Green Car News
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For Fisker Automotive, the last twelve months haven’t been exactly easy. Beset by delays, recalls and even a legal case from an irate investor, Fisker hit a low point in February when it was forced to lay off workers after missing deadlines associated with much-needed U.S. Department of Energy low-interest advanced-technology vehicle manufacturing program loans. Now, according to a local Delaware news site, Fisker has laid off another 12 workers at its Delaware factory, essentially pushing it into hibernation. The factory, formerly owned by General Motors, had been earmarked for some...
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Electric-Car Politics: Attacks Hurt U.S. Innovation, Security
The partisan politics around electric cars have been poisonous pretty much since they launched in December 2010. But commentators are now raising two issues that had almost gotten lost amidst Congressional hearings on Volt battery fires, the GM bailout, the Solyndra collapse, and lazy reporting...
John Voelcker -
11 Months, 36,000 Miles In A Nissan Leaf Electric Car? No Problem
In the minds of many consumers, electric cars like the 2012 Nissan Leaf are over-priced, second-cars that are only capable of short trips around town. We’ve proven that sentiment wrong ourselves, covering just over 15,000 miles in a year in our 2011 Nissan Leaf. Earlier this week however, we...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
Higher Gas Prices Don't Change Buyers' New-Car Choices Much
Fuel efficiency is making news headlines lately, with new-car sales achieving record high fuel-economy numbers in the U.S. (and in the U.K. as well). But a survey of car buyers last month by industry analyst AutoPacific seems to contradict the idea that high gas prices are leading buyers to change...
John Voelcker -
2012 Ford Focus Battery Pack Cost: $12,000-$15,000, Says CEO
Over the past few years, there’s been a lot of speculation surrounding the actual cost to automakers of the lithium-ion battery packs used in most modern electric cars. Unfortunately, the automotive industry hasn’t been keen to disclose any figures, but on occasion we’ve managed...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
Honda Starts Hybrid Battery Pack Rare Earth Metal Recycling
Over the past few decades, demand for rare earth metals, has dramatically increased. So called because they are difficult to find in large deposits and often difficult to mine, rare earth metals are used in everything from electronics devices to hybrid and electric car battery packs. Now increased...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
Bridging the gap between battery electric vehicles and gasoline-electric hybrids we find cars like the 2012 Toyota Prius Plug-In and the 2012 Chevrolet Volt. Both are essentially hybrid vehicles, but use the technology in different ways to achieve different aims. Ultimately though, which vehicle costs less to run? Ray Iannuzzelli at GM-Volt.com has saved us all the leg-work by calculating the cost per mile of each vehicle--and the sort of journeys over which each car would be preferable. Ray used EPA data wherever available to work out the cost per mile of each vehicle. This meant considering...
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Volvo Unboxes V60 Plug-in Hybrid...Literally
Unless you’ve been living in a tech-free bubble for the past decade, you’re probably familiar with the concept of the unboxing video. Common since Internet video-sharing site YouTube became popular, the archetypal unboxing video documents the almost ceremonial removal of a new computer...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
Small Four-Cylinder Engines Are Here To Stay
There was a time when most car buyers looked on small capacity four-cylinder engines with distain. To them, unless an engine had 6-cylinders or more, it was over-stressed, underpowered and only fit for use in small European or Japanese economy cars. Nowadays, increases in gas prices, combined with...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
2013 Audi Q5 Hybrid Coming To The U.S. Soon: Report
Audi will reportedly export its 2013 Q5 Hybrid to the United States in the not-too-distant future.
Kurt Ernst -
Four-Cylinder Volvos Return To U.S. In Fall 2013
It's been eight years since Volvo offered a four-cylinder car in the United States--in the S40 sedan and V40 wagon--but come fall 2013 the four-pot drought will be over. Volvo has announced that the new 2.0-liter four-cylinder will be used in the front-wheel drive versions of the S60 and S80...
Antony Ingram -
2012 Ford Focus Electric To Pace NASCAR Race
Since it was officially launched at the end of last year, only a handful of 2012 Ford Focus Electric hatchbacks have been sold. That’s hardly surprising considering Ford has been particularly cautious about spending large amounts of money advertising its first production electric car. In...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
It's not news that new, higher fuel-economy standards will raise the cost of future cars in real dollars. Now a new study, funded by the National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA), suggests that those increases will prevent up to 7 million buyers from affording new cars in 2025. That's out of a pool of perhaps 80 or 100 million potential buyers, mind you--not 7 million out of the 13 to 15 million people a year who actually buy vehicles. The study is based on debt-to-income ratios from a large consumer sample provided by U.S. Bureau of Labor statistics. Increases up to $3,000 by 2025? The...
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Does Public Charging Network Confusion Hurt Electric-Car Use?
Ask most non-electric car drivers why they haven’t even considered an electric car, and the reason they give will undoubtedly involve some form of range anxiety: the idea that an electric car will run out of juice before it reaches its destination. On the other hand, as those who own an...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
Ferrari Hybrid Patents Revealed, Two Motor System
"Ferrari hybrid" is right up there with "Porsche diesel" and "Bentley SUV" as far as oxymorons go. Even so, Porsche has been producing diesels for several years now, soon to hit the U.S, and Bentley showed an SUV concept at the 2012 Geneva Motor Show, so maybe it isn't that unusual after all...
Antony Ingram -
Open-Source Electric Cars? Umm, No, NOT A Good Idea
In the world of software, open source is officially A Good Thing. It enables a far greater creative and technological base to tweak and change a piece of software than might be possible from within the company that created it. Many are keen on the concept of open source electric cars--that is...
Antony Ingram -
2012 Mitsubishi 'i' Electric Car To Climb Pikes Peak, In Stock & Race Versions
The hills are alive with the sound of... well, very little, if this year's Pikes Peak hill climb will be anything to go by. Electric cars are no stranger to the hill, with Nissan entering a Leaf and Summit Motorsports setting a new electric car record in last year's event. Mitsubishi announced last...
Antony Ingram -
2013 Dodge Dart Compact Sedan Priced From $16,790
Dodge has priced its new Dart compact sedan from under $17,000, including destination charge.
Kurt Ernst -
If you ever studied business at school or college, one of the first things you probably learned is about profit and loss. In order to maximize your profits--and avoid making a loss--your aim is to maximize revenue while minimizing costs. Someone at Tesla Motors was paying attention in class, as its factory in Fremont, California, is full of refurbished machinery and low-cost IKEA furniture--minimizing the cost of production. According to Bloomberg, Tesla's vice president of manufacturing, Gilbert Passin, wanted to ensure that everything the company does has a good value return. That means...
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2012 Toyota Prius V: Service Alert (Exhaust Actuators)
At the end of last week, Toyota quietly announced a service campaign to rectify a potential problem with the exhaust system on the 2012 Toyota Prius V. The voluntary service campaign will focus on weak actuators located within the exhaust heat recovery system on the 2012 Toyota Prius V which, under...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
2013 Chevrolet Volt Details: New EV-Hold Mode, MyLink, Safety Systems
If you want a 2013 Chevrolet Volt range-extended electric car, searching the web may not get you much. Chevy hasn't yet put details of next year's Volt model on its website, for instance. But it did release ordering details to its dealers, and the intrepid sleuths at GM Inside News uncovered them...
John Voelcker -
Sapphire Energy Gets $144 Million To Turn Algae Into Gasoline
Sapphire Energy, a company that creates algae-based fuel, just announced a whopping $144 million in funding. In recent years several startups have emerged to create fuel out of plant material, all hoping to lure people away from gasoline made from crude oil. Solazyme, Algae.tec, and Sapphire Energy...
VentureBeat's GreenBeat -
2012 Nissan Leaf: No More Reservation Fees, Buy Like Any Other Car
When Nissan first launched the 2011 Leaf, it introduced an online reservation system for would-be owners of the all-electric hatchback. Instead of relying on Nissan dealers to assess demand, Nissan opened up a dedicated reservation website, where those interested could pay $99 to be given a place...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
First Chrysler Plug-In Hybrid Minivans Delivered For Testing
There's likely a huge market demand for higher-mileage minivans and wagons, but so far, the 2012 Toyota Prius V is the sole entry that gets more than 40 mpg in EPA testing. So the news that Chrysler delivered four plug-in hybrid versions of its Town & Country minivan to the city of Auburn...
John Voelcker