Hybrids

We often say that many Toyota Prius hybrid owners and HUMMER drivers choose their cars for the same reason: They want to make a statement to other people about who they are. Now our pals at Wired have uncovered a fascinating (if small) sociological study that parses how HUMMER owners view their...

If you frequent this site, you've read all about electric vehicles and gas-electric hybrids. In those applications, electricity is stored in a battery, which powers an electric motor. That electric motor can either move the vehicle or assist the gas engine in hybrid configurations. One U.K. company...

The U.S. Department of Energy yesterday approved a $529 million low-interest loan to Fisker Automotive, which will start building its 2010 Fisker Karma plug-in hybrid luxury sports sedan later this year. Customer deliveries will start next May. In June, Tesla Motors received a $465 million loan for...

The 2010 Chevrolet Corvette goes like stink. Its 430-horsepower, 6.2-liter V8 is the epitome of all-American performance. And that's just the base car. The supercar contender ZR1 model heads straight into the stratosphere. The Vette is an icon, and GM messes with it at its peril. So a throwaway...

Since it was launched in 1997 in Japan, and 2000 in the US, the Toyota Prius has only been sold as a single body style. From 1997 to 2003, it was a subcompact four-door sedan. Since then, it has been a midsize five-door hatchback, thoroughly redesigned for 2010. Now, Toyota executives told its...

"Electric vehicles of today are less costly than in 1990s, but if you compare them with the other vehicles out there they are still too expensive." Those were the words of Toyota Executive Vice President, Takeshi Uchiyamada, at the Frankfurt Motor Show which opened to the press today. "Unless there...

Covering all the green-car bases at the 2009 Frankfurt Auto Show, Volkswagen unveiled not only the E-Up electric city car concept but also the L1, a radical 170-mpg tandem two-seat diesel hybrid streamliner it says it will sell by 2013. The L1 name refers to the European concept of a "1-Liter" car...

Which is faster, the 2010 Toyota Prius or its predecessor, the 2004-2009 Prius? On paper, the 2010 should win. Its engine is larger (1.8 liters vs 1.5 liters) and more powerful (134 total horsepower vs 104 hp). It's even got a lower coefficient of drag, the very respectable 0.25. This morning we...

It's time: the 2009 Frankfurt Auto Show is upon us, and High Gear Media is live at the biggest, hottest Messe in the world to bring you the latest on green cars, diesels, electric cars, hybrid electric vehicles, E-REVs, and NEVs right here at GreenCarReports.com. We've previewed the Frankfurt show...

If you like premium compact hatchbacks, Lexus has something for you - provided you live in Europe. As we've previously reported, Toyota's luxury brand will unveil their LF-Ch hybrid concept in a few days at the Frankfurt Motor Show and their most recent press release called our attention to some of...

We're a bit late on what's usually an end-of-month recap of the five most popular posts on AllAboutPrius.com. But, hey, we had a long Labor Day too ... and now we're back in business. So here they are for August. Unusually for us, compared to July's most popular posts, three of our Top Five are...

This is the face of the Lexus LF-Ch hybrid concept and it will probably come in colors other than baby poop metallic. This premium compact designed to compete with the Audi A3 and BMW 1-Series will have its public debut at the upcoming Frankfurt Motor Show. The concept is a dramatic departure from...

Hybrid vs diesel: It's a longstanding green-car conundrum. Which is better, a hybrid-electric vehicle that recaptures wasted energy in a battery and uses it to assist the gasoline engine, or an efficient modern clean diesel that goes further on a gallon of fuel? The answer depends in part on your...

Toyota will show the final version of its prototype Toyota Prius Plug-In Hybrid at the Frankfurt Motor Show two weeks hence, trying to keep up with the flurry of electric, hybrid, and diesel concepts to be shown there. With numerous concepts from German automakers, and GM pulling out all the...

Honestly, this post has very little to do with new cars for sale today. Instead, think of it another piece of green propaganda encouraging you to consider buying an emissions-free electric car when they start to enter the market in 2011 or thereabouts. The experimental alt-rock band They Might Be...

In recent weeks, BMW has set the blogosphere alight with a trickle of information regarding a concept that would be on display for the upcoming Frankfurt auto show. If you guessed that the new vehicle would be a turbo-diesel plug-in hybrid sports car, you were right. The so-called Vision...

Auto "influencers" are the people you ask whenever you have a car question. By virtue of editing AllAboutPrius.com and other High Gear Media sites, we're known as sort of a de facto influencer. And so we get some of the most random questions you can imagine. The latest was from the mother of a High...

Sunday! Sunday! Sunday! That's when we'll finally hear more about the BMW concept dubbed Vision EfficientDynamics. Until then, all we've got is these teaser images and the short, equally coy YouTube video below. The blogosphere is brimming with speculation as to what BMW is hiding, but we...

Well, here's a surprise. It's no news that Lexus has found it slow going breaking into the luxury market in Europe, which is dominated by Mercedes-Benz, BMW, and Jaguar. By contrast, Lexus has become the highest-selling US luxury brand since its 1989 launch, largely on the strength of its midsize...

Auto websites compete with each other to get the newest, the latest, and the coolest. Sometimes one or more of the 39 sites in the High Gear Media network gets a scoop (like our recent first drive of the 2010 MazdaSpeed3); other times, we don't. So we tip our hat to our buddies at Jalopnik, who got...