Green
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This post will be short and sweet, since we have an early wake-up call for our drive from Boston to New York City tomorrow. We began the day in Montreal, stopping by the famous Schwartz's Deli before setting out for Montpelier, Vermont. In Montpelier, we explored the picturesque city--the smallest state capital in the U.S. by population--after chowing down on a lunch prepared by students at the New England Culinary Institute. From Montpelier, we headed south to Barre, where we stopped by Hope Cemetery, which is home to some unusual headstones, as well as to some very old, very artfully...
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2011 Lincoln MKZ Hybrid Says "Green" With...Flowers
In the green-car world, the leaf is the king of all icons. The 2010 Honda Insight fertilized the idea when it bowed in 2008; it still promotes greener driving with electronically rendered displays of plants that add leaves as the car's computers sense a light, planet-conscious foot on the gas...
Martin Padgett -
GM Turns To Scare Tactics To Sell The 2011 Chevrolet Volt
Fear is a powerful motivator. It has been used in the past to start wars, persuade kids to study at school and of course, sell life insurance. But now GM appears to be gearing up to use the fear of running out of electricity to give the extended-range 2011 Chevrolet Volt a competitive edge over...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
California's HOV-Lane Access Being Expanded To Include More 'Green' Cars
Fans of the Chevrolet Volt and Toyota Prius now have another reason to look forward to purchasing one, with news coming out this week that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has signed a measure allowing up to 40,000 more motorists in the state of California to drive solo in carpool lanes. The bill, SB 535...
Viknesh Vijayenthiran -
Nissan Limits Initial Leaf Rollout To 200 Cars In Five States
Nissan is taking orders today for the Leaf, the first mass-produced, all-electric vehicle, but it’s only offering up 200 cars for December delivery. Those Leafs will go to five states in the initial rollout market – California, Washington, Oregon, Arizona and Tennessee — which...
John Voelcker -
2011 Ford Fiesta World Tour Day Two: Misadventures In Montreal
OK, that headline is misleading. I just wanted to get you to click. We didn't REALLY have any misadventures in Montreal, but our time here on this leg of the Ford Fiesta World Tour has been interesting nonetheless. We started the morning at Niagara-On-The-Lake in Ontario, Canada, and then...
Tim Healey -
Don't want a 2011 Chevrolet Volt or 2011 Nissan Leaf? Fear not - there are a raft of other EVs waiting in the wings to satisfy your desire for something different. If you live in the U.S. though, you'll have to wait until late 2011 to get your hands on Mitsubishi's 2012 i-MiEV. For EV fans in 14 European markets, potential buyers will be getting the car as soon as December this year, with prices starting at less than 30,000 Euros ($38,000). That's still a lot of money of course, especially considering that the price Mitsubishi are quoting takes government incentives into consideration. The...
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Lithium-Ion Batteries Get Green Kudos, Better Than Gasoline
In a week where many mainstream media outlets are claiming electric cars are prohibitively more expensive to own than gasoline counterparts, a team of Swiss researchers have released conclusive data showing that the environmental impact of the electric car is much less than most gas cars. As any EV...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
Global Toyota Prius Hybrid Sales Level Off As Incentives End
Talk about up-again, down-again. It was just a year ago when a global shortages of 2010 Toyota Prius models kept supplies tight all over the world. Now, they may start to pile up on dealer lots again. Last summer, the company had just launched the all-new 2010 Prius, the third generation of the...
John Voelcker -
2011 Ford Fiesta World Tour: Day One
Ford keeps moving with the marketing for its Fiesta small car. After building buzz with the Fiesta Movement, the company has invited assorted media types to take part in a 57-day world tour, in which Fiestas are being driven around the world. This journalist hopped on board in Detroit, and I will...
Tim Healey -
Tesla Fined $275,000 Over Emissions Regulations
With electricity not always generated through renewable methods, it can be hard to claim that an EV is truly zero-emissions. It's generally accepted that you aren't pumping any gasses out the back as you drive along, though. Well, the car shouldn't be anyway... Despite this, electric vehicle...
Antony Ingram -
2011 Nissan Leaf Orders Commence. Fast Charge Option $700
It's been the most anticipated all-electric car of 2010 with well over 13,000 pre-orders in the U.S. alone. We've driven one twice and loved the car's well-finished trim, impressive handling and accurate range calculations using the car's built-in GPS. Our very own Marty Padgett is one of the...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
Lotus is proving to be a major player in the hybrid and electric vehicle segments, having been the provider of the rolling chassis for the Tesla Roadster and also the supplier of engineering expertise for a number of production and concept hybrid vehicles launched by automakers around the globe. The British sports car company is actually at the forefront in hybrid and electric vehicle technology, having already shown off its own advanced Evora 414E range-extended electric vehicle concept, and now following it up with two additional vehicles. Set to debut next month at the 2010 Paris Auto Show...
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U.S. Army Goes Electric With Smart-Grid Enabled EVs
The U.S. military is hardly the first place you'd look to find an electric vehicle, but Canadian firm Rapid Electric Vehicles has just received a four-vehicle order from the U.S. Army for a test fleet of all-electric vehicles. The vehicles will be tested by the U.S. Army Tank Automotive Research...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
2011 Ford Fiesta Shipments Resume After Floods, Parts Problems, And Plague of Locusts
The eagerly awaited 2011 Ford Fiesta subcompact has had more than its share of challenges, but Ford wants you to know it has resumed shipping the little sedan and hatchback models. New ones should be showing up at your dealer within days. The latest issue was a problem in an unidentified part that...
John Voelcker -
Startup Transonic Injects Supercritical Fuel For 30% MPG Rise
The principles of the gasoline engine have chugged along for a century now without much change. The last big evolutions were variable valve timing and the switch to fuel injection from carburetors. Now a flurry of innovations to boost fuel efficiency is in the pipeline. One of them comes from a...
John Voelcker -
More Smart ForTwo Trouble: Owners Least Likely To Buy Another
As regular readers know, we've never been big fans of the Smart ForTwo minicar. It's not that we dislike small two-seaters; in fact, we think they're cool (unlike most U.S. car buyers, we should add). No, our problems with the Smart stem from its unpleasant driving quality--the slamming shifts from...
John Voelcker -
At 307 MPH, Ohio-Built Electric Racer Is Anything But Slow
Land speed records have long been a integral part of motor racing, but for many years electric vehicles have been viewed as slow and cumbersome. With a 0-60 mph time of less than four seconds, the 2010 Tesla Roadster Sport certainly puts the myth of slow vehicles to bed, but just how fast can an...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
We've always had a soft spot in our heart for the tiny Tata Nano, the world's least expensive car and India's equivalent of the Ford Model T that put the U.S. on wheels a century earlier. The Nano may or may not ever be sold in the United States, though Tata says a revised version will be offered here in 2012. But as full-scale production ramps up in India, a fleet of nine Nanos has completed 26 days of long-distance driving across India, visiting 36 cities along the way. The stunt was a combination of marketing scheme to remind Indian car buyers that they can now order Tata Nanos--for...
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Tomorrow's Power Today? New Battery Is Most Powerful Ever
The electric motor is a great invention, but it's entirely limited by the power that the battery can feed to it, and that power is limited by the amount of energy the battery can store. Battery technology is in constant development behind the scenes, though, and the latest to emerge in research at...
Antony Ingram -
Tesla Scores More From Toyota's Big Fremont Factory Sale
It's been almost three weeks since we published a Tesla story. We trust that means that the Silicon Valley electric-vehicle startup is working away feverishly on the designs, engineering, production plans, and manufacturing site for its Model S four-door sports sedan, which it is still promising...
John Voelcker -
Not All Nissan Dealers Will Initially Specialize In 2011 Leaf
Remember how we found out a few weeks ago that some Nissan dealers in the U.K. were blissfully unaware of specifics of Nissan's first publicly sold production electric car? According to the dealers we spoke to, the 2011 Nissan Leaf would charge to full in ten minutes, would not be eligible for...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
Toyota Prius To Make Noise During Electric Running, in Japan
In another step toward making silent electric cars less so, Toyota Prius hybrids sold in Japan are to be offered with an optional system that broadcasts a "humming" noise outside the car whenever it operates solely on electricity. The system is Toyota's response to the fears of blind people that...
John Voelcker -
Why Are Luxury and Sports Brands Going Green? To Survive
It was so much easier just a few short years ago. Luxury cars wafted and sports machines roared, with nary a thought to gasoline consumed. Hybrids were for weenies, and everyone knew their place. But now? A hybrid Ferrari, a hybrid Porsche race car, an electric BMW ... what is the world coming to?...
John Voelcker