green-us-cities.jpgI made my first trip to San Francisco this week and although I expected to see a higher percentage of hybrid cars compared to most Midwest cities, I was really surprised. Throughout the Bay Area and north into the California Wine Country, it was nearly impossible to go anywhere without seeing a hybrid vehicle. And while the Toyota Prius was by far the green car of choice, the fact that it is also the most easily recognizable hybrid probably skewed my informal reporting. I also noticed many Honda Civic hybrids and armies of hybrid SUVs.

When I returned home, I wondered how San Francisco ranked in terms of hybrid auto sales. A quick review of the most recent annual numbers from R.L. Polk & Company and hybridcars.com showed the city was #3 in 2009, behind only Los Angeles and New York. That got me wondering if hybrid popularity was mainly tied to population size or if some cities were clearly much greener than others.

While the 15 metropolitan areas with the highest number of “hybrids per household” were also listed on the above mentioned link, I decided to pull actual search statistics from our family of hybrid websites over the past 12 months. Last year I reported the top hybrid countries and top hybrid states, so today I crunched the numbers for the top cities.

Search Rank: Cities are ranked from 1 to 50 based on the number of searches performed.

Population Rank: From Wikipedia, based on 2008 U.S. Census Bureau data.

Green Rank: Population Rank/Search Rank. This number represents the correlation between population and total annual searches. It creates a way to compare cities to determine which ones have the most or least hybrid searches in relation to their population.

Search Rank     Population Rank Green Rank
         
1 New York NY 1 1.00
2 Los Angeles CA 2 1.00
3 San Francisco CA 12 4.00
4 Chicago IL 3 0.75
5 Washington DC 27 5.40
6 Houston TX 4 0.67
7 Atlanta GA 33 4.71
8 Denver CO 24 3.00
9 Seattle WA 25 2.78
10 Dallas TX 8 0.80
11 Portland OR 29 2.64
12 Minneapolis MN 47 3.92
13 San Diego CA 9 0.69
14 Austin TX 15 1.07
15 Philadelphia PA 6 0.40
16 Phoenix AZ 5 0.31
17 St Louis MO 52 3.06
18 Sacramento CA 37 2.06
19 San Antonio TX 7 0.37
20 Miami FL 43 2.15
21 Columbus OH 16 0.76
22 San Jose CA 10 0.45
23 Raleigh NC 45 1.96
24 Las Vegas NV 28 1.17
25 Indianapolis IN 14 0.56
26 Charlotte NC 18 0.69
27 Honolulu HI 49 1.81
28 Boston MA 21 0.75
29 Orlando FL 82 2.83
30 Ft Myers FL 350 11.67
31 Albuquerque NM 34 1.10
32 Madison WI 81 2.53
33 Oklahoma City OK 31 0.94
34 Baltimore MD 20 0.59
35 Tucson AZ 32 0.91
36 Rochester MN 99 2.75
37 Pittsburgh PA 60 1.62
38 Nashville TN 26 0.68
39 Jacksonville FL 13 0.33
40 Arlington TX 50 1.25
41 Kansas City MO 35 0.85
42 Sunnyvale CA 183 4.36
43 Colorado Springs CO 48 1.12
44 Salt Lake City UT 126 2.86
45 Milwaukee WI 23 0.51
46 Santa Monica CA 300 6.52
47 Cambridge MA 244 5.19
48 Beverly Hills CA 450 9.38
49 New Orleans LA 55 1.12
50 Columbia SC 189 3.78

From the above table you can see that New York is the largest U.S. city in terms of overall population. It was also the city with the highest number of searches (on Hybrid Kingdom websites). Los Angeles ranked #2 in both categories. Chicago is the third largest city and it ranked fourth in total hybrid searches. Based on data from those cities, it appears that hybrid searches are simply a function of population.

If you instead look at a city such as San Francisco, it is the 12th largest U.S. city but ranks #3 in total hybrid searches. Based on these numbers, it earned a much higher Green Rank of 4.0 (12/3). From our data, San Francisco and Washington D.C. are two of the most green cities (at least in terms of search volume compared to population). Now I know why I saw so many hybrid cars in S.F., including my first hybrid electric bus!

Based on Green Rank - Ft. Myers, Beverly Hills, and Santa Monica were the overall greenest cities (although population rank had to be estimated from several sources). Some of the least green cities were Phoenix, Philadelphia, and San Antonio. Those are the 5th, 6th, and 7th largest US cities, but they ranked 16th, 15th, and 19th in our annual search volume rankings. While hybrid car interest doesn’t mean these are the 50 greenest cities in America, we at least know where most of the searches come from.