Federal green car fleet buys more Hyundai hybrids as overall number goes down

The Obama administration made a big deal about how it had a long-term plan to green up the federal vehicle fleet back in early 2011. Even with that big target, the overall number of hybrids is going down. And, after spending time buying fuel-efficient US cars, the Obama administration has been turning more to hybrids from foreign automakers – just like the general public – rather than fuel sippers from Ford or General Motors.

According to a Bloomberg report that used data from the General Services Administration, the overall number of hybrid and electric vehicles the US government bought last year went down by a third to just 1,801 vehicles. Over half of them (54 percent) were from Hyundai, Toyota and Mitsubishi. The number one vehicle by volume? The Hyundai Sonata Hybrid. The US government also purchased vehicles like the Mitsubishi i and the Toyota Prius. Among US civilian buyers, Toyota claimed the four most popular hybrid spots and the Sonata was fifth.

The stated plan is for the Federal government to only buy alt-fuel vehicles by 2015, but the numbers and percentages of the fleet have been dropping. Bloomberg’s numbers show that the Feds bought 8,139 alt-fuel vehicles in 2009, 6,467 in 2010 and then 2,645 in fiscal 2011. The early number were buoyed by stimulus spending.