When it goes on sale late this year, the seventh generation Volkswagen GolfVolkswagen Volkswagen Golf Gen.7 [VII]Germany, 2012 > present363 versions
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will be among the cleanest cars in its class. Two of its models produce less than 100g/km of CO2, but that is not enough for environmental organization Greenpeace who are at the Paris Motor Show protesting the new car. 

Greenpeace's slogan for the seventh generation Golf is "Der neue Golf – Klimaziel verfehlt," which translates to "The new Golf- Misses its emissions target." The group claims that even though the new Golf has cleaner engines, VolkswagenVolkswagenGermany, 1938 > present98 models
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has not done enough to make the car more efficient. If it were truly the state of the art, the entire fleet of new Golfs would produce a total of 50 million tons less CO2. 

Greenpeace further claims that Volkswagen purposefully deceives buyers by calling itself the best auto company in Europe in terms of climate protection. 

To support these claims, Greenpeace says that the cleanest petrol-fueled seventh generation Golf emits only 7.4% less CO2 and 0.3l/100km less than the car it replaces. This is despire VW's claim that the new Golf uses 23% less fuel. The cleanest diesel version uses 3.2l/100km, and the cleanest petrol version uses 4.9l/100km

Greenpeace did its own calculations and believes that VW could profitably produce a version of the Golf that uses 3.0l/100km for a diesel version and as little as 2.6l/100km for a gasoline hybrid. To do this, Volkswagen would have to make the car lighter, reduce rolling resistance, improve aerodynamics and switch to smaller, less powerful engines.

The interesting part of this is that Greenpease says VW could build a diesel Golf that uses 3.0l/100km and produces 75g/km of CO2. Volkswagen has a version of the Bluemotion diesel Golf with 105ps that uses 3.2l/100km and produces 85g/km of CO2. Greenpeace says that to build its car, it would have to use an 88ps 1.4 TDI engine.

The point here is that Volkswagen did nearly everything that Greenpeace suggested except for install a smaller engine, and Greenpeace is still upset about it. It is protesting over a 6.25% difference in efficiency and an 11.76% difference is emissions. 

The hurdle is that Greenpeace wants these technologies  at little or not extra cost to the customer, and Volkswagen does not see that as a financial reality.