Hybrids

Last September, Toyota said the company would launch six new hybrids by the end of 2012. Now, a report from the German car magazine AutoBild suggests that one of those is a new Lexus: a baby brother for the brand's hugely successful RX 450h hybrid crossover utility vehicle. The new compact...

Pretty much every Toyota Prius hybrid you see on the streets looks the same. Wild customization is generally limited to personalized plates that promote the driver's green credentials, solar panels, eco-living, or general hybrid luv-luv-LUV. That's about to change. Toyota announced today it will...

Spare a thought, if you will, a momentary tear, for 85,000 doomed drivers of three models of hybrid car in California. They are the unlucky losers of a privilege that saved them time, raised the value of their vehicle, and undoubtedly increased their karmic contentment, all because of a set of tiny...

Toyota will recall 2006-2007 Highlander Hybrid and Lexus RX 400h hybrid crossovers to inspect and repair a component that could fail in the hybrid control system.

According to Russian billionaire businessman Mikhail Prokhorov, the company building a new natural-gas hybrid car known as the Yo now has orders stretching out as far as 10 years into the future. The business magnate, investor, and former basketball player told satellite TV channel Russia Today...

The 2011 Lexus CT 200h pretty much occupies a class of one. At the moment, it’s the sole luxury compact hybrid hatchback sold in the U.S. And it’s a dedicated hybrid, meaning there’s no gasoline-only version. If you want the compact hatch, you get the hybrid. It’s also terra...

If you want to buy a new 2011 Toyota Prius hybrid these days, you may have to scramble. Supplies are down to 3,000 units, which is less than 10 days' worth of sales. In auto industry terms, that means "sold out," and dealers are charging higher markups on the few precious Priuses they still have...

As we've said before, we love infographics. Some of our favorites come from AutoMD, which did the one we ran two weeks ago on rising gas prices and simple ways to boost your gas mileage. Now they've tackled the perennial question: How does a hybrid car work? Specifically, they dissect the third...

Nissan may have killed off its Altima Hybrid model, but the company is moving forward with a range of new hybrid models. This time, however, they'll be home-grown, based on the company's internally developed hybrid system. Nissan's new single-motor hybrid technology is considerably simpler than the...

The phrase "west side of LA" conjures images of the surf at Malibu, high-dollar real estate and, on the grittier side, the gangs from the bad old days of Venice Beach. Park those images next to the little video below from Smog and Fog Films. On the west side, apparently even mock-gangster rappers...

Add one more to the list of hybrid cars that have been sent off to the great gasoline-electric graveyard in the sky. Nissan will end production of its Altima Hybrid sedan after the 2011 model year. Launched in late 2007, the hybrid version of the Nissan Altima used Nissan's own four-cylinder engine...

It appears Volkswagen is copying Toyota’s commitment to offer a hybrid option on every model in its lineup, if the latest comments from the automaker’s CEO, Martin Winterkorn, are to be believed. The German auto giant sees hybrids, more specifically, range-extended plug-in hybrids, as...

In this day and age, when it comes to being green, looking at the end result is never enough. You have to take a life cycle approach to assessing how green something is, which in the case of cars, means looking at how they are manufactured and delivered to your driveway. Unfortunately, most cars...

Ford has made lots of changes to its model lineup of late, some of them remarkably quickly. Now comes word that the new Ford Escape compact crossover for 2013 may not include the Escape Hybrid model it has sold since 2004. We think that would be a terrible shame, because it takes off the market a...

Toyota has managed to make its Prius family iconic, instantly identified by its unique silhouettes and body styles, and almost synonymous with 'hybrid'; and this past year, GM's Chevrolet Volt, as well as the Nissan Leaf have gone on sale with distinct shapes calling them as among the greenest...

The upcoming Ford two-row C-Max Hybrid and plug-in C-Max Energi hybrid are still on track, but today Ford says it's canning the planned seven-seat, gas-powered C-Max minivan from its future product plan. The three-row C-Max would have been Ford's first minivan on sale in North America since the...

The 2012 Toyota Prius V wagon hasn't even reached U.S. dealers--it'll arrive this fall--but surging global demand has already convinced Toyota to raise production. The world's largest maker of hybrid-electric vehicles will boost Prius wagon production from 3,000 to 5,000 per month by September...

Smaller, more efficient engines that equal the power of larger, lazier ones are how automakers all over the world plan to raise fuel economy. Today Ford [NYSE:F] doubled down on engineering as the best way to boost gas mileage, with announcements about three separate technologies it plans to use in...

According to startup plug-in hybrid maker Fisker Automotive, production of its 2011 Fisker Karma luxury sports sedan recently started in Finland. The company says it is focusing on delivering cars to dealers, so aside from giving a very small handful of journalists some quick driving time within...

It may be the most star-crossed program in recent automotive history, and now it's apparently dead. According to Reuters, General Motors has canceled work on the planned plug-in hybrid version of its Cadillac SRX crossover sport utility. The canceled SRX plug-in would have been the second GM car...