Volkswagen 'greener than Toyota'

Study finds Japanese automaker has slipped behind European rival in the sustainability stakes

A study by PA Consulting Group of five automakers' sustainability credentials has suggested that Volkswagen is greener than Toyota – despite the Japanese carmaker having sold more than one million hybrid vehicles.

The study looked at the products, sustainability strategy and transparency, and operational performance of five automotive OEMs: Toyota and Volkswagen, but also Daimler, Peugeot Citroën and BMW. Perhaps surprisingly, Volkswagen was judged to be the greenest company, with BMW coming second. Daimler came third, with Peugeot Citroën and Toyota joint fourth.

Tobias Reich, an automotive expert at PA Consulting Group, told PE that the study followed a similar piece of work on the sustainability of engineering companies, involving Siemens, GE, Alstom and ABB.

He said: “Nobody has really studied automotive companies in this way, looking at the entire value chain, and savings of energy, water and greenhouse gases. The product element is important – 70% of the companies' overall score comes from the product portfolio, but we also looked at sustainability strategy – how it is formulated and communicated, and how it is anchored within the organisation – and we also looked at some of the operational results, how much energy and water was saved last year compared to the year before, for example. So it's not only the cars – but the cars have a big role.”

Volkswagen and Peugeot Citroën claimed the benchmark position in the PA study with a strong green portfolio in terms of environmental technologies and systems, including brake energy regeneration and 3-cylinder engines, as well as efforts to minimise CO₂ emissions from their portfolios through hybrid and electric vehicles. Toyota scored highly for its green portfolio with a sales volume of more than one million hybrid cars.

Reich said: “I was a little bit surprised that Toyota didn't come out on top overall but we could see it still had some room for improvement, especially in the strategy area. They have many more green cars on the road obviously. But you need to take into account the impact of the earthquake and tsunami on their operational performance.”

Carmakers could improve their sustainability in part by more effectively communicating the good things they did, Reich said. Volkswagen had a clear top-down sustainability strategy that everyone within the firm worked toward, he said.

“It was difficult to pick a clear winner across all three categories. It turned out that some of them were good at strategy and others better at product portfolio – Toyota, for example. Others were good at operational performance, such as Peugeot Citroën.”