Green

As the European brands chase the benefits of diesel in smaller cars--though they're sticking their toes in the hybrid/electric waters as well--the Japanese automakers continue to push forward with their established hybrid systems. The latest is Honda, which has revealed a new hybrid version of its...

 Build Your Dreams, one of China's largest battery and electric vehicle companies, has been telling us for months that it plans to bring affordable, competitive and safe electric vehicles to the U.S. market very soon. But as the months roll on, BYD's claim to get a car to market sooner rather than...

In news that will no doubt be music to the ears of any manufacturer planning to sell an electric vehicle, new research by the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) finds that two fifths of US adults are interested in test driving an EV. The study reveals that consumers are interested in the...

General Motors has been through the wringer over the last 18 months, nowhere more so than in North America, where it declared bankruptcy and was quickly restructured with $60 billion of Federal funds. But its overseas operations haven't had an easy time of it either, including its on-again...

Almost exactly a year ago, we wrote that Peugeot would display its 3008 HYbrid4 Concept at the 2009 Frankfurt Motor Show. Right on schedule, the French automaker is now showing the production version of the compact crossover ahead of its debut at next month's Paris Motor Show. Why would we cover a...

As we're faced with an increasingly large world population and ever-dwindling resources the race is on to produce cars that not only produce zero tailpipe emissions, but ones that are green to manufacture too. But what is the ultimate material for cars? Steel is strong, but hardly light enough to...

The upcoming 2012 Infiniti M35h hybrid sedan will be the first vehicle featuring Nissan’s own proprietary gasoline-electric hybrid system. If you don’t recall, Nissan has sold a hybrid vehicle before, in the form of the Altima Hybrid, but this model relied on technology borrowed from Toyota. As...

Electric vehicles might not be the first mode of transport you'd think of to drive around the world, but that's what the five teams taking part in the Zero Race have just set off to achieve. Starting from the Swiss capital city Geneva, the teams will cover 30,000 kilometers (18,650 miles) on their...

 The end of 2010 is seen by many in the automotive industry as the first hurdle for many budding electric car companies. By the end of 2010 both Chevrolet and Nissan will have plug in vehicles on the market, both at prices that will outcompete much of the competition. For the smaller automakers...

It's Friday, so we're straying slightly afield from covering cars. In this case, we're turning our green lens toward jetliners to look at fuel economy in the sky. Anyone who travels on a jet more than once has likely more than doubled their non-flying carbon footprint, and there are unlikely to be...

Not only do old cars pollute more than new ones, they pollute a lot more. According to a rule proposed by the California Bureau of Automotive Repair, fully “75 percent of vehicular pollution is caused by just 25 percent of the vehicle fleet" in the state. Those vehicles were built before 1995...

Range Fuels, one of the more successful biofuel startups backed by Khosla Ventures, announced today that it has opened up its first commercial plant to make cellulosic methanol out of non-food feedstocks. Located in Georgia, the facility is expected to pump out 20 million gallons of ethanol and...

Small companies developing hybrid and electric sports cars with Ferrari-rivaling performance may seem fairly common these days, and the latest entrant into this growing market segment--Izaro GTE--seems determined to follow in the footsteps of other fledgling green sports car start-ups. Izaro is...

It's easy to forget that BMW have already produced two EVs - the 2009 MINI-E, which is undergoing trials in the U.S. and elsewhere in the hands of individuals, and the 2009 ActiveE concept based on their 1-Series Coupe. BMW are busy working away on another EV though, one that will wear the famous...

There seems to be no end to the number of organic materials that can be converted into usable biofuel to power a car. We’ve seen fuel derived from garbage before, a race car that ran on chocolate, and even a Volkswagen Beetle running on fuel generated from human waste, and now we have news of a...

Everything old is new again. At least that's the hope of the California Energy Commission (CEC), who have just announced that they will be overhauling many of California's old charging stations. California has long been the at the centre of EV development and thanks to several EV programmes in the...

Just as dealers have to discount unpopular cars, they often add "surcharges" to models where demand outstrips supply. It's auto dealership yin and yang, or something. Now mega-dealer chain AutoNation has drawn a line in the sand, flatly stating that its dealers will sell their limited allocation of...

General Motors is calling on Chinese partner SAIC to help develop a new downsized gasoline engine family and an advanced dual clutch transmission, one of the first major developments between the two automotive giants and surely not the last. The new engines, which will be offered in displacements...

The dog days of summer may still be with us, but automakers across the globe are gearing up for the big Paris Motor Show, which kicks off just six weeks hence. This morning, Kia released teaser images of an electric concept car they will unveil in Paris. It's the Kia Electric Pop, an all-electric...

Last week, Karl-Friedrich Stracke, GM's vice president of global vehicle engineering, set to rest rumors of a mid-engine next-generation Chevrolet Corvette. That got a lot of attention among Corvette fans. But a footnote to the story was that Stracke said not only that a hybrid Corvette was...