Green
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Four months from now, the world's first extended-range electric vehicle will start showing up at dealers. The 2011 Chevrolet Volt will introduce car buyers to the idea of a range-extending combustion engine that turns a generator to power the car electrically. But the generator in an E-REV can be driven by many different things that produce torque. Now AVL Powertrain Engineering proposes that rotary engines make more sense as range extenders than they do for powering cars directly. And AVL is not alone. The Audi A1 e-Tron concept minicar shown at the 2010 Geneva Motor Show last March used...
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Leno Wants It Known: He Likes the 2011 Chevy Volt, Really Likes It
OK, file this one in the Tempests & Teapots folder: A "visibly annoyed" Jay Leno has now defended Chevrolet's 2011 Volt electric car. He wants it known that he likes the car. Really, he does. The comic claims he was quoted out of context by Detroit News reporter Robert Snell, who wrote that...
John Voelcker -
Detroit Dinosaur Thinks Kilowatts Are a Buzzkill, World Laughs
As any parent will tell you, progress takes time. Evolution often takes a much longer time yet. So rather than pounding our head on the wall when we read idiotic editorials, perhaps we should take a deep breath and calmly reflect that those who can't adapt to change will eventually die out. What...
John Voelcker -
BREAKING: Honda Plans Electric Car, Plug-in Hybrid For 2012
Just like last week's Toyota-Tesla announcement, the rumor mill went into overdrive yesterday with talk of plans from Honda to build both electric cars and plug in Hybrids in the near future. Knowing full well how the world's largest manufacturer of internal combustion engines felt about battery...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
Fisker Takes Possession Of Ex-GM Factory, Production To Start In 2012
Fisker has finalized its purchase of the GM factory where it will build its new plug-in hybrids.
Nelson Ireson -
Honda To Launch Plug-In Hybrid Car in 2013, A Year After Toyota
It's been a time of turmoil for Honda lately, with the company doubling down on hybrids and pulling back on its clean-diesel efforts. Now, according to a Reuters report, the company will introduce both a plug-in hybrid and a fully electric car for the 2013 model year. The electric car will be...
John Voelcker -
We're living in exciting times. In the next year we'll see electric cars hit the market in the form of the 2011 Chevrolet Volt, 2011 Nissan Leaf and 2011 Mitsubishi i-Miev to name just three. While we wax lyrical about the multitude of vehicles set to reach the market there are very few available on the sort of money most folks consider spending on a car. In fact, right now we can't think of a single highway-capable car coming to market in the next twelve months which costs under $30,000. Those cars under that price are generally low-speed Neighborhood Electric Vehicles, or NEVs for short...
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Obama Meets The Volt: Sparks Barely Fly
President Barack Obama’s electric vehicle tour climaxed last Thursday with a visit to the Compact Power battery plant in Holland, Michigan, where he was treated to his first extensive experience with the upcoming 2011 Chevrolet Volt. The Holland plant just happens to be the place where LG Chem...
Viknesh Vijayenthiran -
2011 Chevy Volt Doesn't Impress Leno; World Yawns, Ignores Him
Talk-show host and comedian Jay Leno has long been known as a car fan and collector. And car companies often play nice with him to get their products onto his show. While GM worked with Leno on his EcoJet green sports car in 2006, the company is hardly a patsy. Leno told the Detroit News that the...
John Voelcker -
Honda Doubles Down on Hybrids, Dumps Clean Diesel To Go Green
Although Honda designed and sold the world's second hybrid-electric car, the 1999-2006 Insight, the company hasn't done nearly as well in hybrids as its larger rival Toyota. Now the company has reinforced its earlier suggestion that it would significantly beef up its hybrid efforts by providing...
John Voelcker -
Fisker Dealer: Karma Plug-In Sedan Deliveries Start March or April
We've written before about the schedule for the 2011 Fisker Karma, which (like many other electric cars) has slipped a bit since the car was first unveiled. Now Fisker's newest dealer, located in none other than LA's epicenter of green consciousness--namely Santa Monica, California--says that the...
John Voelcker -
BREAKING: The RAV4 EV Is Returning, Tesla, Toyota Confirms
Remember yesterday's article where we spoke about rumbles from the rumor mill at Toyota and Tesla? Industry insiders had told two auto sites that the two companies were working together on a supercar and a re-development of the classic RAV4 EV. We said yesterday that the possibility of the RAV4...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
Ending weeks of speculation, Tesla and Toyota announced today that they plan to develop an all-electric version of Toyota's RAV4 small crossover, using Tesla's battery and electric drive technology in Toyota's vehicle. Last week, chairman Akio Toyoda announced that Toyota was already working to fit Tesla battery packs into test vehicles. Then, news reports had identified the two vehicles Tesla was developing for Toyota as the RAV4 and the Corolla sedan. Now the joint announcement, issued in Tokyo and Palo Alto, California, has confirmed the accuracy of the RAV4 reports, following just a few...
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Are Tesla And Toyota Re-Electrifying RAV4EV, Going Supercar?
We've known for some time that Toyota and Tesla are planning on working together on an EV, despite protests to the contrary. But with two separate rumors breaking today this partnership looks ever more likely to produce not one, but potentially two very interesting cars. That's if the rumor mill...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
Rabobank, SolarCity Switch On Chargers Along Highway 101, CA
California's Highway 1, otherwise known as the Pacific Coast Highway is one of the world's most famous roads and one we should all drive at some point in our lives. Some 400 miles of driving, a trip from San Francisco to Los Angeles might be a fun journey in a gas car, but isn't a trip many would...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
General Electric Unveils EV Charger, $200M Smart Grid Tech Contest
General Electric stepped up its game in the smart grid industry today, launching both a charging device for electric vehicles and a $200 million contest calling for projects working to make electrical grids cleaner and more efficient. Both developments were rolled out under the banner of...
John Voelcker -
Spy Shots: Top Secret Rolls-Royce Phantom Hybrid Revealed!
Sometimes, we get the most amazing stuff in our e-mail. Most spy shots show up on our sister site, MotorAuthority.com, but once in a while, sometimes they come directly to us here in green-car-land. Which is how we ended up with these spy shots, taken by a reader on his mobile phone while walking...
John Voelcker -
2011 Chevrolet Volt Battery Pack Warranty: 8 Years, 100K Miles
General Motors announced today that it would offer an 8-year, 100,000-mile warranty on the battery pack, the charger, and the Voltec electric drive components of its upcoming 2011 Chevrolet Volt electric car. The announcement sets to rest potential worries that Volt owners might be stuck having to...
John Voelcker -
This must be Fiat 500 News Week. How else to explain the drumbeat of announcements, from its innovative TwinAir engine to a special U.S. model offered only to current Fiat owners? Today's item: The company will develop a mild hybrid version of its 500 minicar, fitted to the 0.9-liter TwinAir two-cylinder engine. Its goal is to reduce the little car's carbon-dioxide (CO2) emissions to just 70 grams/kilometer, far lower than any other non-electric car. Fiat plans to pair its 900cc twin to a sophisticated dual-clutch transmission (DCT), which will include a very small 5-kilowatt electric motor...
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2011 Ford Fiesta Subcompact: You Gotta Wait Two More Weeks!
The 2011 Ford Fiesta subcompact is one of the more eagerly awaited cars arriving in the U.S. market. Winning points for styling, equipment, and performance, it's Ford's first high-volume European car to be sold here. But eager buyers and test drivers will have to take a breath and wait for just a...
John Voelcker -
Reward For Old Fiat Owners, Finally: New 2011 Fiat 500 Special Edition
It hasn't been easy being a Fiat fan in the U.S. these last, oh, 20 or 30 years. Sneers of "Fix It Again, Tony!" due to rusty and unreliable cars were followed by Fiat fleeing the U.S. market in 1983 with its tail tucked between its legs. But now, with the imminent debut of the 2011 Fiat 500 late...
John Voelcker -
Ultimate Green SUV: For $225K, Range Rover Electric Conversion
Ask most consumers to describe an electric car and the chances are they will talk about the Tesla, the 2011 Nissan Leaf, maybe the 2011 Chevrolet Volt. They almost surely won't think of the large, luxurious, and expensive Range Rover. They may talk about how expensive EVs are. And unless they're...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
Tesla Takes The Trendy Train, Hires Ex Apple-Stores, Gap Guru
Super sexy Silicon Silicone Valley darlings Tesla Motors might be feeling a little motion sickness after the ups and downs of its first two weeks on the stock market, but its most recent hire brings a whole new level of retail chic to its aggressive sales plans. You'd be forgiven for thinking that...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
No, Electric Vehicles Won't Bring Down the U.S. Power Grid
Last week's heat wave prompted another eruption of that perennial question: Won't electric cars that recharge from grid power overload the nation's electricity system? Or put more bluntly: Will electric vehicles bring down the U.S. power grid? The answer, equally bluntly, is: No. They won't. (And...
John Voelcker