Acura NSX, BMW X5, Mercedes C350e win Green Car Awards

While the Green Car Journal's big annual awards event happens at the Los Angeles Auto Show - where it crowns its Green Car Of The Year - the Washington Auto Show has its own collection of Green Car Awards. This year, Green Car Journal crowned three winners:

• 2017 Green SUV of the Year: BMW X5 xDrive40e iPerformance
• 2017 Connected Green Car of the Year: Mercedes-Benz C350e
• 2017 Luxury Green Car of the Year: Acura NSX

Green Car Journal editor Ron Cogan praised all of the winners (and the finalists) as offering lower emissions and higher fuel economy without requiring any sacrifice from the driver. With the non-plug hybrids like the NSX, this is obvious, since you get some electric benefit without needing to change your gas habits at all. Both the BMW X5 xDrive40e iPerformance and the Mercedes-Benz C350e have plugs, and so can drive for a few miles (11 in the Mercedes, 14 in the BMW) on electric power alone. Cogan said that the C350e won because of its suite of, "on-board cameras and sensors [that provide] autonomous and semi-autonomous features like adaptive cruise control, steering assist, and full automatic emergency braking to help avoid pedestrian and vehicle collisions." And he liked that the NSX goes from 0-100 km/h in just 2.9 seconds, "while still delivering over 30 percent better city fuel efficiency than the model's previous generation."

For the record, here are the other finalists in the three categories. In the Connected category, Green Car Journal picked the Audi A3 e-tron, Honda Civic, Tesla Model X, and Toyota Prius Prime as finalists. The other Luxury finalists were the BMW 740e xDrive iPerformance, Jaguar XE 20d, Mercedes-Benz S550e, and Range Rover Td6. Finally, in the SUV category, we also had the Honda CR-V, Mazda CX-9, Mercedes-Benz GLE550e, and Nissan Rogue Hybrid.

In 2016, the winners were the Chevy Malibu Hybrid (Connected), Volvo XC90 T8 (Luxury), and the Honda HR-V (SUV).