Green Car News

The U.S. Department of Energy hasn't made any new loans under its Advanced Technology Vehicle Program in well over a year. At its current rate, it may never do so. The latest company to walk away from applications for low-interest loans from the $25 billion DoE program is Chrysler. This afternoon...

You have just two weeks left to vote for the Diesel Car of the Year award, which is organized by The Diesel Driver website. Every year, that site asks green-car advocates, diesel fans, and its readers to chose from its list of nominees. That list (below) includes all 13 passenger vehicles fitted...

It’s now been well over a year since the first 2011 Nissan Leafs were delivered to customers in California, Oregon, Washington and Arizona. But after one year, how are early Nissan Leafs performing? Are their battery packs still healthy, or have they started to show signs of wear already?...

Over the past few years, Toyota has run some pretty unusual ad campaigns for its range of Prius Hybrids, from the cute Harmony TV spot through to the mildly disturbing People Person creation and the downright hilarious Cleaner Than-A-Sheep print ad. Now the Japanese automaker wants you to don...

This is the week when driving impressions of the 2012 Fisker Karma have started to appear, as Fisker invites in waves of automotive journalists for a half-day of driving in and around Los Angeles. (We'll have our report early next week, but we had a brief drive a few weeks ago, and another with...

Sixteen months ago, General Electric announced it would place the "largest order in history" for electric cars, to be used by its employees who are issued company cars. Now, those cars are starting to arrive and be placed with employees. And where changes are made, personnel policies are sure to...

Let's say you're in the market for a small car, and you want the most economical one around in your budget. What are the options? Quite varied ones, actually - everything from electric cars, through hybrids, range-extended vehicles, gasoline and diesel. You might notice a few glaring omissions from...

We already know that appropriately-equipped electric cars can be used to provide emergency backup power to homes cut off from the electricity grid in a natural disaster, but can they also be used to help a city run as normal? Could they, for example, be used to power stop lights? It’s a...

Tesla Motors released its 2011 financial results today and held a conference call this evening for financial analysts to question officials. A number of interesting items emerged, largely from CEO Elon Musk. Perhaps the most significant is Musk's claim that Tesla won't need to raise any more...

To say the Chevrolet Volt range-extended electric car has become a political punching bag would be to understate the obvious. Now, GM is slowly, carefully trying to get the facts about the Volt out to the public at large, hoping to win hearts and minds in a larger battle involving electric cars...

Ever felt a bit cranky in the morning? Chances are, it's not for quite the same reason as it would have been for your great grandfather. Because originally, "cranky" was what people called you if you'd become flustered from trying to hand crank your recalcitrant automobile. But in 1912, that all...

Less than a week after Tesla Motors [NASDAQ:TSLA] unveiled the prototype of its 2014 Model X Crossover SUV at an exclusive event in Los Angeles, the Californian electric automaker has called it the fastest selling Tesla ever. According to a press release posted on Tesla’s website yesterday...

When it comes to gas mileage figures, we're always told "your mileage may vary". It's when that mileage varies outside of reasonable expectations that people start to take issue, and that's exactly what happened when 2006 Honda Civic Hybrid owner Heather Peters was unable to match Honda's 50 mpg...

Two days ago, President Barack Obama released his proposed U.S. government budget for the fiscal year starting in October. And in it, he followed through on a promise from his State of the Union address last month, by proposing to cut up to $4 billion in subsidies to the oil and gas industry. The...

In the past 15 years, the city of San Francisco has doubled the numbers of taxi cabs on its streets, up from 750 vehicles in 1997 to 1,500 this year. But thanks to incentives designed to get taxi operators behind the wheel of greener cars, 92 percent of San Francisco’s taxi fleet are either...

First deliveries for Tesla’s all-electric Model X crossover are still a couple of years away, but the Silicon Valley-based automaker was already hard at work selling it to potential buyers at last week’s party-style premiere, held at the automaker’s design studios in Hawthorne...

For some time now in a variety of motorsport disciplines, the engine and transmission has acted as a stressed member of the car's structure. What that means, is that rather than mount the engine and gearbox in a chassis, the drivetrain becomes part of the chassis - to which other components such as...

Honda has managed to raise the gas mileage ratings on all of its new 2012 Civic models, including the 2012 Civic Hybrid, which is rated at a combined 44 mpg. In a road test over several days last May, we managed to get a real-world 45.3 mpg over a route that was about two-thirds highway, one-thirds...

Toyota may be the acknowledged master of hybrid cars - after all, they were one of the first to the party - but Ford isn't about to let its Japanese rival steal the show. To this end, Ford is promising big things with the 2013 Ford Fusion Hybrid - including Camry Hybrid-beating fuel efficiency...

Let's imagine for a second that you have a family, and you need a vehicle to transport them around in. However, you're also looking to get a good mix of practicality and gas mileage, as gas prices aren't making those long vacation trips any easier. Your eye may have been caught by the 2012 Toyota...