Green

Despite the appealing 2010 Milan Hybrid, the Mercury brand hardly springs to mind when you think "green car". In fact, it hardly springs to mind, period; Ford's upmarket brand has languished for years with little product and even less attention. Now that's going to change. Ford confirmed yesterday...

Pretty much every manufacturer is now at least experimenting with hybrid cars. The bulk of them use a high-voltage battery pack to store and deliver energy to supplement a gasoline engine. But in its experimental 911 GT3 R Hybrid test car, Porsche has taken a different tack toward energy...

The largest car rental agency on the planet, Hertz, has given its approval to the concept of all-electric cars. Hertz announced today that it would make Leaf models available at selected rental locations in the U.S. and Europe, starting next year. With its 100-mile range, the five-seat Leaf would...

After the rapturous reception for three successive models of its e-Tron electric coupe concept at the Frankfurt, Los Angeles, and Detroit auto shows, Audi announced it would build and sell a small number of the electric supercars. Now we know a few more details of Audi's plans. And it seems Audi...

We'd be remiss if we didn't nod to the Vancouver Olympics, opening today, and highlight their heavy reliance on mass transit to move spectators and athletes around the scenic seaside region. In particular, we note that electric vehicles play a major role. Take, for instance, the city's streetcar...

And now, for today's great green concept, we present: Overhead highway lights powered by wind turbines, which are spun by the air turbulence generated as cars and trucks whiz past at speed. Like many such concepts, this one's conceptually brilliant: Use all that wasted wind to do useful work, in...

When Mazda launched its 2011 Mazda2 subcompact hatchback at last year's Los Angeles Auto Show, many journalists noted that the doors were locked--and the windows were tinted so no one could see inside. Why? Because Mazda hadn't finished work on the interior. Well, now it's February, and they're...

Yesterday we drove the 2011 Ford Transit Connect Electric, and later today we'll have a drive report for you. But if you'd rather not wait until November or December for to buy Ford's first-ever electric vehicle, perhaps you'd consider a slightly used electric car on eBay? This 1918 Rauch and Lang...

The Chicago Auto Show is traditionally all about trucks, and in this slow year it's pretty light on green cars. A welcome exception comes from Korean maker Kia, who just unveiled their Ray plug-in hybrid concept car. The Ray points the way toward a stylish compact four-door sedan that's both...

Everything you need to know about the recalls affecting the 2010 Toyota Prius, and the 2004-2009 Prius too

It's long been known that Ford's first electric car would actually be a truck. Now, we have all the details of the 2011 Ford Transit Connect Electric, an all-electric conversion of the Transit Connect commercial van that offers a range of up to 80 miles on a full charge. The 2011 Transit Connect...

So what exactly IS a "green car"? At both the Los Angeles Auto Show and Detroit Auto Show, you could find the word "green" all over the place. LA has been pitching itself for years as the greenest auto show, with fewer muscle cars and more hybrids, clean diesels, and so forth than any other U.S...

Many reviewers lauded the new, third generation 2010 Toyota Prius hybrid when it launched last spring--but wondered why it didn't use a lithium-ion battery, rather than 15-year-old nickel-metal-hydride technology. Now we learn that the 2010 Prius was indeed supposed to have a new, more energy-dense...

One of our favorite cars from the 2009 Los Angeles Auto Show was the CMT-380 supercar concept from Capstone Turbine. To show off potential automotive uses for its C30 micro-turbine, it built an extended-range electric car using the turbine to add up to 500 miles to the 80-mile range of its...

Before either car launched, the 2010 Toyota Prius and 2010 Honda Insight were viewed as natural rivals. Would the third generation of Toyota's definitive hybrid be threatened by Honda's "least expensive hybrid", which too offered five doors and good gas mileage? What a difference a year makes...

The U.S. government isn't the only one that gives grants and loans to help automakers develop advanced-technology vehicles. The U.K. government's Technology Strategy Board does it as well, for companies that build cars there. Luxury carmaker Jaguar Land Rover, collaborating with Lotus Engineering...

UPDATE: The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has opened a formal inquiry into the brakes of the 2010 Toyota Prius hybrid. It has now received 124 complaints of faulty brakes, out of roughly 37,000 of the cars sold to date in the U.S. Toyota said it would cooperate fully with the...

Things are moving fast in the land of Toyota safety issues and recalls. Yesterday, we told you that the 2010 Toyota Prius was being investigated for braking problems in Japan. Today, Toyota has admitted that most 2010 Prius models (those built between the start of production last spring and late...

UPDATE, February 8, 2009: Speaking in a sort-of-webchat on Digg, Toyota president Jim Lentz said of the Woz complaint, "We are working with him on the operation of the cruise control." Please forgive us while we quietly smirk. ++++++++++ It's obviously pile-on-Toyota week. Transportation Secretary...

The Tesla Roadster may be going out of production in 2012, but Tesla drivers--and electric vehicle drivers in general--are nothing if not resourceful. First, in December, the company managed a cross-country road trip, driving a Roadster from Los Angeles to Detroit. Now, we find that a Colorado...