Hybrid cars offer a greener choice by reducing the dependence on oil and hydrocarbon pollution. However, there is great public debate if going to a 100% electric car fleet actually creates a greener environment since the burden of supplying the energy is now shifted towards polluting power plants.

While it may take decades for clean energy producing power stations to come online to sustain such an automobile fleet, we need to face the fact that the internal combustion engine will be with us for at least another 50 years.

Regardless of the car’s power train, the manufacture process is highly dependent on the use of oil for interior plastic components. Automobile makers such as Toyota are actively perusing ‘ecological plastics’ that are carbon neutral since the source of the oil is from renewable plant materials.

Toyota’s has been engaged in biological based petroleum plastics, or Bio-PET, since 2000 and has produced an ecological plastic that is heat and shrink resistant with high durability compared to convention bio-plastics. Bio-Pet is made by replacing the monoethylene glycol with a biological raw material from cane sugar.

Starting with 2011 the Lexus CT 200h, Toyota will manufacture the luggage compartment liner using Bio-PET. Toyota plans to increase the number of vehicle series featuring this new material. One new model will derive 80% of the interior plastics from Bio-PET.

As Toyota and other automobile manufacturers move towards the use of bio-plastics, both the environment and company’s bottom line should be improved. Bio-plastics are not as dependent on wild oil price fluctuations making the manufacturing cost of the interior components more predictable. Yet the source of bio-engineered materials is plants and is subject to crops shortages and agricultural conditions.

But the future looks bright green as car makers produce more efficient hybrid and electric vehicles while using biological materials inside the car’s interior.