Fuel Efficient Cars Benefit From High Gas Prices ~ Hybrid Car Review
Hybrid Car Review: Fuel Efficient Cars Benefit From High Gas Prices

Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Fuel Efficient Cars Benefit From High Gas Prices

A few months ago, I put together a list of the 82 most fuel efficient cars in 2008 according to the EPA ratings. It's a very simple list, just an inventory of all vehicles getting a combined 25 mpg or more.

A recent story at autonews talks about a few small cars and how sales are skyrocketing in the small car segment. They concentrated on the subcompacts: Fit, Yaris, Aveo, Rio, and Cooper, all of which showed double digit (percentage) growth.

But that left me wondering about all the other fuel efficient cars out there, including hybrids of course. So, I gathered together the list of fuel efficient vehicles and then found their sales numbers and saw something amazing. Even as the overall car sales dropped 2.3%, the 'fuel efficient segment' grew over 15%.


Make Model Jan-08
Jan-07




% Change
Audi TT 326
10




3160%
Chevrolet Aveo 5,314
3,789




40%
Chevrolet Cobalt 17,310
13,023




33%
Chevrolet Malibu 14,541
9,209




58%
Dodge Caliber 10,885
8,672




26%
Ford Escape/Mariner Hybrid 1,474
1,238




19%
Ford Focus 11,600
8,035




44%
Honda Civic 19,248
16,595




16%
Honda Civic Hybrid 1,745
1,783




-2%
Honda Fit 4,480
2,036




120%
Hyundai Accent 2,941
2,437




21%
Hyundai Elantra 5,615
6,361




-12%
Kia Rio 2,709
1,624




67%
Kia Spectra 4,858
4,273




14%
Mazda Mazda3 6,579
7,643




-14%
MINI Cooper 2,460
2,050




20%
Nissan Altima 21,162
24,394




-13%
Nissan Altima Hybrid 473
0




-
Nissan Sentra 7,170
7,878




-9%
Nissan Versa 5,609
4,497




25%
Pontiac G5/Pursuit 1,970
1,312




50%
Pontiac Vibe 2,338
2,130




10%
Scion xD 1,597
0




-
Suzuki SX4/Aerio 1,966
1,007




95%
Toyota Camry Hybrid 3,750
2,801




34%
Toyota Corolla/Matrix 20,736
25,519




-19%
Toyota Highlander Hybrid 2,143
1,810




18%
Toyota Prius 11,379
8,299




37%
Toyota Yaris 7,666
5,870




31%
Total 200,044
174,295




15%

Obviously, not all of the vehicles in my list were up. I've highlighted those that were down in red, including the Civic Hybrid, Elantra, Mazda 3, Altima, Sentra, and Corolla/Matrix.

But the rest were up, some by quite remarkable numbers. The Honda Fit, for instance, jumps out at you with 120% increase in sales. The Chevy Malibu saw a huge gain with a new release and a huge advertising push and the Ford Focus is also benefiting from the high cost of gas.

Want more? Check out the latest hybrid cars sales from January, 2008.

Let me know what you think about these numbers in the comments below.

Get Four Free Price Quotes From Yahoo! Autos Hybrid Research and Pricing at Edmunds.com

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Nice reporting. Thanks.

Unknown said...

I'm glad you liked it.

Anonymous said...

I assume you mean combined MPG of 25 or more, right?

Unknown said...

Yes, I did mean 25 mpg combined, not 35. Thank you. I fixed that in the post.

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