Gadgetory

some cars do indeed get much greener in their hybrid version others are a different shape I'm Brian Cooley with top 5 brownest hybrids for 2011 rolling piles of green wash that get barely better mpg than their conventional version and charge you plenty for that lack of improvement we've ranked these guys by the skint difference in their average mpg over the non hybrid version and when there was a tie we broke it by looking at tailpipe emissions and price penalty so the hybrids that made this list are sorted dirty piggy and expensive not what you had in mind is it let's do it number 5 is almost a caricature it's the Cadillac Escalade hybrid one of the first cars that signaled this whole hybrid thing is gonna get a little out of hand it gets just 5 mpg better than a conventional laid but that's at least good enough for 21 mpg average versus a hoggish 16 on the straight gas engine model but you'll pay eight thousand dollars more for that lift number four is the BMW x6 ActiveHybrid that kind of coupe utility vehicle average mpg of 18 just four mpg better than a gas v8 and it sports a huge price bump almost 20 grand more than the gas engine ride while delivering the worst emission numbers of any car in this list talk about some inconvenient truths number three brings us another BMW the active 7 hybrid just three mpg average better than a regular 750 I though to be fair with this guy lacks in mpg improvement it makes up in speed it's really quick like four and a half seconds zero to 60 but I'm sorry the regular gas engine 750 s no slouch either and for the extra 13 grand you can easily soothe your ego with a really nice bottle of some bold moves EEE Reeth time you lose a drag race number two on our list of the brownest green cars is the VW Touareg hybrid get this just two mpg better than a straight-up Touareg without an electric motor and it costs 16 grand more presciently VW calls this the rare beast in its lineup and with numbers like these my hunch is it'll stay that way before I take you to the number1 brownest hybrid for 2011 let's restore your faith in the most hyped cars on earth here's a list of some hybrids that do deliver stellar double-digit mpg gains over their conventional counterparts those guys will change your fundamental fuel outlet okay the number one hybrid car that makes you mouth the word idiot when its owner turns away is the Lexus LS 600h l also just two mpg better than a non hybrid LS 460 l with a middling 20 mpg average and for that you pay sit down $37,000 more I know the equipment levels will vary between these models but still you could buy an entire Lincoln MKZ hybrid for the premium it takes to get a Lexus LS Hybrid and still have a couple grand left to go buy some carbon credits or someone okay if this whole piece is just backfired horribly and now you want to buy one of these dubious rides head over to cars dot cnet.com where we have most of them review and for more top fives like this go to top-5 cnet.com i'm brian coulis thanks for watching you