Green
-
As major automakers and electric specialists battle it out to become the number one electric vehicle maker, a small Oregonian company is slowly sneaking into the lead in the world of electric motorcycles. Featured in The Wall Street Journal Blogs this weekend, Brammo motorcycles likes to think of itself as the “Antithesis of Tesla”, but has just successfully completed the first $12.5 million of its series B funding. Who are Brammo? And what of their two bikes, the 2011 Enertia and 2011 Empulse? Even though its motorcycles are now sold worldwide, Brammo likes to stay close to its...
-
Ferrari California HELE Adds Stop-Start, Gas-Saving Gizmos
No, it's not pronounced "hell" ... although that word was heard from many Modena fans when news first broke that Ferrari was planning a hybrid-electric drivetrain in some models. The first fruits of Ferrari's wide-ranging quest to improve the fuel efficiency of its models was unveiled at the Paris...
John Voelcker -
Venture Capitalist Khosla Sour on Electric Cars at Disrupt Green Panel
Vinod Khosla, dynamic founder of Khosla Ventures and Kevin Skillern, managing director of GE energy financial services, both just spoke on the “GreenTech Gurus” panel at TechCrunch Disrupt. Here are some highlights of the discussion. On investment in cleantech: Khosla (pictured, above)...
VentureBeat's GreenBeat -
Get Green Car Reports Via Our New E-Mail, Better RSS Feeds
Want to follow the latest news and information on green cars of all varieties, from high-mileage to hybrid, clean diesel to fully electric vehicles? Now we're launching a brand-new, redesigned daily e-mail update. If you'd like to have all our headlines delivered to your Inbox in one nice, tidy...
John Voelcker -
2011 Chevy Volt Customer Advisory Board: More Than A Publicity Stunt
When long-time EV advocate and former GM EV1 salesperson Chelsea Sexton talked to us a few weeks ago and told us she had some exciting news, we knew something fun was about to happen. Did she have news about the up-coming sequel to Chris Payne’s docudrama Who Killed The Electric Car? Was she...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
Car-Crazy CA No More: Air Resources Board Wants to Cut Miles Traveled
Think California is the land of fast-flowing freeways and drop-top driving under the endless sun? Think again. The California Air Resources Board is now writing rules to implement a law passed two years ago that will require regional reductions in vehicle miles traveled. In other words, the state...
John Voelcker -
Endurance racing has more than its share of heartbreak. For Porsche Motorsport, this weekend's Petit Le Mans at Road Atlanta provided sweet relief to a galling memory: Its unique 911 GT3 R Hybrid race car retired less than two hours before the checkered flag during May's 24 Hours of Nurburgring. This time, the hybrid Porsche completed the race just fine, using roughly 10 percent less fuel than the non-hybrid 911 GT3 RS racers. And in fact, another race car's fuel efficiency--or lack of it--caused a dramatic last-lap upset during this final race of the American Le Mans Series season. Driver...
-
Auto X-Prize Winners Finalize Plans To Bring Unique 2-Wheeler To Market
Let’s face it. We haven’t been particularly nice about the Automotive X-Prize. While the multi-million dollar competition was originally designed to seek out new engineering talent and encourage automakers to go green, the event became a holding pen for the misfits of the automotive...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
Tuning Porsche's 911 GT3 R Hybrid Race Car: It's All Software
Road Atlanta -- Two days before the Porsche 911 GT3 R Hybrid competes for the first time on U.S. soil, the head of its development team said the company plans further development of the technology. Dr. Daniel Armbruster, whose official title is manager of the motorsports development process for the...
John Voelcker -
Lance Armstrong Takes Delivery Of His 2011 Nissan Leaf
Anticipation for Nissan's 2011 Leaf electric car is beginning to reach boiling point but for those who've put down deposits in the last few months, waiting for the car brings a mixture of frustration and excitement, like a kid on Christmas Eve trying to get to sleep before Santa arrives. Our own...
Antony Ingram -
How the 2011 Coda Sedan Hopes To Compete With the Nissan Leaf
Coda Automotive, the California startup that will begin delivering its 2011 Coda Sedan electric car at the end of the year, has ambitious plans. CEO Kevin Czinger expects to sell up to 14,000 all-electric compact sedans in the company's first full year of operations. The car is assembled in the...
John Voelcker -
Hertz To Rent Electric Cars Like Nissan Leaf In Selected Areas
Renting a car is one of the most common ways of driving a model you’re not familiar with. Now, as electric cars start to make their way into dealerships, they will be showing up in rental fleets as well. Hertz, the nation’s largest rental brand, announced last week that it would add...
John Voelcker -
As you might have already gathered, the Volkswagen empire is rather big. Owning Volkswagen (obviously) and Audi and having a large stake in Porsche, they're one of the biggest and most profitable car companies on the planet. Two marques you don't see Stateside though that also play a big part in the Volkswagen Audi Group (VAG) are Skoda and SEAT. The Czech and Spanish companies handle the budget and youth-orientated sports models respectively in Europe, allowing VAG to fill virtually every market niche its possible to fill. So with Audi showing us e-Tron concepts and Volkswagen planning...
-
Nissan All Smiles: TownPod Concept Unveiled At 2010 Paris Motor Show
If you remember back a few weeks you’ll remember that we were given a sneak peak at Nissan’s latest electric creation, the Townpod. We weren’t told much by NIssan at the time and spent some time cogitating over the enigmatic press release, which stated that the TownPod “is...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
Paris Motor Show: Ford Confirms C-Max Hybrid And Plug-In Minivans
Since launching the Ford Escape Hybrid in 2004, Ford has confined sales of its hybrid-electric vehicles to North America. But that's about to change. In European markets, where up to 50 percent of new cars are fitted with high-efficiency diesel engines, Ford has focused its efforts over the last...
John Voelcker -
Paris Motor Show: Jaguar C-X75 Turbine-Electric Supercar Concept!
We don't use exclamation points all that often, but once in a while it's justified. In this case, the Jaguar C-X75 Concept supercar just unveiled at the 2010 Paris Motor Show deserves one. If not several: !!! Not only is it sleek, sexy, and stunningly beautiful (to our eyes, anyhow). It returns...
John Voelcker -
2011 Nissan Leaf Won't Depreciate As Quickly As Critics Had Feared
Remember the June rantings of British motoring journalist Mike Rutherford, who warned in his column for the Telegraph that cars like the 2011 Nissan Leaf would retain just 10% of its original value three years after purchase? While Rutherford ‘s original article was based on figured provided...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
GM Electric Meriva Van Tests Vehicle-to-Grid Charging in Germany
Last summer, Karl Stracke, the vice president of global vehicle engineering of General Motors, said the company planned to test three battery-electric vehicles in different global regions. This morning, the company's Opel unit announced that it would test a fleet of Opel Meriva small minivans...
John Voelcker -
It’s tough being at the cutting edge of technology. Just like the early days of the video cassette or more recently, the high-definition DVD wars a technology becomes obsolete before its even had chance to take off. So what happens when over 600 EV chargers in the state of California are rendered obsolete thanks to a new national charging standard? You upgrade them, of course. Or rather EV Connect does. The company has just been awarded $1.9 million to upgrade charging stations all over California which were installed long before the 2011 Nissan Leaf, 2011 Coda Sedan and 2011 Chevy Volt...
-
Report: Electric Cars Best Way To Reduce U.S. Oil Dependancy
We like it when a study confirms a common-held belief. And for hundreds of would-be electric car owners across the U.S. a recent study has done just that. Years into the Military Conflict in the Middle East, and just months after the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill a team at Rice University have...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
Will the 2011 Wheego LiFe Be the First Electric Car On Sale?
Sometimes we avoid covering certain cars, for good reasons or not. One of those cars is the 2011 Wheego LiFe, a derivative of the 2009 Wheego Whip. Never heard of it? Not surprising. Wheego Electric Cars is a startup electric-car company, in this case selling an electric conversion of a...
John Voelcker -
Mercedes-Benz Reporter: Plug-In Hybrid Pickup Truck Concept
If you're all about saving gasoline--or "displacing petroleum," as energy wonks say--then the place to start may not be passenger cars. It may be commercial vehicles. From electric trucks in urban delivery fleets to more efficient hybrid-electric powertrains, there's a lot of innovation happening...
John Voelcker -
Thomas Edison's 1912 Electric Car Gets A Chance To Shine
American-born Thomas Edison might be best known for coming up with one of history's most significant inventions, the lightbulb, but the inventor had other bright ideas too. Just over a decade into the 20th Century, Edison also turned his hand to electric cars, as part of his vision to make the...
Antony Ingram -
2010 Paris Motor Show: Green Car Roundup of Production Models
The fall's first big European auto show, the 2010 Paris Motor Show, officially kicks off on Thursday, which is when all the press conferences happen. But the industry has been leaking out selected images, teasers, and occasionally full details on the concepts and production cars that will appear...
John Voelcker