British newspaper The Times recently devised a test to see if the Toyota Prius’s green credentials were really as great as they are made out to be. To do this, the Times team decided to pit the Prius against a BMW 520d on a run to Geneva.

The Prius has been the car of choice for the majority of greenies for a while thanks to it’s massively heralded green credentials – in fact, more than a million Prius’s have been sold worldwide since it’s introduction to the motoring public in 2007. Celebrities have also been flocking to buy it, with Cameron Diaz and Leonardo DiCaprio both seen behind the wheel of one.

Driving a Prius afford you special privileges in many countries – in the US, you are allowed to drive in ‘high occupancy vehicle lanes’ even if there is no-one else in the car with you. In the UK, the Prius is allowed into central London without having to pay the central London congestion charge. As it’s classed as an ‘alternative fuel vehicle’, it currently attracts less tax that a ‘normal’ car – road tax is just £15 per year.

Officially, the Prius will do 65.7mpg in mixed motoring, although many people who own or have driven the Prius have yet to see such good consumption figures – many people see closer to 50mpg than 65.7mpg.

And so, with these facts in mind, The Times journalists decided to pit the Prius against a more conventional car of the same sort of size and class to compare the two.

The results were quite telling – each car was driven an identical number of miles, and one assumes that as they were travelling together, a similar sort of driving style was affected by both journalists. At the end of the journey, the BMW was found to have averaged around 50.3mpg and used 10.84 gallons of diesel compared to the Prius which averaged 48.1mpg on 11.34 gallons of petrol.

It is interesting to note that the BMW driver chose to keep his air-conditioning and stereo on during the test, whereas the Prius driver chosen to keep his off to help his fuel consumption figures.

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