Green Car News

$40,000 will get you plenty of electric cars these days, including the recently-unveiled 2014 BMW i3. They can be fun on the right road, and it's great knowing you aren't using any gas... but there have to be bigger electric thrills elsewhere, right? The GreenWing eSpyder could be what you need to...

Want an indication of just how quickly gas mileage is improving? Consider the 2011 BMW 335d. BMW's last diesel 3-Series model achieved a respectable 36 mpg on the highway and an unimpressive 23 mpg city, for a combined 27 mpg figure. The 2014 BMW 328d's gas mileage figures have just been revealed...

Land Rover's iconic Defender has proved itself many thousands of times over by now on everything from farms to off-road endurance rallies to the battlefield. Its latest task is a little more relaxed than those duties, but then the powertrain is a little different too. Land Rover's first electric...

Government lending to green technology companies has been a political hot potato in recent years. Huge loans were offered to dozens of companies. Automakers, solar companies, biofuel concerns and more received money, but high-profile failures like Solyndra lent credence to those critical of the...

California loves its hybrids. And according to figures from Toyota, it loves their hybrids more than anyone else's. A full 61 percent of new hybrids sold in California are from the Toyota brand, despite tough and growing competition from marques like Ford. The Blue Oval places second in...

Little fuels a passion for travel like a cross-country trip. Perhaps "fuels" is the wrong word though, as it's not unusual to see people attempt U.S. crossings using electrons these days. Terry Hershner has done just that, though not in the air-conditioned luxury of a Tesla Model S. Instead, his...

A new bill in the U.S. Senate would amend Corporate Average Fuel Economy rules to encourage production of a new class of natural-gas vehicles with "reserve" gasoline tanks. As demonstrated in a drive of prototype vehicles earlier this year, the range-extended natural gas cars would run for perhaps...

Electric or range-extended electric? It's a choice that normally means selecting between entirely different cars, but when the 2014 BMW i3 debuts in the U.S. next Spring customers will be able to choose both options in the same car. The range-extended option marks out the i3 as a competitor for...

Some of the most exciting hybrid technology isn't coming from Japan or the U.S. these days, but France. The PSA group, comprising Peugeot and Citroen, has already attracted plenty of attention for its hybrid-air technology. Now, it's looking for ways of improving the batteries in "micro hybrid"...

Venture capitalists fund a lot of startup companies, and most of them don't pan out. So famed venture firm Kleiner Perkins' stake in Fisker Automotive--which is still trying to sell itself, but hasn't built a car for 12 months--could be viewed as just another failed investment. On the other hand...

There can be few tougher tests for a car than as a taxi in New York City. Tough roads and even tougher traffic makes the city a workout for any vehicle, but one cabby is enjoying the Nissan Leaf he's driving as part of the city's electric vehicle trials. In fact, driver Uppkar Singh Thind described...

Since November 2006, our family has always owned at least one plug-in car and one powered by gasoline. For almost two years, our fleet has been a Nissan Leaf electric hatchback, and a used 2008 Toyota Prius. After two years and nearly 42,000 miles of driving the Leaf, however, our once high-tech...

The humble automatic transmission has come along in leaps and bounds over the year, and modern systems are often more efficient than their manual equivalents. For the manual gearbox itself, economy is still very much down to "the nut behind the wheel", so anything that optimizes a driver's shift...

Despite its pollution problems, China has never shown much interest in the electric car and sales have been a mere fraction of a fraction of the country's huge new car market. Not that Tesla Motors [NSDQ:TSLA] CEO Elon Musk is put off by unfavorable odds, as he pushes towards Tesla sales in China...

We cover China's air pollution problems with depressing frequency on Green Car Reports, but the country's pollution problems have until now been far more than token schemes are able to deal with. That could change over the next few years, as the Chinese government pledges to invest $283 billion to...

As you've probably discovered when hunting in the classified adverts for a used fuel-efficient vehicle, the latest batch of hybrids and small cars holds its value quite well. With high gas prices and limited supply, that's not much of a surprise. But the situation is getting better, and it's thanks...

For several years, Toyota had the hybrid market pretty much sewn up with its Prius. Okay, so it never reached the heady economy highs of the original Honda Insight, but it was far more practical and electric running made it the hybrid of choice in city driving. That's until the Ford C-Max Hybrid...

We won't see them in the States until early next year, but today the 2014 BMW i3 electric car was revealed in production form to the world at large. Some images had already leaked, and BMW had previously released some specifications and also information on the i3's connectivity and navigation...

You've likely never heard of a Hindustan Ambassador--and unless you're an old British-car geek, you've certainly never seen a Morris Oxford Series III. But the Ambassador--fondly known as the "Amby"--is both India's de facto taxi cab and the oldest production car in the world. Now it's been fitted...

For owners of electric vehicles, powering their homes and cars using solar panels mounted on the roof are a win-win scenario. Not only do they get to drive past every gas station, but home electricity bills are reduced or even eliminated. That's great news for the end user, but not so much for the...