Green Car News

Car rental firm Hertz got in there early with electric cars, saying as far back as 2010 it would put the Nissan Leaf on its fleet. Several plug-in models have followed, and for its newest initiative, Hertz is targeting younger drivers. A Chevrolet Volt has joined the University of Connecticut's...

Unless you follow green cars fairly closely--or perhaps live in California--you may not know that the Golden State now requires the sale of certain number of battery electric cars. Between 2012 and 2014, the six highest-selling carmakers in the state must sell a combined 7,500 zero-emission...

Audi's A8 L may be a big vehicle, but with one of Audi's famed TDI engines under the hood, you know it's unlikely to drink fuel like a big vehicle. That TDI engine is a 3.0-liter V-6, developing 240 horsepower and a chunky 406 pounds-feet of torque. Despite the performance on offer--60 mph will...

Nissan announced today that it would provide 40 quick-charging stations to NRG, which will use them to expand its eVgo electric-car charging network into the Washington, D.C., region. Working with its dealers, local authorities, and charging-station partners. Nissan hopes to triple the number of...

Are you in the market for a hybrid car? You probably want great gas mileage, without switching to diesel fuel, or taking the next step into plug-in vehicles. The good news is, plug-ins aside, virtually all the most fuel-efficient cars on sale right now are hybrids. Whether you're after a spacious...

Right now, we seem to get news about Tesla Motors or Fisker Automotive almost every day. Some is good, some isn't. Yesterday, Green Car Reports editor John Voelcker sat down with High Gear Media's social-media manager, Joel Feder, to discuss the two companies in a Google+ Hangout on Air. The live...

Their part in the future energy mix for vehicles may be small, but several companies are taking a renewed look at hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. That's if recent partnerships are anything to go by, at any rate--Toyota and BMW recently joined forces, as have Ford, Renault-Nissan and Daimler. The U.S...

It's now clear: Volume deliveries of the second version of the 2013 Tesla Model S began this month. That would be the version fitted with the middle of three battery-pack sizes, with a stated energy capacity of 60 kilowatt-hours. The news does not come from Tesla Motors [NSDQ:TSLA], a company that...

We get asked a lot whether winter weather makes electric cars impractical. Short answer: No. We even rounded up some of the best electric-cars-in-winter stories last month. But it's a fact of physics that a plug-in electric car will have a longer range in temperate Southern California than in the...

Ask the average person how far an electric car will go on a charge, and they'll probably say "around 100 miles". In reality, most electric cars have an EPA range lower than that--the Tesla Model S an honorable exception--but driving conditions can have a large effect on just how far they'll go...

Recent pollution figures in Chinese capital Beijing have made 1970s Los Angeles look like a crisp day in the Rocky Mountains. The city, like Hong Kong last month, has finally decided to take action, and the city's acting mayor is set to scrap 180,000 old vehicles from the roads. Additionally...

Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk is hardly shy and retiring. He tweets out random financial results, states as fact things that haven't quite happened yet, and regularly speaks his mind. Yesterday, he described the troubled Boeing 787 Dreamliner's battery pack design as 'inherently unsafe,' which could...

It isn't easy bringing a new hybrid to market against the might and experience of Toyota--but Ford is certainly managing. The 2013 Ford Fusion Hybrid is setting record hybrid sales numbers for the company, and even beating down Toyota's share of the hybrid segment. The striking styling of the...

The turn of last century must have been a fascinating period to live in. Within the last quarter century or so, the car itself had been invented by Karl Benz. Virtually every automotive advancement changed the direction of the automobile, and--perhaps more significantly than anything else--nobody...

Imagine if you were being charged tens of dollars to drive into the center of your home city each day. Around Europe, many drivers already face such a charge. London is one such city, and residents have been paying to enter the center of the capital since 2003. Low-emission vehicles have commonly...

We tend to like small cars, as a personal preference. But the very smallest of cars often don't get the best gas mileage, and they can feel subjectively unsafe in some driving conditions. So how did our 2013 Chevrolet Spark minicar do on gas mileage? We've concluded that--depending how you use...

The market for electric cars is a dynamic beast, different companies offering different options and usage varying all around the world. As with the U.S, European drivers now have access to a small selection of genuinely usable electric vehicles, from the Nissan Leaf, through the Chevrolet Volt and...

Want to improve your gas mileage but aren't ready to take the plunge into hybrids or plug-ins just yet? What you'll want is a diesel, then--and as Chevrolet is set to unveil the 2014 Cruze Diesel, due this year, your options have just increased. The Detroit News reports that Chevy will unveil the...

He has his eyes on space, and is changing the world of automobiles with his Tesla electric cars--but now Elon Musk is offering a hand to Boeing, too. The Tesla Motors [NSDQ:TSLA] CEO tweeted Saturday that he was in talks with the chief engineer of Boeing's Dreamliner 787 aircraft, currently...

It's no good simply producing green cars these days--you have to be green at every stage of producing the cars, too. With GM using solar at its Detroit-Hamtramck plant and Volkswagen recently unveiling a huge solar array at its Chattanooga plant, Honda is next to display its green credentials--with...