Green Car News

The Monte Carlo Rally is one of the most famous events on the motorsport calendar. While the World Rally Championship visited the event back in January and the Monte Carlo Historic rally ended in February, an equivalent, the Rallye Monte-Carlo Des Énergies Nouvelles is also held for electric...

On the face of it, biofuels seem like an ideal short to medium-term solution for reducing our reliance on fossil fuels. After all, they could not only be grown at home--reducing dependence on foreign oil--but growing crops is also a renewable process, and net CO2 emissions are lower than burning...

London is making big claims that its Olympic games held this summer will be the greenest yet. To that end, it was announced last year that BMW would be supplying 4,000 of its low-emissions cars to the event, including 200 electric cars. The company has revealed that the first cars in its huge fleet...

Even supercar makers take the environment into account when designing a car these days. Modern Ferraris, Lamborghinis and Porsches have to meet the same regulations as regular passenger cars, even if ultimately they still use more gasoline and pump out more emissions. Ferrari is hoping to cut its...

On March 28, 2011, I took delivery of a European-specification 2011 Nissan Leaf. Yesterday, a few days short of our 1-year anniversary with the car, its odometer passed the 15,000 mile mark. But what have we learned about Nissan’s first electric car after living with it daily for a year?...

In the years since Soviet rule ended in Russia, the number of cars on its roads have steadily increased, driving pollution and congestion to unimaginable levels. Now Yo-Auto, the same Russian company responsible for the Yo-Mobile Hybrid Electric Car -- a vehicle already as synonymous in Russia for...

Last week, we confidently predicted that we’d be hearing more about BMW’s first all-electric and plug-in hybrid production cars -- the i3 electric minicar and i8 plug-in supercar -- as we neared the BMW-sponsored 2012 Olympics. For the past few weeks, most of the news we’ve heard...

Unless you live in one of the more northern states -- or spend a lot of time in snow-covered mountains -- the idea of driving on ice might fill you with a sense of foreboding doom. Especially if that ice happens to be covering a very large expanse of water. Enter former Automotive X-Prize entrants...

You'll already be familiar with ethanol-powered cars, but what about methanol? Both are alcohols, but methanol is even simpler than ethanol, containing only one carbon atom. It has less energy content than ethanol, and only half that of gasoline, but it's easier to produce. The fuel is now...

It still hasn't really registered in public awareness, but as we've said before, U.S. gasoline consumption has been falling since 2006. Now, it turns out that U.S. energy imports have been falling as well--from 60 percent in 2005 to just 45 percent last year. That can be attributed to two factors...

The 2012 Infiniti M35h hybrid large sport sedan is marketed by Infiniti as the "world's quickest (full) hybrid sedan," based on its 0-to-62-mph acceleration time of 5.5 seconds. Now it looks like the next version of the smaller Infiniti G sedan will use the same powertrain--which, in a smaller and...

Believe it or not, Volkswagen’s modern-day take on the classic Beetle has been in production for 14 years. But its cutesy curves and large, bug-like eyes meant many men avoided it, giving it the unceremonious title of being a “chick car”. So when Volkswagen put the Beetle under...

General Motors announced yesterday that it would replace the 120-Volt charging unit provided with every Chevrolet Volt, to provide what GM spokesman Randy Fox called a "more consistent charging experience." Back in July, we reported that some of the charging units provided in Volts were...

BMW might be more than a year away from bring its first production electric car -- the 2014 BMW i3 -- to production, but the German automaker wants you to know that it isn’t new to electric cars. You may not know it, but BMW’s electric car history spans 40 years. As part of its...

Chevy's Sonic marked a huge step up in quality and performance from its Aveo predecessor, but until now customers wanting the automatic transmission have been denied the turbocharged engine, and turbo fans have only had a manual option. That's set to change, as Chevrolet is now offering its...

Infiniti has been on something of a product blitz lately, launching its 2013 JX seven-seat crossover this month and a host of concept cars over the last year. Now it has confirmed it will show a new concept at the 2012 New York Auto Show two weeks hence: the Infiniti Zero Emission Concept Coupe. We...

A small SUV with the Mercedes-Benz "three-pointed star" sitting on the grille may not be everyone's idea of a green car, but as it's representative of the trend towards downsizing, it still marks an improvement over large, gas-guzzling SUVs. Even more so when it's the new 2013 Mercedes-Benz GLK...

Orders have been coming in ahead of projections for the European Opel Ampera, but sales prospects may be looking up in the U.S. too for GM's range-extended electric car.

It's not just how efficiently you burn it--it's the stuff you're burning, too. That's the message coming from the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, working with the EPA to tighten pollution rules for gasoline, reducing the proportion of sulfur from 30 parts per million (ppm) to 10 ppm. The oil...

In the toughest days of Tesla's early years, CEO Elon Musk said on film, he wired $3 million of his personal fortune to the company so it could make payroll. Now the always-quotable CEO is downplaying the effect the $465 million in U.S. Department of Energy low-interest loan guarantees it received...