find out the 10 cities most interested in hybrids and the 10 cities that couldn’t care less.

Comments

Come on guys,,, it is different Texas where hard working people live than areas full of trustafarians with a lot of money.

And the people in these areas drive old cars until the wheels fall off, so they preserve the natural resources reusing their cars again and again.

Its hard to see how driving an ancient carbon belching chevy pickup truck is helping the environment...

really?? slow news day? solely based on hybrid interested huh? good measuring stick! how about diesels? nah, those are dirty right..and cause cancer apparently!

hybrids don't make as much sense in many parts of texas. many of the 'cities' (victoria? a city???) you listed have a large population that works in the oil field, farming, and ranching. farmers and ranchers can't exactly haul a load of hay or take a crop to market towing it with a prius. roughnecks (oil field workers) often drive hundreds of miles to the drilling rig location, and since they stay on location for a week at a time they have lots of gear with them. not necessarily the best situation for a hybrid.

glad all those guys in cali own hybrids. makes sense given that most of the places you listed are actual cities and extremely congested (i was stationed at monterrey for 2 years). hybrids do best in those types of driving situations.

at any rate, i hope this doesn't make people think poorly of texas or view it as not developing environmentally friendly tech. we are the leading state in the U.S. for the amount of wind power used to generate electricity (above cali).

Come on, a Prius will pollute more before is on the road than a pick up in all its life time. Just to make the batteries.

How about a hybrid truck for those texans or a bio-diesel truck or even ultra low sulfur diesel. There are only Solutions , furthermore how about a plug in hybrid truck or an all elctric truck. How about work On Site Lockers and storage that way workers could travel lighter and even carpool. Creativity and Ecconomics go hand in hand, Plus Sustainability equals Livability. With No Planet there is no Business! What good is all the money if your kids have asthma from polluted air and your city is putting up swim at your own risk at local natural rivers and Our Oceans, do the right thing for everyone. Thanks , interesting article

harrison wells,

i think i might have been a bit unclear on a few things.

i worked in the oil field for six months before joining the military. roughnecks (oil field workers) typically stay on site during their 5/6 days on site. we had trailers to sleep in during our 12-hours off, and we did carpool..uhum truckpool. we could not have fit five guys and all their gear for a week on site in a prius or insight.

texas is very big, generally we measure distance in hours not miles. hybrid trucks don't make much of a difference when your driving 300 miles each way on the interstate. the batteries get depleated quickly, then you're just driving a truck that has the excess weight of batteries...

hybrid trucks are also still ridiculously expensive, which puts them outside most of our range cost-wise. at any rate, in 1996 i had a chevy 1/2 ton with a v6 that returned 21mpg on the highway when i would go to work, which compares pretty well w/today's hybrid highway fuel economy (and it was only $17k).

the size of texas also negates the all-electric truck option, if one were even on the market. i'm not sure what the towing capacity of an electric truck would be, or how towing a horse trailor would affect the range of the batteries, but let's not get too excited just yet.

as for low sulfur diesel, we have that just like the rest of the u.s. unfortunately, there are no light-duty diesel pickups out there currently, although some should hit the market soon.

It sounds as if one or two folks are still reading and believing CNW's "Dust to Dust" report, and other bits of fluff proclaiming the Prius "dirty" because of the battery manufacturing. It's been thoroughly disproved, and the lies about the Prius are, at times, downright entertaining.

Here in the Pacific Northwest, people tend to keep their cars much longer than most. However, folks here also tend to do city driving, so full hybrids like the Prius and the new Ford Fusion do make more sense here.

Chevy does make a full hybrid pickup truck and full sized SUV (Tahoe) using the 2 mode hybrid system.

Anything with wheels and a motor can be built as a hybrid, and there are examples in almost every vehicle class. Small cars, small SUVs, mid sized cars, mid sized SUVs, pickups, large SUVs, buses, trash trucks, dump trucks, etc. Just about anything up through and including Class 8 trucks.

There currently aren't many fully electric vehicles on the market, and no commercially sold all electric pickups. However, if one researches the electric vehicles on the market, and various efforts by DIY electric car buffs, as well as the continuing efforts to build fully electric vehicles, one will discover that electric vehicles generate torque right away so hauling stuff isn't an issue. Lack of a recharging network is the issue.

Plugin hybrid vehicles, or PHEVs, are the short term solution until a recharging network can be built. As with conventional hybrids, PHEVs technology can be employed in every class of vehicle.

ken,

i mentioned hybrid trucks. they're crazy expensive (over $40k) and the mileage they return isn't all that great (21mpg city / 22 mpg highway). i could do as well on the highway with my old v6 silverado..and most of the driving i did/do was/is highway.

as for the fictitious electric truck...we'll see what its capabilities are when it comes to market, but as my point was that i imagine towing would greatly decrease the range of the batteries.

i haven't read anything that disproves the negative environmental impact of either building the batteries for hybrids or replacing them when they are worn out. do you have any links to good articles?

just as you do in the pacific northwest, here in texas we drive the trucks until the wheels fall off too, hence all of the old f150s, silverados, and rams still on the roads.

This is not the question of being "holier than thou, or greener than thou". From an environmental point of view, hybrids probably are not the best alternative, considering how expensive and polluting is to produce the batteries.

Actually I am very surprised than hybrids are not making it big in Europe compared to the US, considering that in Europe people are more practical in environmental issues, not "Hollywood Prius" people we find here.. maybe is because in Europe they have the turbo diesel engines that California rejects and they can get more than 45MPG.

Actually probably the only people who would make a good use of hybrids would be the Post Office workers, cab drivers and people who live in congested areas. And the Texas border or North Platte are not congested areas.

I have worked in Nebraska and Texas and in the rural areas, not in the metros, you can find most of the cars are old clunkers from the 80's and 90's with more than 200k miles in their odometers. There is a big markets of broken down cars from the Sun Belt which go North for parts. Renew, Recycle, Reuse.

Most of the folks in the second list of cities live in places where there are no traffic jams, not many traffic lights, and they don't have the higher salaries of the Pacific Coast. For them a car is basic transportation/farm/business not a luxury, not a vehicle to show off or build an image of themselves.

the prius pollutes more on the road than all trucks with a new diesel in it so take your hybirds and junk them.

I like the 10 Ford Fusion hybrid ... nice and at least it doesn't scream "holier than thou" in your face...like the Prius does. I don't need the image.