Green
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Doug Parks, vehicle line executive for the 2011 Chevrolet Volt, GM's range-extended electric vehicle, confirmed Tuesday that the company loses money on every Volt it sells. This should hardly be a surprise. It's called R&D, folks Every major automaker spends billions of dollars a year on research and development costs. And they know that when they launch certain new technologies, they will lose money for some years before costs fall and volumes rise to let economies of scale make a particular new feature or technology profitable. Toyota's investments in its hybrid program, which has given...
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Follow Green Car Reports On Our Facebook Page Too!
EDITOR'S NOTE: We originally published this article on September 20, but we wanted to alert readers once more that you can now follow us on Facebook. We're eager to reach out and connect with you wherever you're spending your time online, and the discussion on our Facebook page has gotten pretty...
John Voelcker -
2011 Geneva Motor Show Preview: Rinspeed BamBoo Concept
Best known for its construction of oddball but impressive concepts like the James Bond-esque underwater sQuba and eXasis glass car, Swiss tuning and engineering firm Rinspeed is now delving into a new world of minimalistic auto design where efficiency and renewability is the name of the game. Set...
Viknesh Vijayenthiran -
2010 Los Angeles Auto Show: 2012 Infiniti M Hybrid Details
First previewed at last year's Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance, we've been hearing about the 2012 Infiniti M Hybrid for more than a year. Now, finally, Infiniti has officially unveiled the M35h, its very first hybrid-electric vehicle, at the 2010 Los Angeles Auto Show. First of many? It's the...
John Voelcker -
Try Again: Honda's Big-Car Hybrid System Has Plug-In Ability
It wasn't even at the 2010 Los Angeles Auto Show, where Honda only showed a video of the new plug-in hybrid platform it only discussed But details of the new powertrain point the way toward a range of future hybrid Honda models. It uses two separate motor-generators, as does Toyota's Hybrid Synergy...
John Voelcker -
2010 LA Auto Show: Volvo C30 DRIVe Electric First Drive Report
One of the great things about auto shows is the chance for journalists to drive prototype cars, especially at the Los Angeles Auto Show, known for its green-car test drives. We got a chance to spend 20 minutes behind the wheel of the Volvo C30 DRIVe Electric car, with Volvo's Lennart Stegland in...
John Voelcker -
You may not know it, but our Marty Padgett isn’t the only member of the High Gear Media editorial team to order a 2011 Nissan Leaf. Over 5,000 miles away on the west coast of England, I’ve also been waiting patiently in the queue for an email from Nissan letting me know when my Leaf would be delivered. Today the wait was over. Nissan mailed to ask me to choose my local dealer in order to start the finalization process. Apparently then the local dealer will contact me in the next few days to talk financing, charging and delivery dates. I’m one step closer to driving my 2011...
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Cracker Barrel Installing EV Charge Points At Tennessee Stores
Cracker Barrel, not exactly the bastion of green technology, has launched a pilot program that will see a number of EV charge points installed at 24 of the restaurant chain’s outlets across the state of Tennessee. The company that prides itself on old-style country stores is taking a very...
Viknesh Vijayenthiran -
Want To Lease a Fuel-Cell Vehicle? That'll Be $850 A Month, Please
Finishing our last few stories from the 2010 Los Angeles Auto Show, we realized we forgot one piece of consumer news: Mercedes-Benz started taking orders for its 2011 B-Class F-Cell hydrogen fuel-cell vehicle last month, and now it has announced the price. So what does it cost to lease a compact...
John Voelcker -
Hydrogen Refueling Ramps Up In Norway
A new hydrogen refueling station supplied by the Danish company H2 Logic will be installed just outside Oslo, Norway in summer 2011 as part of Norway’s “hydrogen highway“. Together with another planned Oslo hydrogen station in 2011, this means Norway will have one of the...
VentureBeat's GreenBeat -
Chevrolet Auctions “Job2” Production Volt For Charity Online
The long wait is over. At least, it soon will be. At an event at General Motors’ Detroit Hamtramck facility which was streamed live on the Internet, everyone from government officials and GM board members down to the factory workers responsible for manufacturing the extended range electric...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
Hybrids Don't Cost More To Repair or Run, But Payback Debatable
It's a concern that comes up over and over: If I buy a hybrid car, won't I have to spend thousands of dollars to replace the battery pack in a few years? The answer is, No. Not only are automakers required to warranty the high-voltage battery packs in hybrid-electric vehicles for 8 years/100,000...
John Voelcker -
Toyota plans to service approximately 650,000 of the more than 2 million Prius hybrids it has built to date, to correct a potential flaw in a cooling pump that could cause overheating. About 390,000 of the affected models are in the U.S. While the company hasn't yet released details on what it calls a "service action," the number of vehicles suggests that the repair applies to the second-generation Prius. Those cars were built from models years 2004 through 2009. Toyota says it's not being compelled to recall the vehicles, but will do so under a new initiative to be more proactive in keeping...
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Honda Unveils Brio, Its Smallest Car, For Asian Markets Only
The smallest Honda sold in the U.S. market is the 2011 Fit subcompact, its well-reviewed and enormously versatile five-door hatchback. But other markets demand different types of cars, and today at the Thailand Motor Expo, the company unveiled the Honda Brio prototype, a lightly disguised version...
John Voelcker -
Audi Using Solar Panels To Power Future e-tron Cars
Audi is demonstrating the use of solar energy for future mobility by converting the roof of one of its factories in Ingolstadt, Germany to solar panels. Here, Audi e-tron models will in future have their batteries charged with current obtained directly from the photovoltaic equipment installed on...
Viknesh Vijayenthiran -
Why the 2011 Chevrolet Volt EPA Rating Sends Mixed Messages
If like us, you were waiting with baited breath for the official EPA rating for the 2011 Chevrolet Volt you’ll have heard that the day before Thanksgiving Chevrolet announced the official figures were back for its first plug-in range-extended electric car. But unlike the 2011 Nissan...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
2010 Toyota Prius Plug-In Hybrid Prototype: Drive Report
The main thing to understand about the Toyota Prius Plug-In Hybrid is that it's not an "electric car" as many people use the term. Yes, it plugs in to any electric socket to recharge the 5.2-kilowatt-hour lithium-ion battery pack. And, yes, its Hybrid Synergy Drive system uses electric torque...
John Voelcker -
Move Over THINK: Mitsubishi i Highest Selling Electric Car (For Now)
A few months ago we reported that the diminutive Think City had snatched the top spot as the world’s best-selling city EV with over 2,500 vehicles now on the road. But that claim is now dwarfed by Mitsubishi, which last week celebrated the 5,000th i-Miev electric car to roll off its Japanese...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
For many years, Honda was routinely awarded the title of greenest carmaker in the U.S. market. But its most recent green cars have stumbled, and a dark-horse competitor is rising fast toward taking the coveted title, conferred every few years by the Union of Concerned Scientists. It's not Nissan, which launched the 2011 Leaf battery electric car that won our GreenCarReports 2011 Best Car To Buy award. It's not GM, with its much-lauded 2011 Chevrolet Volt range-extended electric car. It's not even Toyota, which sells the uber-hybrid Prius and has built roughly two-thirds of all the...
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2011 Nissan Leaf Voted Car Of The Year In Europe
Our sister site GreenCarReports voted it the Best Car to Buy for environmental conscious customers and it looks like the judges in the European Car of the Year panel agree, awarding the 2011 Nissan Leaf this year’s winner in the prestigious awards. The all-electric hatch beat out the likes of...
Viknesh Vijayenthiran -
Gran Turismo Game Goes Green: Virtual Electric Cars
Depending on your demographic, the new PlayStation 3 Gran Turismo 5 (GT5) video game is either your single most essential purchase this year, or a completely baffling piece of technology that you'll probably never buy. Ironically, the same could be said for the current wave of electric cars we've...
Antony Ingram -
Your iPhone Can Charge Wirelessly—How About Your Electric Car?
Psh. Plugs. They’re, like, so 2008. There’s been a surge of attention over the last year towards products that that can charge your smartphone wirelessly, like the devices PowerMat makes. Just set it down on the charging mat and let your phone juice up. But according to a new report...
VentureBeat's GreenBeat -
2011 Chevrolet Volt Gets 93 MPGe EV Rating, 60 MPG Combined
The shenanigans continue. Just this week the Nissan LEAF was rated at 99 mpg-equivalent by the EPA, raising the ire of our own John Voelcker--and justifiably so. Today, the Volt gets similar treatment and a similar rating, but only in EV mode. Add in the gas-only mode's 37 mpg rating and the...
Nelson Ireson -
From GAP To The Electric Car: Tesla’s George Blankenship
How do you go from selling clothes to electric cars? George Blankenship, Tesla’s Vice President of Design and Store Development knows. A 20-year veteran of global clothing store GAP and the man responsible for Apple’s successful retail stores, Blankenship jokes that these previous jobs...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield