Hey, all you people that read this site to learn what car to buy: the Green Car Journal says that your 2009 green car of the year is the Volkswagon Jetta TDI. Treehugger gives us a report:

The 2009 Jetta TDI is a quiet-running, diesel-powered car. It beat out hybrids and mini-cars to take the title. The Jetta uses a technology called “clean diesel” which actually lives up its name pretty well. It has a very clean tailpipe, and an EPA estimated 41 mpg highway fuel economy.

Also, it’s a Jetta, which means that you can drive it and it makes you trendy and hip, automatically.

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Diesel fuel, long regarded as the dirtier, noisier, lamer gasoline, has been reborn as a more environmentally friendly energy source, and is poised to be unleashed on the US car market.   The International Herald Tribune (the New York Times in disguise for non-Americans (don’t tell France)) reports that the new diesel emits 97 percent less sulfur than those old models, and can pass emission tests in all fifty states, even the really really hippie ones California and New York.

In the next couple years, automakers will once again attempt to turn Americans on to the diesel market.   Mercedes, Audi, VW, Nissan, Ford, GM, Jeep, and so forth and so on will be introducing new diesel vehicles to the market by 2010.

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