Green Car News

Over the weekend, the 90th Pikes Peak International Hill Climb took place, pushing cars and drivers to the limit on the 12.42-mile course. For years, the event has been dominated by purpose-built gasoline-powered hill climb cars, but at this year’s event two all-electric cars placed in the...

It's fair to say that E15 gasoline--that's gasoline, blended with 15 percent ethanol--hasn't been universally popular, since being approved by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Not only are the blended pumps that serve it few and far between, but there are still clouds of doubt hanging...

Given the hurricane of bad publicity for the Chevrolet Volt last year over a battery-pack fire (in a crash-testing vehicle, a week after it was wrecked), any fire at all in a plug-in car is one too many. So the occurrence of a second fire among only 1,000 Fisker Karma range-extended electric luxury...

If racing improves the breed, then the next generation of Mitsubishi's electric cars could be a significant step up from the humble Mitsubishi 'i' sold today. The 'i' itself is the focus of Mitsubishi's efforts at this year's Pikes Peak International Hillclimb, where a production-spec car and a...

A car service, not for the rich, but for the rest of us. It’s a novel idea, and its time has come, thanks to on-demand car service startup Uber, which will soon start offering patrons a hybrid vehicle option for more affordable come-and-fetch-me rides. Uber is the San Francisco-based startup...

Volkswagen has long put faith in diesel technology as a way of offering both performance and economy to car buyers. In October, buyers will be granted a second option, however--with the launch of the 2013 Volkswagen Jetta Hybrid. Using a 1.4-liter, turbocharged and hybrid-assisted four-cylinder...

You only need to listen to Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk chat for a while to understand that there's more to Tesla than just electric cars--efficiency permeates through the company. That extends to the manufacturing process, and as production of the 2012 Tesla Model S continues, Telsa has just...

Last week, governors of more than 20 states joined together to ask the auto industry for a specific kind of car: a mid-size sedan powered by natural gas, rather than gasoline. This week, the industry responded, with auto-company representatives gathering in Oklahoma City to discuss the request with...

The 2012 Fiat 500 minicar started out as one model: a three-door hatchback. That was followed by a cabriolet (500C) with a roll-back cloth roof, and then the turbocharged 500 Abarth sporty model. Next up in the lineup may be the electric Fiat 500, which Car and Driver says will be dubbed the 500E...

As scientists have been warning for some time, the U.S. is at risk of losing its leadership in areas like Physics and Chemistry, thanks in part to a lack of public interest in the sciences. So when we found out that Toyota had paired its 2012 Prius V wagon with How Things Work for a web TV series...

This morning, Mitsubishi North America announced an official recall of certain 2012 Mitsubishi i electric cars after it became apparent that there may be an incompatibility between the air bag sensors and the car’s on-board diagnostics system. According to the official recall notice posted on...

Being a backseat driver may no longer be a bad thing. Luxury car brand Daimler AG just invested an undisclosed amount in ride-sharing startup Carpooling. Although Munich, Germany-based Carpooling declined to specify the size of the investment, other sources indicate that it’s of the order of...

It's been a very, very tough 18 months for lithium-ion cell maker A123 Systems. In late May, the company said there was "substantial doubt" about its ability to remain in business. Now, A123 has announced a tentative deal to recapitalize the company that would--if approved--give an 80-percent...

With the yen weak against the dollar, Japanese automakers like Honda, Nissan and Toyota are working hard to relocate production of U.S. market cars to the U.S. Now it seems Honda has chosen the U.S. as its development base for the next-generation Honda Civic, due some time around 2016. The...

If you’ve got children of a certain age, you’ll know how fond they are of the plastic ride-on electric cars you can buy at any toy store in the U.S. You’ll also know that as they grow, children quickly tire of the 5mph maximum top speed that most ride-on toys have. Not so for one...

Electric city cars are not a new concept, but in aiming vehicles at a city environment it can side-step many of the issues normally associated with EVs, such as short range and high pricing. Those issues are even less likely with the Hiriko electric car, which is designed to fill the "first and...

You'll be familiar with diesel cars, and familiar with hybrids, but as yet no manufacturer sells a diesel-electric hybrid car in the U.S. In Europe, things are different. Earlier this year, Peugeot launched the world's first diesel hybrid car, the 3008 HYbrid4. Positioned to compete between...

It seems that Nissan isn’t the only automaker suffering from low electric-car sales figures: Mitsubishi is too. Yesterday, the Japanese automaker announced a temporary halting of shipments of its all-electric i minicar to French automaker Peugeot Citroen. Slightly smaller than the U.S.-spec...

You might think that the wealthiest individuals in society--commonly known as the 'top one percent'--would flaunt that wealth with Ferraris and Porsches. On the contrary, it seems that they prefer to remain fairly low-key on the roads--and that the humble Toyota Prius is one of the most popular...

Ford is the current king at dribbling out factoids on future products (though Honda's been taking lessons). But buried toward the bottom of its current press releases on all three of its plug-in electric cars is a sentence that notes, "The all-new C-Max Energi plug-in hybrid begins arriving this...