Chevy Tahoe Hybrid wins Green Car of the Year award

Chevy Tahoe Hybrid wins Green Car of the Year award.

(Credit: CNET Networks/Sarah Tew)

At the 2007 Los Angeles Auto Show, Green Car Journal's Green Car of the Year award was given to the 2008 Chevrolet Tahoe Hybrid. The Tahoe Hybrid is the largest car to win the award, with past winners including the Toyota Prius and the Mercury Mariner Hybrid. The newly introduced Tahoe Hybrid uses a dual-mode hybrid system developed by GM, Daimler-Chrysler, and BMW. GM is the first company to bring cars with this system to market. The Tahoe Hybrid uses a 6-liter V-8 gas engine in conjunction with electric motors for propulsion. The motors get electricity from a battery pack which gets charged by the engine and through regenerative braking. This system, along with another fuel-saving system called cylinder deactivation, gives the Tahoe Hybrid about 25 percent better fuel economy than its gasoline-only counterpart. Emissions data for the Tahoe Hybrid has not been published.

The Tahoe Hybrid is the biggest car to have won the award.

(Credit: CNET Networks/Sarah Tew)

We drove the GMC Yukon Hybrid, which uses the same platform and system as the Tahoe Hybrid, earlier this year. Click here to read our driving impressions of the Yukon Hybrid. With its hybrid system, the Tahoe Hybrid behaves much like a Toyota Prius, shutting off the engine while stopped in traffic and driving under electric power at low speeds. But the Tahoe also gets a continuously variable transmission, commonly used in Toyota hybrids, enhanced with a four-speed automatic transmission. The truck uses its fixed gears when it is towing a trailer or climbing hills.