But why aren’t today’s exotic hybrids at the top of the table? It’s because vehicles like Jeeps use established technologies which use less energy in manufacture and which share many parts among other vehicles. Both these factors contribute towards a noticeable reduction in the energy used in vehicle manufacture. Cars like the Jeep® Wrangler also tend to have a longer life cycle, adding ‘green value’ at the end of the car’s lifespan as well as at the beginning.

Applying this ‘dust to dust’ analysis of energy use shows cars with some of the lowest CO2 emissions and most friendly environmental credentials in quite a different light. Amazingly, neither of the two hybrids on sale in the UK today finished in the top 50 of the CNW investigation.

Hybrid cars show up poorly because of the energy used in their manufacture and in the disposal and replacement of high-energy-use items like batteries and electric motors, and in their use of lighter weight construction materials like lightweight steels which use more energy and which are harder to recycle.

By contrast, the simple but immensely strong construction of cars like the Jeep® Wrangler, Cherokee, Grand Cherokee and Commander make them a recycler’s dream. To make the CNW’s report meaningful to car buyers, energy usage was turned into the amount of petrol needed to supply the same amount of energy. This was then translated into the cost of the petrol in dollars.