This morning we supplied two vehicles to a national company, the first car replaced averaged 25 mpg, the replacement will average 35 mpg. The other car replaced one that averaged 35 mpg with a car that will now cover better than 46 mpg. Its easy at first sight to think that the second car will represent the greatest saving to the company, with an 11 rather than a 10 mpg improvement. In fact it represents 31% improvement whereas the car that will average 35 mpg represents an improvement of 40%. In other words, when beginning to replace your company cars with new cars, start off with replacing the least efficient cars first.
In business leasing terms, hybrid cars and even some electric cars are suitable for lower mileage company cars but some modern very efficient diesels, such as the Vauxhall Insignia make more sense if you are covering more miles. Until such time as there are 
many more fast charging points in the UK, this will remain to be the case.
Some of our Greener clients will insist on turning off their air-conditioning to save fuel. Although it seems really obvious that it takes energy to run it, at any speed above 26 mph, the air-conditioning uses an almost immeasurably small percentage of the overall energy requirement of moving that car.
Lastly, the web carries images of fantastically efficient cars covered in solar panels that take power from the sun. But, we are nowhere near powering a vehicle in this way. Cars 
with solar panel roofs use the panel to power ancillary things such as a blower fan and keep the starter battery charged or maybe ever a small aircon unit. In solar terms, the bigger you get the cheaper per KWH, so its cheaper to build solar arrays and charge multiple cars.Finally, keeping an old car is virtually never greener than owning a modern efficient one. Firstly, old cars were never built with a mind to recycling. Most modern cars are over 90% recyclable, are mostly made up of recycled materials and then use massively less fuel.
