Sustainable Performance Metric ranks efficient cars with great performance
Yesterday, at Sonoma Racway's 2nd annual Accelerating Sustainable Performance summit, the "Sustainable Performance Ranking Metric" was unveiled. The question asked is, what if a driver wants both a "Green" and "Performant" car to drive? The Toyota Prius is a popular and highly fuel efficient car, but its "performance" (0-60 time, etc) is pretty weak. On the other hand a typical SUV can haul a boat, but gets poor gas mileage.
This initial Sustainable Performance Ranking Metric was defined by Joey Shepp, a sustainability consultant in the SF Bay Area, along with a small flock of GreenMBA students at the Dominican University of California. The goal was to develop a simple automobile ranking system demonstrating which vehicles balance both sustainability and performance.
The "green appeal" of electric or hybrid cars is all well and good, but is that the entirety of the purchasing decision? What about whether a vehicle is fun to drive (or ride)? Electric vehicles can be a lot of fun to drive, but there is a large stereotype against them, that they can only be slow boring ugly golf carts. While the Tesla Roadster and Tesla Model S do a lot to blow up that stereotype, one can then dismiss them as being too expensive for the average person, and get back to the slow boring ugly golf carts idea. That still turns out to be untrue, because the Nissan Leaf and Chevy Volt both have decent (but not stellar) performance. How can we measure these attributes in a way that makes sense to the consumer? Further, if consumers start demanding cars based on a sustainable performance metric, the automakers should respond.