Green Car News
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It's been out in the U.S. for over a year now, but today marked the first delivery for a Telsa Model S on European soil. The first 2013 Tesla Model S delivered in Europe rolled out of a Tesla Store in Norwegian capital Oslo, according to the Tesla Motors twitter feed. Norway is Europe's most electric car-friendly country, with strong sales for models like the Nissan Leaf and a proliferation of public charging points around the country's cities. In addition, electric cars in Norway are exempt from the country's hefty sales taxes, road tax fees, license fees and even parking fees--so buying and...
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2013 Smart Electric Drive Coupe Lease Price Lowered To $139
The prices just keep falling on plug-in electric cars. The latest to announce a new, lower lease price is Smart, which cut the monthly cost of a three-year lease on its 2013 ForTwo Electric Drive Coupe from $199 to just $139. That's not the lowest single electric-car lease we're aware of in the...
John Voelcker -
2014 MINI Cooper To Be Unveiled November 18
You might not be familiar with Sir Alec Issigonis, but his name has made as much impact on the motoring landscape, particularly in Britain, as anyone else in the history of the automobile. Issigonis was the man behind the Austin Seven and Morris Mini-Minor--the famous Mini. He died in 1988, but...
Antony Ingram -
Why 'Compliance Cars' Turned Out To Be Good For Electric-Car Buyers
Electric-car advocates spend a lot of time grumbling about compliance cars. But it turns out that even in low volumes, limited mostly to sales in one state, they've unexpectedly produced a benefit for all electric-car buyers: lower prices. Recent price reductions to "move the metal," as Detroit...
John Voelcker -
Toyota Hybrid R Concept Due At 2013 Frankfurt Auto Show
As teaser images go, it doesn't leave us much to go on. But Toyota's Hybrid R logo, in familiar Hybrid Synergy Drive blue and with the smallest hint of a checkered flag graphic, suggests the company's next concept will be rather more racy than normal. Toyota will show the Hybrid R Concept at the...
Antony Ingram -
BMW i8 Plug-In Hybrid Sports Car: More Details Emerge
BMW has only just officially revealed its electric i3 city car, but already the German automaker seems ready to tease us with its i8 plug-in hybrid sports car. The company has released further details on the i8's plug-in drivetrain, with detailed images showing some of the i8's more intimate...
Antony Ingram -
Volkswagen Group of America has confirmed that its latest generation of 2.0-liter clean diesel engines will debut in the U.S. in the second half of 2014. The engine, a version of which is already on sale in several European VW group models, will see service in the 2015 model-year Golf, Beetle, Passat and Jetta. Designated EA288, the 2.0-liter, four-cylinder turbocharged diesel unit is a direct replacement for the 2.0 TDI currently found in several VW group vehicles. With common rail technology and direct injection, total output is boosted to 150 horsepower--10 hp more than before--and torque...
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Would You Retrofit A Range Extender To Your Electric Car?
Companies that convert regular gasoline cars to electric, or add a plug-in option to regular hybrids, are nothing new. The same can't be said for companies taking electric cars and turning them into range-extended electric vehicles with small gasoline engines--but that's exactly what Hyperdrive...
Antony Ingram -
Audi A3 TDI Ultra Is Audi's Most Fuel-Efficient Car Ever...But Not For U.S.
The 'Ultra' tag will be familiar to fans of endurance motor racing, seen since 2010 on Audi's Le Mans-winning race cars. It hasn't yet featured on an Audi production car though, up until now--and as you'd expect, it's Audi's most fuel-efficient production car ever. The Audi A3 1.6 TDI Ultra uses a...
Antony Ingram -
Plug-in Electric Car Sales In Canada, July 2013: Tesla On Top?
July marked the 237th anniversary of the American Republic, and the 146th birthday of Canadian Confederation. While it could also have marked another month for the Chevy Volt as the best-selling Canadian plug-in electric vehicle, when the vehicle registration data comes out, we may see the Tesla...
Matthew Klippenstein -
Hyundai To Develop Renewable Hydrogen Station In California
Hyundai has announced plans to transform an existing hydrogen refueling station in California into a cutting edge renewable fueling station. The station will be built on the site of an existing hydrogen station at Hyundai America Technical Center Inc. in Chino, California. The original station was...
Antony Ingram -
2013 Tesla Model S: New Options, Packages, And Prices
It's still fairly early days for the Tesla Model S, and while the car is finding fans across the globe, it's still seeing various updates and option packages that early buyers didn't have access to. Tesla Motors [NSDQ:TSLA] has recently announced a new line of option packages and pricing for...
Antony Ingram -
The 2014 Chevrolet Volt electric car will carry a base price of $34,995, a cut of $5,000 from the 2013 model. That price includes an $810 destination fee, but not any optional equipment. Chevrolet has "made great strides in reducing costs as we gain experience with electric vehicles and their components,” said Don Johnson, Chevy's vice president for U.S. sales and service. “The 2014 Volt will offer the same impressive list of features, but for $5,000 less" than its predecessor. And the lower price "broaden[s] its exposure to price-sensitive prospective buyers," Chevy notes. Lower...
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Hey, Electric-Car Fans: Are You 'The Electric Generation'?
Marketing plug-in electric cars isn't all that easy. There are many different reasons people buy electric cars, and for the mass market, the high prices against gasoline cars of the same size can lead to sticker shock. So among the many efforts to put a little muscle behind explaining why plug-in...
John Voelcker -
Cars Bursting Into Flames All Over China--And They're Not Electric
Discovering fire is undoubtedly a high point in mankind's history, but it's easy to overlook its benefits when it's consuming something you own. We'll forgive you if your thoughts turned towards electric cars at this stage. After all, the last few years have seen a few high-profile electric car...
Antony Ingram -
Real-World Gas Mileage Varies By Brand; Honda Does Well, Ford Not So Much
Just how close do cars get to their official EPA gas mileage figures? We expect it's a question many of our readers are familiar with--either in keeping an eye on their own car's gas mileage, or from friends asking about their next car. It's become all the more important in recent months, with...
Antony Ingram -
Chevy Volt Plug-In Electric Cars Now Have Battery Cells Made In U.S.
Over the next few months, the Chevrolet Volt will get just that little bit more American--as its battery cells are now produced in the U.S. Korean battery maker LG Chem opened a plant in Holland, Michigan two years ago, and production of lithium-ion cells for Chevy's range-extended plug-in Volt is...
Antony Ingram -
Solar Power Initiative By DoE Could Make Grid Electricity Cleaner, Cheaper
Some of our electric car-owning readers already reap the benefits of solar energy with roof-mounted panels, but on a grid level solar still has a long way to go. The U.S. Department of Energy wants to change that, revealing targets that would mean one third of the Western U.S. energy demands could...
Antony Ingram -
Ford plug-in hybrid drivers are really making the most of the electric range of their vehicles--with nearly 60 percent of trips done entirely gas-free. That's according to Ford itself, using aggregated data from the MyFord Mobile app. The most interesting thing is that as many Ford plug-in owners are driving gas-free as their Chevy Volt counterparts, despite the shorter electric range. One year ago, we reported how 63 percent of Volt miles are electric--suggesting drivers really were making the most of their Volts and plugging in wherever they could. At the same time, the remaining 37 percent...
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Tesla's Musk Promises Deep Dive Into Electric-Car Emissions
The environmental impact of plug-in electric cars is a hot topic right now, and a fiercely debated one at that. A couple of weeks ago, Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk pledged to dive into it himself. Musk tweeted, "Am seeing many poorly argued attacks on 'true' CO2 impact of electric cars. Will rewrite...
John Voelcker -
BMW i3 Electric Car Coming, But BMW Believes In Fuel Cells Too
All eyes have been on BMW over the past few weeks as it launched the 2014 i3 electric car, two years after the concept first debuted at the 2011 Frankfurt Auto Show. So where does BMW go from here? A wider range of electric cars, perhaps? Well, yes--with the BMW i8 sports car and mooted i5 on the...
Antony Ingram -
Plug-In Electric Car Sales For July: Leaf Up, Volt Down (FINAL UPDATE)
Sales of plug-in electric cars continued at a relatively steady pace in July, keeping the sector on track for something near 100,000 sales by the end of the year. While last month's half-year total wasn't quite enough to double the 2012 total of 53,000 electric cars, sales are now running at an...
John Voelcker -
Facing Fuel-Economy Fracas, Ford Focuses On Gas Mileage Myths (Video)
Many buyers of new Ford cars--both its 2013 C-Max and Fusion hybrids, and those fitted with its EcoBoost line of downsized, turbocharged engines--report real-world gas mileage much lower than the cars' EPA ratings. Ford is trying to counter almost a year's worth of media attention to these concerns...
John Voelcker -
Via Motors Latest To Try Electric Vehicle-To-Home Backup Power Tech
Japanese companies have explored the concept of electric vehicles powering houses for some time, but with events like last year's Hurricane Sandy fresh in peoples' minds, some U.S. organizations are investigating it too. One of these is the Department of Defense. Another is Via Motors, the Bob...
Antony Ingram