Green
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What grim breaking news could make the expanding diesel emission scandal more painful for all German makers? And why did GM really extend the shutdown of the assembly plant where the Chevrolet Bolt EV electric car is made? This is our look back at the Week In Reverse—right here at Green Car Reports—for the week ending on Friday, July 21, 2017. Friday, we covering breaking news on the German diesel scandal: the EU is now investigating collusion among all German makers to agree on common designs and limits on the aftertreatment systems to reduce diesel emissions. New information on...
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More diesel drama, Bolt EV plant info, whiskey for fuel, Volt crossover coming? Today's Car News
Today, our missing plug-in Mini review, some rumors on future Chevrolet Volts, a new Volvo crossover, and much more diesel drama. All this and more on Green Car Reports. We updated our article on the Bolt EV production shutdown to reflect information added by a worker at the Orion Assembly Plant...
John Voelcker -
2018 Mini Cooper S E Countryman All4 review of plug-in hybrid
The makers of the 2018 Mini Coooper S E Countryman All4, the unwieldy name for its first plug-in hybrid small crossover utility vehicle, aren't going to make any friends among electric-car fans. That's because the company has included in its marketing the notion that the car's hybrid powertrain...
John Voelcker -
EU investigating diesel collusion among Audi, BMW, Mercedes, Porsche, VW: report
As numerous political probes over the years have famously shown, once investigators dig into the circumstances around an alleged crime, anything can happen. The September 2015 announcement by the EPA that VW Group engineers had admitted to deliberate cheating on U.S. emission tests of the company's...
John Voelcker -
Scotland fuels car with biobutanol derived from whiskey production
Electric cars may receive most of the attention within the realm of alternative propulsion methods, but liquid hydrocarbon fuels will be with us for many decades to come. The challenge then becomes how to reduce the carbon footprint of extracting, transporting, refining, and burning those fuels to...
Sean Szymkowski -
Chevy Volt may be replaced in 2022 with plug-in hybrid crossover: CrossVolt at last?
Small SUVs are all the rage, steadily eating into sales of passenger sedans and hatchbacks of pretty much every size. It's not just limited to North America, either: the trend is global, which is why several makers have jacked up perfectly standard front-wheel-drive hatchbacks and turned them into...
John Voelcker -
Volvo has never tackled the small crossover segment in the United States, but it's ready to change that with the new XC40. The Volvo XC40 will join the larger XC60 and XC90 as its smallest crossover option in the United States, though a previous generation of the model has found success in Europe over the past few years. With a launch getting closer, the brand released a handful of teaser imagines showing various design patterns, with the promise of "dozens of possible exterior and interior color combinations." DON'T MISS: Volvo to electrify all cars from 2019: 'end of internal-combustion...
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Chevy Bolt EV plant shutdown extended, due to slow Sonic sales (updated)
One of the biggest tests of an automaker's discipline is what it does when sales start to ebb and inventories of unsold cars swell. Does it keep the production lines churning, and dial up its incentives to keep new-vehicle deliveries flowing? Or does it prioritize profitability and suspend...
John Voelcker -
Plug-in Mini, 2018 Leaf news, self-driving car rules, electric Hyundais and Kias: Today's Car News
Today, more on the 2018 Nissan Leaf, more electric cars from Hyundai and Kia, a Bollinger backgrounder, and a drive report on the first volume plug-in Mini. All this and more on Green Car Reports. The 2018 Nissan Leaf will offer one-pedal driving, under the label "e-Pedal," according to a new...
John Voelcker -
Why Robert Bollinger decided an electric utility truck was 'obvious'
One week from today, in a pricey supercar club in Manhattan, journalists, electric-car advocates, and perhaps a few celebrities will gather for the unveiling of a new electric vehicle. It's not another fast, luxurious sedan or crossover utility vehicle. Instead, it's an electric utility truck...
John Voelcker -
Hyundai-Kia electric-car production to soar to 50,000 next year
Korean siblings Hyundai and Kia will aggressively increase production of electric cars next year, according to a report in the Korean press. The production increase comes amid the combined automaker's goal to become the second largest maker of green vehicles (hybrids, plug-in hybrids, and electric...
Sean Szymkowski -
House approves bill to exempt self-driving cars from safety standards, overrule state laws
The United States House of Representatives has taken the first step towards allowing automakers and technology companies to deploy self-driving cars on public roads. A House panel passed a proposal that would allow automakers and other companies to deploy up to 100,000 self-driving vehicles...
Sean Szymkowski -
No, the new 2018 Nissan Leaf electric car isn't going to have only a single pedal—despite at least one headline late yesterday claiming that. Honest. But the "e-Pedal" in the next generation of Nissan's highest-volume plug-in vehicle does offer some interesting new features. DON'T MISS: Latest 2018 Nissan Leaf teaser shows ProPilot Assist self-driving capability One of those is the ability to provide what's known as "one-pedal driving" (hence the confusion among uninformed journalists). As the 58-second video above notes, drivers of the 2018 Leaf can use the accelerator pedal to...
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Tesla Model Y timing, Lucid vs Ford, hydrogen fuel cell service, VW electric-car price: Today's Car News
Today, we take a long look at what's needed to service a hydrogen-powered car, ask what will happen to electric-car startup Lucid, and have some Tesla news to boot. All this and more on Green Car Reports. With the Tesla Model 3 now in nominal production, at quite low volumes, we asked our followers...
John Voelcker -
Tesla Supercharger electric-car charging sites in CA surge (photos)
In January 2016, before the public introduction for pre-orders of the Model 3, Tesla had 585 Supercharger locations around the world. By the end of June 2016, that number had climbed to 655. Then the potential of 400,000-plus reservations for the more affordable Model 3 pushed Tesla to promise it...
George Parrott -
VW intends to price its ID electric car five-door hatchback aggressively
Volkswagen intends to take on the growing global electric-car market in an aggressive way, given the automaker's range of I.D. electric-vehicle concepts over the last couple of years. While a complete portfolio of electric cars will eventually find their way into production, the first high-volume...
Sean Szymkowski -
How do you service a hydrogen fuel-cell car at a dealer?
Over the past century, gasoline-powered vehicles have gotten simultaneously more complex and more reliable. Service intervals have lengthened, drivers no longer check a car's fluids daily or weekly, and many new-car owners will never once open the hood. Reliability data shows that some of them...
John Voelcker -
Lucid looking for savior, perhaps, after Ford declines to buy company
The image of the electric car as the future of passenger vehicles has led to a wealth of start-up companies hoping to cash in on the newest type of automotive propulsion. Starting a company—an automobile company at that—is not an easy task, however. Now Lucid Motors (nee Atieva) may be...
Sean Szymkowski -
The Tesla Model 3, the first mass-market electric car from the Silicon Valley carmaker, is now nominally in production. Scaling up from a trickle of hand-assembled cars to 10,000 units a month is Job One to keep Tesla afloat by letting it sell cars to hundreds of thousands of hand-raisers globally who put down a $1,000 deposit on the car. Still, Tesla CEO Elon Musk dangled a glimpse at the company's next product at last month's shareholder meeting. CHECK OUT: 2017 Tesla Model 3 in pilot production: Musk tweets photos of first car (video) Musk briefly showed a shadowy slide of the Tesla Model...
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Bolt EV plant shutdown, best charging stations, clean air vs audio gear, BMW to Faraday: Today's Car News
Today, we dig deeper into the reasons for a Chevy Bolt EV plant shutdown, look at why Audi may have cheated on diesel emissions, assess charging stations, and tell you why we think Formula E is important. All this and more on Green Car Reports. We analyzed the news that Chevy is extending its...
John Voelcker -
Why all electric-car owners should follow Formula E racing
In North America and Europe, the old saying—"Win on Sunday, sell on Monday"—probably no longer applies. That is, winning races over the weekend probably does little if anything to boost sales of passenger cars and light trucks, certainly not the way it did in the U.S. in the 1950s and...
John Voelcker -
Electric-car charging stations rated: what's best, what's cheapest, what to avoid?
There is a lot to consider when it comes to purchasing an electric-car charging station, as it can affect the ownership experience and the convenience of using the car. While some owners of plug-in hybrids may stick with the 120-volt charging cord that comes with the car, virtually all buyers of...
Sean Szymkowski -
European electric and plug-in hybrid sales for Jan-May 2017
Another month, and another round of European electric car sales data is ready for dissemination. Electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles continue to earn a healthy share of the European car market, and it's clear there's still a definitive electric car for Europeans. That is the...
Sean Szymkowski -
Tough Audi decision alleged: diesel-emission gear or profitable high-end audio systems?
Although it's not been in U.S. news much lately, the VW diesel scandal continues to unfold in Germany, as prosecutors continue their investigations over whether criminal acts were committed under German law. That doesn't mean U.S. investigations have finished, however. Last week's arrest in Germany...
John Voelcker