Green
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Auto executives always want you to buy their cars, today. That goes without saying. But it's slightly less common for them to say, in effect, "This is the month to buy, 'cause we're going to be discounting the heck out of 'em." Nonetheless, that was the message from Bob Carter, Toyota's group vice president and general manager, about the company's quintessential hybrid-electric vehicle the Prius. At the end of a press call two weeks ago to discuss November's sales, Carter said December "will be the month" in which to buy a new Prius, because Toyota finds itself overstocked with the hybrid in...
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Moving On Up? Volkswagen Considers Producing Electric Taxi
Whilst the 2013 Volkswagen Golf Blue eMotion might be responsible for many of the company's EV headlines, their smaller Up concept is possibly even more intriguing. The Wolfsburg maker has just revealed the third in a trio of electric taxi concepts. Following Berlin and Milano versions, the latest...
Antony Ingram -
World's Two Top Electric-Car Makers Agree to Cooperate
You may not realise it, but automakers often work together on shared projects, vehicles or technology improvements. But when the top two electric car makers in the world agree to work together, even we find that interesting. Enter Mitsubishi and Nissan. Both poised to start selling their own...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
Electric-Car Deliveries? Mercedes-Benz Says, Hey, Fuel Cells Too!
It's the week of green-car delivery publicity. Nissan delivered its first Leaf in San Francisco Saturday (and three more in San Diego, Portland, and Southern California this week), and not to be left out, Chevy delivered a Volt this morning in New Jersey. Well, damnit, says Mercedes-Benz, we...
John Voelcker -
Charging Station Incentives Sneak Into Tax Cut Extension Bill
As recently as last week, it became apparent that the current federal 50 percent incentive towards the cost of installing an electric car charging station would expire on the 31st December this year. This would be particularly bad news to the vast majority of upcoming EV owners, many of whom...
Antony Ingram -
Three Different Electrified Ford Focus Models To Be Built At Single Michigan Plant
It’s well documented that Ford is planning an all-electric version of its new global Focus--heck, we’ve even test driven a very early prototype based on the previous generation car. But what isn’t that well known is that there will be two other electrified versions of the new...
Viknesh Vijayenthiran -
When I met last month with Volkswagen to ride inside a prototype 2012 Golf Blue e-motion, I was eager to experience this all-electric version of its popular 2011 Golf hatchback. It will go into production as a 2013 model. But I also knew something the VW public relations corps didn't: the location of an electric car that VW had built some 25 years earlier--which they assumed had been lost forever. A Relic From the Past In fact, Volkswagen has experimented with electric cars since the 1970s, when the Volkswagen Golf (Rabbit) platform was first produced. Starting with the Mark I Golf, VW...
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Electric Vehicle Collaborative To Help Introduce EVs in CA
If you were to draw up a listof places least in need of encouraging towards the use of electric cars, California would probably be right up there. As well as being the home of companies such as Tesla Motors and Coda Automotive, many EV manufacturers usually pick at least one city in the State to...
Antony Ingram -
Range Rover Decides Hybrids Make Most Sense For Gas Guzzlers
The 2012 Range Rover Evoque--the stylish new baby "soft-roader" that's Land Rover's smallest-ever luxury vehicle--will not be offered with a hybrid-electric version to improve its gas mileage. That's the word from John Edwards, Land Rover's global brand director, who noted that in Europe, the...
John Voelcker -
Needed Or Not, Electric Car Noisemakers Are Going To Be Law
Although the relative silence of electric cars and hybrids was originally touted as one of their key beneficial attributes, alarmists have been less than enamored with the perceived difficulty involved in hearing one coming, especially advocates of the blind and the seeing impaired. While critics...
Viknesh Vijayenthiran -
Fisker To Skip Detroit Auto Show, 2011 Karma Next In Geneva
For next month's Detroit Auto Show, we're making our list and checking it twice. But it turns out that one notable name in green cars is giving the country's largest auto show a miss. Fisker Automotive confirmed to GreenCarReports yesterday that it won't be present at the 2011 Detroit Auto Show...
John Voelcker -
Russian Billionaire's Natural-Gas Hybrid Electric Car, Yo
Never let it be said that Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov doesn't put his money where his mouth is. He plans to invest 150 million euros, or about $200 million, in a new company that will build the world's first production natural-gas series hybrid vehicle. The car will be called Yo, which is...
John Voelcker -
Add another entry to the growing list of electric vehicles going on sale in the next year or so. Think North America, maker of the two-seat City electric car, announced that its 2011 Think City had been approved as a zero-emission vehicle by the California Air Resources Board (CARB). The approval lets Think sell the 2011 City in California and the 12 other states, plus the District of Columbia, that have adopted California's stricter vehicle emissions regulations. The 2011 City uses a lithium-ion battery pack, with cells from Ener1, that gives it a stated range of up to 100 miles, a...
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First 2011 Chevy Volts Leave Plant, Head To CA, TX, DC & NY
Production of the world's first range-extended electric car is now a reality. Today, the first shipment of 2011 Chevrolet Volt electric cars left the Detroit-Hamtramck assembly plant. The cars are bound for dealers and buyers in the initial launch markets: California, Texas, New York, and...
John Voelcker -
2011 Detroit Auto Show Preview: New 2012 Honda Civic Concept
News from next month's 2011 Detroit Auto Show is coming in almost daily now. The latest announcement: Honda will present the world debut of a concept car that shows the styling direction of its next--and crucially important--Honda Civic. In reality, this means that the Honda Civic Concept shown in...
John Voelcker -
Next-Gen Electric Car Batteries Only Five Years Away?
There has undoubtably been a lot of work put into battery technology in the last few years as more and more electric vehicles hit the scene. One of the current trends is to use varying numbers of lithium-ion (Li-ion) cells, similar to those you'll find in a laptop computer. They offer numerous...
Antony Ingram -
First 2011 Nissan Leaf Delivery, To Northern Californian Buyer
The first page of a new chapter in green-car history was written yesterday, as Nissan formally handed over a 2011 Leaf electric car to Olivier Chalouhi of Redwood City, California. He was the very first person in the U.S. to order the all-electric vehicle, and the first to take delivery. Leaf...
John Voelcker -
Revenge Of The Electric Car Trailer: Watch It Now! [Video]
It's finally here! Well, the trailer is anyway... We announced just under a month ago that the long awaited sequel to the film Who Killed The Electric Car?, the logically titled Revenge Of The Electric Car (ROTEC), would be previewed with a trailer released when 10,000 people became fans of the...
Antony Ingram -
With the 2010 Los Angeles Auto Show past us, it's time to look toward January's 2011 Detroit Auto Show. Which should have a lot of interesting green cars, if early reports are any guide. Never mind the debut of what's now called the 2012 Chevrolet Sonic (nee Aveo). One of the most eagerly anticipated cars is Volkswagen's all-new entry into the midsize sedan market. VW will reveal the model name at the show--right now, it's simply called the New Midsize Sedan (NMS)--but it has a lot riding on this competitor to the Toyota Camry, Honda Accord, Hyundai Sonata, Chevrolet Malibu, Ford Fusion...
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Naming Electric Cars And Companies: Is Anything Good Left?
Naming new car models is always tough. The latest head-scratcher is GM's decision to rebrand the replacement for its Aveo subcompact as the 2012 Chevrolet Sonic, a name better associated in the U.S. with hedgehogs or hamburgers. But that's nothing compared to the challenge of naming electric-car...
John Voelcker -
BMW Hiring 2,600 Workers By 2012 For Hybrid And Electric Cars
First General Motors said it would add 1,000 workers purely to work on electric cars. Now it's BMW's turn. In a strong indicator of its commitment to developing hybrid and pure electric vehicles, BMW says it will hire an additional 2,600 employees over the next two years to work in these particular...
Viknesh Vijayenthiran -
2011 Nissan Leaf? Far Too Boring In Japan...
If it ever really needed to be said, Japanese car tastes can be... "alternative", to put it in polite terms. As well as their Kei-Jidosha class of city cars that are absolutely miniscule compared to U.S. monsters, the country has produced some fairly crazy production cars over the years. That trend...
Antony Ingram -
As 2011 Chevrolet Volt Nears Dealers, Ghostly EV1 Gets Enthusiasts Excited
Just as the excitement is growing over the first dealer deliveries of the 2011 Chevrolet Volt and 2011 Nissan Leaf, eagle-eyed EV enthusiasts have spotted General Motor’s previous electric car on Google’s Street View. Is it serendipity or a more carefully timed disclosure to coincide...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
40-MPG Cars Are Better Than Ever; Too Bad They're Not Selling
Today's small cars are better than they've ever been, even if few of them are among the EPA's all-time gas mileage champs. And spurred by tighter fuel-economy laws, 40 miles per gallon on the highway is becoming the new target for subcompact and even compact cars. There's just one little problem...
John Voelcker