Audi clean diesel sedan wins 'Green Car' award

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WWI - Verdun's missing villages Inside SeaWorld Migrant crossing Delivering aid to Damascus Editor's choice Click here for more slideshows LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Audi's latest clean-diesel sedan, launched in the United States just last month, was named Green Car of the Year at the Los Angeles Auto show on Thursday, upsetting Toyota's popular Prius hybrid for the award.

The Audi A3 TDI, a premium hatchback that gets 42 miles (67.6 km) to the gallon on the highway, is the second clean-diesel vehicle in a row to claim the prize bestowed each year by Green Car Journal magazine Autel Maxisys.

Last year's winner was the Audi A3's corporate cousin, a Volkswagen Jetta. Volkswagen AG owns Audi.

Other finalists for this year's award included the Volkswagen Golf TDI clean-diesel, the Honda Insight hybrid, Ford's Mercury Milan hybrid and the Prius.

Toyota Motor Corp's market-leading hybrid was widely seen as the front-runner for the prize by virtue of its huge commercial success and its status as the most fuel-efficient mass-market sedan on the road Auto Diagnostic.

But Ron Cogan, editor of Green Car, said jurors were impressed that the Audi A3 with TDI, which stands for turbo diesel direct injection, achieved "50 percent better fuel efficiency than the gasoline-engine (A3 model) without sacrificing anything."

"It offered all the environmental features that you look for plus it's stylish and it's very fun to drive," Cogan said.

Audi spokesman Jeff Kuhlman said the German-based automaker sold just over 500 clean-diesel A3s in the United States in November, the car's first month in U.S. showrooms.

That pales in comparison to Prius, which tallied 128,000 units sold in the United States this year, accounting for 60 percent of all U.S. hybrids.

Still, Consumer Reports magazine senior automotive engineer Jake Fisher said he believes Audi's A3 TDI holds promise in a U.S. market that has traditionally spurned diesels.

"There is a demand for this type of vehicle, and I think it will do well," Fisher said, adding that the A3 TDI is basically Audi's version of the Jetta diesel, which has proven so popular that it sold out in the United States last fall.

Fisher said Prius may have suffered in this year's contest from jurors finding little change in the new third-generation Prius from the previous model. "It is old news, isn't it."

Cogan said he, too, sees the back-to-back Green Car wins for Jetta and Audi as "a pretty clear message that clean diesel has arrived, and it's not all about hybrids."

Audi America President Johan de Nysschen said the award will help boost the image of clean diesel, which many Americans still see as a contradiction in terms.

"People have this idea that diesel is for trucks, that it's dirty, that it's smelly," he said. "But here you have a high-performance automobile, extremely efficient, very luxurious to drive, no compromise."

The Green Car winners are chosen by a panel of Green Car Journal editors and invited jurors, including car-collector and comic Jay Leno, environmental activist and ocean explorer Jean-Michel Cousteau, legendary muscle car designer Carroll Shelby and Sierra Club head Carl Pope.