Green Car News

If you're trying to get your hands on a plug-in Ford, it should soon get a little easier. Ford will more than quadrouple the number of dealers able to sell its plug-in models, the Ford Focus Electric, C-Max Energi plug-in hybrid and Fusion Energi plug-in hybrid this year. According to The Detroit...

After just about four years of waiting, my 2013 Tesla Model S has arrived. Almost. The call from the Tesla delivery rep came on February 4, the last day of the two-week delivery window promised back in December. My car, with metallic green paint, 60-kilowatt-hour battery pack, black leather...

Electric car owners coming out of winter will know just how much of a drain a car's accessories can put on their range. That makes energy-efficient accessories like the Bose Energy Efficient Series audio system available with the 2013 Nissan Leaf an easy option to understand. With no engine roar to...

If you've been following our reports on battery-swapping company Better Place, the news probably won't come as much of a surprise. The company has decided to shut down its operations in the U.S. and Australia, to concentrate on its original markets of Denmark and Israel. Loss-making Better Place...

If you were a car dealer, would you decide not to sell a plug-in electric car because you had to buy a $5,000 tool to service it? We didn't think so. Late last year, trade journal Automotive News wrote a story saying that a few Chevrolet dealers have stopped selling the Chevy Volt range-extended...

Who'da thunk it? Young buyers may love Camaros and Mustangs, but when it comes to smaller cars, American brands have traditionally played second best to imports. But the Chevrolet Spark minicar is proving much more successful, bucking all the trends. It's even stealing plenty of buyers off its...

We're always interested to hear what sort of cars our readers drive. We're even more interested to hear what gas mileage you're all getting from those cars. Testing a car for a weekend, or a week, is all well and good, but a wide cross-section of owners will always get wildly varying results...

It's become increasingly common for carmakers to solicit volunteers to lease new-technology cars for a year or two, to gather real-world data about how the cars are actually driven and used. But those cars remain development prototypes, not production-quality vehicles. And as BMW ActiveE drivers...

What motivates you to buy a green car? For some, it's the desire to do just a little to help the environment. For others, it might be the technology. Some may simply want to save money. If the latter is a major factor, you may be interested to know that the cheapest car to run over five years is...

Analyzing electric-car sales numbers and prognosticating on them is somewhere between a parlor game and a black art. Now one blogger has applied some Nate Silver-like statistical analysis to try to divine predictive patterns in sales of the Chevrolet Volt, the range-extended electric car that's...

A select few drivers on the U.S. West Coast have already been enjoying Honda's token contribution to the electric car market, the Fit EV. Now their counterparts in some East Coast markets will be able to lease the small EV too. Drivers in California and Oregon have had access to the 118 MPGe...

If you're reading this, you probably already know a little bit about Tesla. Brainchild of entrepreneur Elon Musk, producer of electric vehicles, and upstart in the automotive market, Tesla Motors [NSDQ:TSLA] has been one of the highest-profile new brands of recent years. That high profile has done...

Every month, the University of Michigan sends out its weighted average of the gas mileage of all new cars sold the previous month. And for January, the news is good. The new vehicles sold in the U.S. during January scored a sales-weighted average fuel efficiency of 24.5 mpg. That's up 0.4 mpg from...

It happens every so often: a spate of media reports with gloom-and-doom headlines about what a dismal failure electric cars are. Take, for instance, this morning's in Reuters--"Electric Cars Head Toward Another Dead End"--or a weekend report in The Detroit News entitled "Electric Vehicle Sales...

Last week, the Chinese company Wanxiang got U.S. government approval to buy bankrupt lithium-ion cell maker A123 Systems. With that underway, will China's largest auto-parts company now turn its sights toward one of A123's biggest customers, Fisker Automotive? That seemed to be the implication from...

The Tesla Model S Performance looks great on paper. Not only does the 85 kWh Model S have an impressive 265-mile EPA-rated range, but it'll do the benchmark 0-60 mph sprint in only 4.4 seconds. That means the all-electric luxury sport sedan from Tesla Motors [NSDQ:TSLA] is at least as fast as V-8...

We’re going to let you in on a little insider’s secret: when manufacturers are shilling their wares, they tend to favor statistics that illustrate their own version of the truth. As any politician (or car company) will tell you, you can always find a set of numbers to work in your...

Sales of plug-in electric cars tripled last year, so how's the New Year looking? Based on January sales, being reported throughout the day by automakers, the year is starting slowly. General Motors said it delivered 1,140 Chevrolet Volt range-extended electric cars last month. That's more than the...

General Motors has announced more shuffling of its future-tech facilities. Back in October, the automaker shut down a fuel cell center in Honeoye Falls, New York and shifted operations (along with 220 jobs) to Pontiac, Michigan. Outposts in Torrance, California, Castleton, Indiana, and Warren...

If you've heard of a 1951 Atlas Babycar, 1954 Cuno Bistram or a 1956 Eshelman Deluxe Adult Sport Car, you've probably visited The Bruce Weiner Microcar Museum in Madison, Georgia. Filled with the tiniest, oddest cars you could ever contemplate, the museum was a shrine to the largest collection of...