Green
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Following its October approval of E15 gasoline for 2007 or newer cars, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is to announce today that it will expand the approval to cars from the 2001 through 2006 model year as well. E15 contains 15 percent ethanol, half again as high as the legal maximum today of 10 percent in E10 gasoline. Automakers sue to block You're not likely to see E15 showing up immediately at your neighborhood gas station, though. In December, a group including every major automaker selling cars in the U.S. launched a lawsuit asking that the first approval be overturned...
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Audi Toys With New Electric Car, Pedals Future in Nuremburg
After initially appearing skeptical about the electric car, Audi has been busy over the past few years with a selection of plugin hybrid and fully electric-powered concepts, showing them off at prestigious events such as the Le Mans 24 hour race. But unlike the R8 e-tron, R4 e-tron spyder and A1...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
Mitsubishi Launching Eight New Electrified Cars By 2015
Later this year Mitsubishi’s battery-powered i-MiEV will finally go on sale in the U.S., having already gone on sale in Europe and Japan and making an appearence at the 2010 Los Angeles Auto Show last November. However, it’s hard to get excited over Mitsubishi’s zero-emission...
Viknesh Vijayenthiran -
Weekend Wheels: 2011 Nissan Juke--What Do You Want To Know?
We like small cars, not only because they're fuel efficient but because they're usually more fun and engaging to drive than larger ones. But this being winter in the Northeast, we also need an all-wheel-drive vehicle on weekends, when we head up into the mountains. And that severely limits the...
John Voelcker -
Question: How Do Electric Cars (Volt, Leaf) Heat Passengers?
Another in our irregular series of answering questions from readers, this one from John Q of Eugene, Oregon: Question: I was wondering how an electric car provides heat and defrosting. Using batteries to generate the heat will drain them pretty fast. Maybe with the 2011 Chevrolet Volt, the internal...
John Voelcker -
Guest Post: Cool Factor Must Woo New Buyers To Electric Cars
Researching and writing for GreenCarReports, we've come to respect the insights of Oliver Hazimeh, Director and Head of the Global E-Mobility Practice at global management consulting firm PRTM. This invited post, written by Hazimeh and Principal Aaron Tweadey, offers thoughts on how carmakers can...
John Voelcker -
Build a $30,000 electric car in under four years. That’s the promise made last night by Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Speaking at the Cleantech Investor Summit in Palm Springs, California, the 39-year old businessman shared his plans for the venture-backed automaker. In addition to bringing the 2012 Model S sedan we saw moving under its own power earlier this week to market, Musk disclosed that Tesla would bring two more electric vehicles to market within the next four years. Just to make things clear, Musk told the audience that Tesla’s Model X SUV would be one of the vehicles released...
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Mitsubishi Switches On: 6 More Plug-in Electric Cars by 2015
In case you didn’t know, Mitsubishi is in the midst of a dramatic corporate change of direction. While it may be more known for its pickup trucks, SUVs and rally cars, the automaker is planning to build on the success of its 2011 i-Miev electric car by unveiling at least six more plug-in...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
World's Fastest (Or 2nd-Fastest?) Hybrid: Porsche 918 RSR
Possibly the most rapturously received vehicle at last week's Detroit Auto Show was the Porsche 918 RSR coupe, a hybrid race car that isn't even street-legal. And it's about as far from the quintessential Toyota Prius hybrid as you could get. It doesn't use a battery pack at all, in fact, but the...
John Voelcker -
Smart Goes Topless: Electric Roadster To Appear At Geneva?
Smart's current range, just like its sole product, the ForTwo, is short and sweet. The lineup consists of the Pure and Passion specifications, and convertible versions of each. A Ford Fiesta rival is expected in the fall, based on the new Nissan March/Micra subcompact. And although it's not...
Antony Ingram -
2012 Mercedes-Benz C-Class: Half of Sales To Be High-MPG Fours
Mercedes-Benz likes to launch technologies and lead trends, but sometimes they follow along with the crowd. In this case, Hyundai's doing it. Chevy's doing it. Chrysler's going to do it. Even Porsche will be doing it. And now Mercedes-Benz has joined the gang: The luxury carmaker too will fit a...
John Voelcker -
Electric Car Pioneers Want Simple Sockets, Not EVSE Charging Stations
Less than two months after the first 2011 Nissan LEAFs and 2011 Chevrolet Volts arrived in the eager hands of their new owners, there is an increasingly large group of owners worldwide who are wanting to ditch the confines of dedicated electric vehicle charge points and plug in where-ever they can...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
It was announced nearly 3 years ago and we’ll not see it on the roads for another year, but Tesla’s Model S has made another important step towards production: the obligatory drive-by road video. As our John Voelcker reported yesterday over at GreenCarReports, the all-electric Californian car company posted a short video showing its 2012 Model S driving along a selection of rather quiet roads in rural California. Professionally filmed, but without any soundtrack, Tesla’s alpha prototype can be seen taking corners in what is a classic promotional video for any vehicle. The...
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Sergio Marchionne: Hybrid Minivan Will Join Chrysler 300 Hybrid In 2013
Earlier this week we heard from Sergio Marchionne, the demanding CEO of Fiat-Chrysler, that a hybrid version of the new 2011 Chrysler 300 sedan would arrive sometime in 2013. Now, at Chrysler’s Windsor plant in Canada, Marchionne has revealed that the hybrid 300 will be joined in 2013 by a...
Viknesh Vijayenthiran -
Tesla Releases Pretty Video of Model S Sedan Under Own Power
Hot on the heels of its appearance at last week's Detroit Auto Show as a body-in-white, the 2012 Tesla Model S sedan also clearly moves under its own power. Tesla Motors just posted a beautiful, scenic video on the company's blog showing about 90 seconds worth of a Model S "alpha" prototype...
John Voelcker -
Greening The Rouge: Ford's More Sustainable Pickup Plant
A green roof is not at its most photogenic in a Michigan winter. In fact, it's hardly green at all--more like gray and brown--though it still insulates the building below just as well. But while some of the green aspects of Ford's showcase Rouge assembly plant have succumbed to the January weather...
John Voelcker -
VIDEO: Future Electric ‘Car’ Drives Itself But, Oh, Those Looks...
If you listened to countless futurists of days gone by, we should all be living in little space pods by now, with electric cars, robotic servants and self-cleaning homes. But as with many promises for the future, many of these predictions from long ago seem rather laughable today. Except of course...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
DBM Energy’s Electric Audi Destroyed in Fire, Cause Unknown
The converted Audi A2 electric car which hit the headlines back in October last year by apparently driving 375 miles on a single charge has been destroyed in a warehouse fire in Berlin. While the German police investigate the cause of the fire, no official statements have been made about the fire...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
The U.S. EV market will become wider next year with the appearance of the 2012 Mitsubishi "i" electric car, itself wider than those available across international markets. Early reports suggested the American market wouldn't take well to the original's Japanese kei-car dimensions and relatively low performance and interior quality, so the model arriving on U.S. shores is wider, quicker and better equipped. Mitsubishi Motors Corportation (MMC) has announced today that the European-spec Mitsubishi "i", revealed at the Paris Motor Show and still known as the i-MiEV to avoid confusion with the...
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Now We Know: This Will Be The New 2012 Ford Escape Hybrid
Ford was clearly one of the stars of last week's Detroit Auto Show, launching green vehicles and concepts across a wide range of fuel-saving technologies. The company unveiled just a single concept, the Vertrek crossover, but it's an important one. The production version of the Vertrek will be the...
John Voelcker -
Life After Top Gear: “The Stig” Goes Electric, Joins EV Cup
What happens when the masked marvel of the highly popular and highly anti-electric car BBC Show Top Gear leaves? He starts racing electric cars, of course. Since his fiery departure from the prime-time entertainment show after he unveiled his identity, racing driver and stuntman Ben Collins has...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
Hybrids Redux: Chrysler 300 Hybrid Sedan To Launch In 2013
Chrysler's got bigger problems right now than whether or not it builds hybrid cars. After quickly spiffing up of its line of aging, unappealing cars and crossovers for 2011, the company's engineers are deep into designing modern, fuel efficient compact and midsize Chrysler, Dodge, and Jeep vehicles...
John Voelcker -
Do High Electricity Tariffs Make CA Electric Cars Costly?
California might be considered the U.S. spiritual home of the electric car, but according to a new study by Purdue University in indiana the cost of charging electric cars in California may be higher than anywhere else in the U.S. Or is it? According to the university’s Wally Tyner, the James...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
Want To Waft In Eco-Friendly Fashion? Electric Rolls-Royce May Be On The Way
If Bentley is all about seamless low-end torque from V-8 engines (or the odd W-12), then Rolls-Royce is about 'wafting'. That's the word used to describe the experience of riding in an utterly silent, totally effortless conveyance that sets one above the common man. Which might, if you think about...
John Voelcker