Hybrids

The flurry of activity in hybrid and electric supercars has led to several concepts being approved for production, but BMW still hasn't publicly committed to a date for its high-tech green performance car. Mercedes-Benz has its SLS AMG E-Cell; Audi has the E-Tron; even Porsche gave the green light...

The Toyota Prius is the quintessential hybrid vehicle, with an instantly recognizable shape and a place in history confirmed by the South Park "Smug" episode. It seems like it's been with us forever, but in fact, Toyota only sold its very first 2000 Prius in the U.S. just 10 years ago. To celebrate...

It seems like almost every month or so a new start-up, often with roots tied up with a huge manufacturing conglomerate based in China, announces ambitious plans to launch a new generation of advanced hybrid or electric vehicles. Some of them become somewhat successful, like Coda, while others...

Many global automakers have research outposts in Silicon Valley. BMW's is one floor of an unremarkable office building in downtown Palo Alto, while Volkswagen's much larger Electronics Research Laboratory (ERL) occupies a whole building in an office park nestled in the foothills above Stanford...

We've told you many times about the upcoming 2011 Hyundai Sonata Hybrid--delving into its cosmetic and technical changes in our live coverage from the 2010 New York auto show, discussing how it fits in the Sonata lineup in a New York preview, reporting live from Korea on the Sonata Hybrid's...

Toss everything you thought you knew about hybrid-electric vehicles out the window. Porsche has just green-lighted production of a car that will shake preconceptions about hybrids to their roots. The Porsche 918 Spyder hybrid supercar, first shown as a concept at this spring's Geneva Motor Show...

Now we know: The first two plug-in cars from major manufacturers will go head-to-head on warranties and lease prices: $350 a month for the 2011 Chevrolet Volt, $349 for the 2011 Nissan Leaf. Now the choice shifts to other measures, including electric and overall range, as well as the plug-in perks...

It's no secret that Porsche has a new found love affair with vehicle electrification, having recently unveiled its first hybrid model ever, the 2011 Porsche Cayenne S Hybrid, as well as teasing fans with high-performance hybrids such as the 911 GT3 R Hybrid and 918 Spyder. Porsche even confirmed...

The convoluted twists and turns of possible Prius production in the U.S. have taken another unexpected bend. A Toyota executive has now told Reuters that the company intends to build the quintessential hybrid in the States, but not until its next generation is launched. That would be in 2016, since...

If you're one of the more than 16,000 customers who put a deposit down on the 2011 Nissan Leaf, you're in luck--you're among the first in line as Nissan begins checking out home installation issues before opening the actual order process to pre-registered shoppers. And you're no newbie. In fact...

A few years back Chrysler showed off all manner of hybrid, range-extended and all-electric concepts in the hope that these vehicles would eventually see production, thus catapulting the automaker to the forefront of the electrification revolution. Unfortunately, a global economic downturn and...

It's a wonderful TV news flash: Blind people in peril from killer electric cars! News at 11. The fear is that electric vehicles are so silent that blind people can't hear them coming, so new draft safety regulations may now require electric vehicles to emit sounds. There's just one problem...

Hot hatches. The Europeans love them, we--as a whole--apparently hate them, and consequently miss out on some amazing cars that our cousins across the Atlantic have been enjoying for years. But that’s all about to change thanks to stylish newcomers like the 2011 Ford Fiesta and upcoming 2012...

GM sells only about 10,000 Two-Mode Hybrids a year, but if nothing else, its system is technically sophisticated. Sophisticated enough, in fact, that a former General Motors employee and her husband have been indicted on charges of copying thousands of pages of GM documents on the system in January...

It’s not every day that a small guy gets embroiled in a lawsuit with an automotive giant like Toyota and actually wins but that’s exactly what happened in the case of Alex Severinsky and his claims of patent-infringement. The dispute actually dates back several years and surrounds...

The 2011 Volkswagen Jetta arrives this fall in showrooms, but the German automaker's already planning on two green versions of the new compact four-door for U.S. customers. When it goes on sale, the Jetta will assume its usual place in the VW lineup, beneath the Passat and atop a likely addition to...

Fisker has finalized its purchase of the GM factory where it will build its new plug-in hybrids.

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...

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...

Almost a year ago, General Motors launched a little marketing campaign connecting its 2011 Chevrolet Volt range-extended electric car to the figure "230 mpg." As we pointed out at the time, they were basing that projection on a proposed formula for fuel usage patterns that made a lot of assumptions...