gas pump
Carrying on the tradition, our last post is a quick recap of our five most popular blog entries for the month of March on GreenCarReports:
# 1: Miles Per Gallon Is Just Stupid. No, Really, It Is. Serves us right for the inflammatory headline, we suppose, but while this was a breakout hit for March, we were staggered by the vitriol and physical threats in the comments, both on the post itself and on Digg. Bottom Line: Miles Per Gallon is not a linear measure (like gallons/mile would be), and lots of Americans don't understand that going from 10 to 20 mpg saves waaaaaaay more gas than going from 40 to 50 mpg. Read it, you'll see.
# 2: Islamic Scholar Suggests Using Ethanol-Powered Vehicles May Be A Sin. Last month's breakout hit held strong, falling only one position to # 2. Bottom Line: If you're an observant Muslim, know that Sheikh Mohamed al-Najimi suggests that driving--or even riding in--any vehicle that's running on ethanol (or even E10) could be considered a sin. We followed this one up with some different points of view in a later post.
# 3: Volkswagen Jetta TDI: Much More Mileage Than EPA Admits? Along with our colleague Colin Mathews, there are clearly hordes of Volkswagen diesel fans out there on the Interwebs. Bottom Line: The US Environmental Protection Agency's emissions and gas-mileage testing procedures seem to put VW's diesels at a disadvantage, with real-world economy often far higher than the EPA ratings.
# 4: The New 2010 Rabbit TDI Diesel...Or, Is It a Golf Again? Another carryover item (see discussion of VW diesel enthusiasts, above), our story was validated this month by news that the 2010 Volkswagen Golf won't be a Rabbit after all. Bottom Line: Despite the firm denial from Volkswagen representative Steve Keyes that we added to the piece at the time, we were right. So we've updated our update. Nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah!
# 5: India's Tiny Tata Nano Coming to Europe in 2011. The entire web saw a surge of traffic during the official launch of the audacious Tata Nano; Indians rushed to put down deposits this month for the 10-foot-long Tata. Bottom Line: Tata has big plans for the little Nano, and the model it expects to sell in Europe within a couple of years will be more powerful, more luxurious, and fractionally larger than the bare-bones home version.
Tata Nano Europa at Geneva Auto Show
