Green Car News

As the brand-new owner of a 60-kWh Tesla Model S, I was eager to try out a Supercharger, the ultrafast 90-kilowatt DC fast-charging stations that Tesla is establishing along Interstate highways across the country. Model S owners--and nobody else--will be able to plug in and grab up to 150 miles of...

Following EPA head Lisa Jackson's resignation at the end of December, President Obama will nominate Gina McCarthy as her successor. McCarthy will become the Environmental Protection Agency's new administrator, following her role as head of the air and radiation office. A White House official has...

It was a Mercedes-Benz icon before it became a performance flagship. Now it's a messenger for the future: the gullwing's going electric. The SLS AMG Electric Drive electric car is closing in on series production, converting the octane-addicted supercar to fit a greener vision of the future. We've...

In utopian visions of the future, we won't have to burn anything to get anywhere. No fossil fuels, no coal, no burning of any sort. For some, that future is already here--plenty of electric car owners run their cars using solar electricity generated from panels at their home or place of work. It's...

We've written quite a lot about the gas mileage of Ford's two new 2013 hybrid models, the C-Max and Fusion hybrids. That's because a lot of shoppers and buyers have been talking about it. Both cars are rated at 47 mpg combined, and neither car seems to achieve anything close to that rating in...

Debate over the slow rollout and potentially damaging effects of gasoline with 15 percent ethanol blended in just continues to roll on. The latest to pile on are members of the Science Committee in the House of Representatives, which held a hearing Tuesday on the progress of EPA efforts to roll out...

Years ago, tourism officials in the Lone Star State adopted the saying, "Texas: It's Like A Whole Other Country". There's some truth to that, but the slogan might be most appropriate for California. Like Texas, California, is home to a diverse array of cultures and a wide range of environments...

U.S. sales of plug-in electric cars continued at a reduced level, as seems to happen every winter. The best-selling electric car, the Chevrolet Volt range-extended electric car, logged deliveries of 1,626 units, compared to 1,140 last month. That's a better number than the 1,023 Volts sold in...

No, that's not a misprint--Audi really is launching an A3 g-tron next to its A3 e-tron at the Geneva Motor Show. While the e-tron is a plug-in hybrid using Audi's in-development electric vehicle technology, the g-tron uses a different alternative fuel--natural gas. The 2014 Audi A3 g-tron is set to...

As any entrepreneur will tell you, starting a business isn't easy. Few know this more than Shai Agassi, founder of battery-swapping outfit Better Place. The company is making huge losses, has closed operations in some countries and even booted out Agassi himself as CEO. Still, Agassi is one of few...

Obviously, fuel economy will be an increasingly big deal in years to come. The gas-mileage ratings of new cars and trucks must double (and then some) between last year and 2025. But as two recent news events pointed out once again, EPA mileage ratings on the window stickers of new cars may not be...

Okay, so perhaps "McLaren-beater" is a bit of an exaggeration. The recently-unveiled McLaren P1 plug-in hybrid supercar has the looks, the heritage, the quality and indeed a full production run on the way--while the VOLAR-e from Spanish industrial design firm Applus Idiada is just a prototype. But...

When journalists and buyers alike found they were struggling to hit Ford's gas mileage claims for the Fusion and C-Max hybrids, we knew it wouldn't take long for the situation to escalate. Ford now finds itself on the receiving end of a consolidated lawsuit from two Californian law firms, filing on...

The Land Rover Defender is as much an automotive icon in Great Britain as the Jaguar E-Type, MGB or the Austin Mini. It's not as glamorous as any of them, but the car's chunky styling, go-anywhere ability and incredible longevity have resulted in the design barely changing since its introduction in...

Fuel cell vehicles have been garnering more attention recently, with the high-profile agreements between Toyota and BMW, and Renault-Nissan, Daimler and Ford. Not yet ready for the mainstream, fuel cell vehicles have so far been restricted to limited-run production models like the Honda FCX...

Rinspeed isn't the only unusual carmaker to originate from Switzerland. Fellow Swiss automaker Sbarro is another which periodically releases something weird and wonderful into auto show halls, and this year it's the turn of the Réact E.V. E.V. doesn't, as you might expect, stand for electric...

Electric cars aren't evenly distributed across the U.S. By far the largest single market for them is California. And in a sign of increasing adoption rates--there are now roughly 75,000 plug-in cars on the nation's roads--some electric-car drivers are facing a new problem. Charging stations in...

It's a subcompact. It's all-wheel drive. It's sort of a crossover, sort of a small wagon. It's also a Buick. Huh? We recently spent four days and covered 373 miles in a 2013 Buick Encore, the newest and smallest entry in the five-car lineup from GM's near-luxury brand. Despite its subcompact size...

Almost two years ago, I took delivery of one of the very first 2011 Nissan Leafs to be imported into the United Kingdom. With its two-year anniversary approaching, and more than 32,000 miles on the clock, has our family's opinion of the Nissan Leaf changed? What has life with the car been like? And...

No, seriously--it's a plug-in hybrid. It's not the most conventional of plug-in hybrids, of course. Unless we've missed something, Toyota's Prius Plug-In has no 903-horsepower version, nor does any Prius cost over a million dollars. But then, you can't expect something too conventional from...