Green

  • Formulec EF01 Electric Racing Car

    If you happen to indulge in the twin passions of both electric cars and motorsport, you'll no doubt have heard of series such as the TTX-GP for electric racing motorcycles that holds events all over the world. A similar series has been slow to emerge for electric cars but at the recent United Nations Climate Change Conference in Cancún, Mexico, a new racing series was announced offering stars of the future the chance to compete in electric formula-spec single-seater racing cars. The car unveiled at the conference is called the Formulec EF01, and is designed to offer performance on-par...

  • 2011 Chevrolet Volt test drive, Michigan, October 2010
    GM Leads Nissan In December Electric Car Sales As Supply Trickles In

    Chevy’s electric hybrid vehicle, the Volt, beat out the cheaper Nissan Leaf in electric car sales in the last month of 2010 as each manufacturer struggled to keep up with demand for their newest rides, the Associated Press reported today. The Volt went into production in mid-November and hit...

  • ActaCell prismatic lithium-ion battery cell
    ActaCell Nabs $3 Million For Cheaper, Better Hybrid Batteries

    Recently, we wrote about the move in the private sector to use electric and hybrid delivery trucks. Companies like FedEx and Frito Lay are tapping into benefits of greener cars — even ahead of the broader consumer market because they’re a hedge against volatile diesel prices and can pay...

  • Crushed GM EV1s - Screenshot, Who Killed The Electric Car?
    Could Rising Commodity Prices Kill (Or Hurt) The Electric Car?

    At the time of this writing, oil has sprinted above $90 a barrel, silver has jumped 80-plus percent in the last year and China just announced an 11 percent decrease in exports of rare earth metals for 2011. Will these constraints on critical resources, and their inevitable steep rise in costs and...

  • Navistar eStar electric delivery truck in Washington, D.C.
    Will Trucks And Buses Beat Cars In The Electric Race?

    Right now, six companies are vying to win a contract that would provide 100 electric vehicles to the government’s General Administration services 214,000-strong fleet. One of them is Ford; the other, a relative newcomer called Smith Electric. But the government isn’t looking for...

  • Racing Green Endurance en-route
    VIDEO: Racing Green: The Ultimate Electric Car Expedition, Airs January 1

    Back in 2009 we were approached by a press representative for Racing Green Endurance, a team of 20-something post-graduate engineers from Imperial College London. We didn't hear from them again until June this year, when we met up with them in London. Their goal? To drive the 16,000 miles from...

  • John Hofmeister, ex-president of Shell Oil, June 2010 (miscaptioned as 'Jeff')

    This video clip, now six months old, has been making the rounds yesterday and today. Still, it's worth pondering. What would you do if gasoline rose to $5 a gallon in two years? How would your driving, and car buying, behavior change? Two days after the BP drilling rig blowout in the Gulf of Mexico, Shell Oil's ex-president John Hofmeister (miscaptioned as "Jeff" in the video) spoke at the McCall School of Business at Queens University in Charlotte. Not only did he excoriate BP for continuing operations, he predicted that gasoline would reach prices of $5 a gallon by 2012. And he didn't stop...

  • First 2011 Nissan Leaf delivered to buyer, San Francisco, Dec 2010, photo by Eugene Lee
    Our Popular Stories of 2010: LEAF, Recharging, Myth Busting

    We’re just two days away from 2011, the year many industry experts are terming the year of the electric car, but 2010 hasn’t been a slow year for electric cars. We’ve seen new models launched, records broken and even the Pope show an interest in going electric. But over the course...

  • Energy classroom, courtesy of USACE Europe District
    Things We Read, And Like: 'Why We Need Energy Literacy'

    Many readers on this site are concerned with miles per gallon, or how much fuel their car uses. And while any site called Green Car Reports is bound to have an environmental tilt, most car buyers are far more concerned with saving money than saving the planet. Nonetheless, we're all about making...

  • 1999 GM (Specialty Vehicles) EV1
    GM EV1 Gets Another Shot At Smithsonian, 4 Years On

    If General Motors' EV1 had featured in the Disney Pixar animated film Cars, we can't imagine it would have been the happiest of characters. It might well have spent a little time complaining about its friends all being crushed back in 1999, and who could blame it? And four years ago it might have...

  • 2011 Mazda2 exterior and detail
    Most Popular Posts of 2010: Mazda2, Prius Crashes, Leaf, Volt, and Other EVs

    We love looking back to see what's been popular over the course of a full year. And 2010 was definitely chock-full of green car news. Our 10 most popular posts this year are a little less random than last year's most popular, which featured Muslims and ethanol, urine, hybrid Ferraris, and our...

  • Nissan Leaf Carwings feature
    Forget Angry Birds - 2011 Nissan LEAF Launches New Addictive App

    Ten years ago the concept of social media was in its infancy. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s geeky founder, wasn’t even at university and the best chance you had of playing at being a farmer was to head down to your local city farm. So what happens when you combine the always-connected...

  • 2011 Chevrolet Volt home charging

    Let’s face it: the end of the holiday season is financially tough. After spending what may seem like a small fortune on gifts for your family and friends the last thing you want to do is spend money on a costly electric charging point for your plug-in car. Of course, it is technically possible to charge an electric car from a standard 110V domestic outlet in your garage. However, specially designed Electric Vehicle Supply Equipment (EVSE) can reduce your electric car recharge time and improves the home charging experience. Nissan and Chevrolet are both keen to sell you their official...

  • Simplified diagram of the Cyclone steam engine
    Could Waste Oil Power Your Range-Extended Electric Car One Day?

    We're suckers for new kinds of combustion engines. Ever since we first saw and wrote about the Cyclone external-combustion engine, we've been intrigued by it. Now we have an automotive angle: Suppose you could power a Chevy Volt-like range-extended electric car on nothing more than used motor oil...

  • BMW prototype based on Vision EfficientDynamics concept
    BMW's Plug-In Hybrid Supercar May Be Named i8, Cost $200,000

    BMW is pressing forward with its plans to build a production version of the striking plug-in hybrid concept car it called Vision Efficient Dynamics, unveiled at the Frankfurt Motor Show in September 2009. According to reports filtering out of Germany, the model that goes on sale in October 2013 may...

  • First 2011 Nissan Leaf delivered to buyer, San Francisco, Dec 2010, photo by Eugene Lee
    CA Electric Car Rebate Will Run Out Mid 2011, Advocate Warns

    California has always been kind to drivers of alternative fuelled vehicles with special privileges in High-Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lanes, reduced parking and even additional purchase tax credits. However, the $5,000 Californian state rebate for those purchasing electric vehicles may soon run out...

  • BYD e6 electric crossover, Electric Avenue, 2010 Detroit Auto Show
    2011 Detroit Auto Show Preview: 2012 BYD e6 Electric Crossover, Plug-In Hybrid Sedans

    Now that the 2011 Nissan Leaf and 2011 Chevy Volt have reached showrooms--a handful of them, anyhow--a new crop of electric vehicles will launch into the market for 2011. One of those may be the e6 all-electric crossover built by Chinese manufacturer BYD. Famed financier Warren Buffet was so...

  • Traffic light
    Ford Will Be First Major Carmaker To Offer Start-Stop In U.S.

    Start-stop systems, which shut off car engines when the vehicle comes to a stop, have been offered in Europe for several years. But until now, no automaker other than Porsche has offered them on U.S.-market cars. That's about to change. Ford said yesterday it will offer the systems on some of its...

  • Eiffel Tower and green cars

    Why are many European carmakers now planning to build electric vehicles? Because many European cities are widely expected to ban high-emissions vehicles from their city cores over the next decade--perhaps even vehicles with any emissions at all. Now, Paris may be the first city to experiment with such a policy. Next year, it will begin to test restrictions on vehicles that emit more than a certain amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) per kilometer--the measure of a car's contribution to greenhouse gases. An official within the Parisian mayor's office, Denis Baupin, identified older diesel-engined...

  • Tesla Motors, Palo Alto, California
    Tesla Motors Stock Drops 16 Percent, Analysts Pile On Worries

    As VentureBeat suggested on Thursday, the entry of new shares onto the market today has caused Tesla’s stock to drop. The stock is trading down 16 percent today now that the 180-day post-IPO lockup period has ended and insiders are free to sell their shares. The stock is trading at $25.30...

  • question mark on road: image via Flickr/ milos milosevic
    Will Charging Infrastructure Be Speed Bump For Electric Cars?

    This year — and next — will be a busy one for arrival of electric cars. The Ford Focus Electric and Coda’s sedan are slated for launch by 2011. The Nissan Leaf is slowly making its way to buyers in the U.S. and Europe, the Wheego Whip and LiFe are on sale in New York, and the...

  • MINI Snow Globe
    The Twelve Days Of (Electric-Car) Christmas

    Don't you just love a good song over the holidays? We've taken an established favorite and given it the plug-in car treatement. Gone are the birds, noisy drummers and milking maids. In their place we've put some of the most importante cars we've talked about this year, as well as some fun side...

  • Quentin Wilson Talks About i-Miev
    Quentin Willson: “The 2010 Mitsubishi i Has Changed My Life”

    History has a way of repeating itself. Just as the many tearful original EV1 lease drivers bade farewell to the electric car in the mock funeral that started Chris Paine’s docufilm Who Killed The Electric Car, a select group of electric car lease drivers in the U.K. gave a suitably British...

  • First factory-built Fisker Karma live photos
    2011 Fisker Karma 'Final Pricing' Goes Up Again, To $95,900

    The 2011 Fisker Karma is still on track to reach U.S. dealers in March or April, according to the company. But there's one new piece of info: The price of the extended-range electric sports sedan has gone up. Again. Originally announced in 2008 at a price of $80,000, the Karma fairly quickly went...

News First Drives Electric Cars Hybrids Guides Green Life