Green Car News

MINI head, Dr. Kay Segler, recently told Car and Driver that diesel models for U.S. customers are a "medium term" consideration for the automaker.

California has long been at the forefront of developing rules to reduce automotive pollution levels, but a vote held yesterday could prove to be a landmark for green cars. The California Air Resources Board (CARB) has been voting on regulations requiring 15 percent of new cars sold in the state by...

A few days back we took a look at two similar, yet very different Hondas. The 2012 Honda Insight and 2012 Honda Fit share a platform, but different bodystyles and the use of Honda's Integrated Motor Assist hybrid technology in the Insight, makes each model unique. The same could be said of the...

According to the ninth annual Avoider study published yesterday by J.D. Power and Associates, many car-buyers avoid green cars because they’re too small, look strange, or cost too much. As we’ve previously found from other recent surveys, gas mileage proved to be the number one...

When Smart launched its ForTwo over a decade ago in Europe, the company heavily played the car's ability to park nose-on to a curb, thanks to its short length. Parking a Smart is hardly difficult anyway, but in crowded cities like Paris, Rome or Madrid, every inch helps. Still, that perpendicular...

If you’ve ever wondered why BMW’s upcoming 2014 all-electric i3 mini car and 2014 BMW i8 plug-in hybrid sports car are numbered the way they are, it’s because BMW plans to fill in the gaps with other plug-in models in future years. We all know that the BMW i3 and i8 are due in...

Ford’s continuing drive towards smaller capacity, direct-injected, turbocharged, fuel efficient engines continued today as it announced yet more Ford cars and trucks will get EcoBoost engine options during 2012. Moreover, Ford claims that by the end of the year, nine of its production...

"Although we loaded the Volt with state-of-the-art safety features, we did not engineer the Volt to be a political punching bag. Sadly, that is what it's become." That's how General Motors CEO Dan Akerson described the furor surrounding the Chevrolet Volt battery fires. A pack demolished in NHTSA...

Ask about green cars and most buyers think only of gas mileage. But there are other ways to make vehicles greener, including the use of renewable materials to replace petroleum-derived synthetic components. For its all-new 2013 Escape crossover, Ford has created door bolsters from a plant called...

The state of Kansas is famous for a lot of things, from its wild sunflowers and large wheat-fields through to its miles and miles of straight roads, an incredibly flat landscape, and a certain 1939 musical about a little girl, a tornado, and her dog. This week however, Kansas became one of the...

A southern California Prius owner learned the hard way that energy-efficient building windows can reflect enough sunlight to melt plastic.

If you're in the market for a fuel efficient vehicle your choice is better than ever. Virtually every manufacturer now offers a high-mpg vehicle, but Honda could lay claim to being one of the first. Since the Civic arrived back in the 1970s, the Japanese carmaker has made fuel economy a high...

Technology market research firm Gartner announced yesterday that it forecasts plug-in car sales in the U.S. will top 100,000 vehicles during 2012. But with 2011 sales figures much totaling just over 17,000 fully electric and plug-in hybrids, is it conceivable that total plug-in car sales will more...

At the end of 2011, Tesla released its final specification, options and price list for the 2012 Model S sedan. Depending on the choice of battery pack, the 2012 Tesla Model S should travel 160, 230, or 300 miles per charge. For Tesla Model S owners who have purchased cars with the 230 or 300-mile...

Five days ago, when we told you the National Academy of Sciences was backing the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s findings into unintended acceleration issues concerning Toyota Priuses, we speculated it wouldn’t be the last we’d hear on the matter. Now an American...

Think about the names given to electric cars and electric motorcycles on the market today. Most, if not all, are a play on the concept of all-electric, zero tailpipe emissions travel. So when we heard about a team of engineers in Henderson, Nevada who were developing a new electric motorcycle...

Automakers have long known there's a double standard for gas mileage. Cars have to meet higher goals, trucks have less stringent requirements. And the larger the vehicle, the lower the average fuel economy it has to deliver. The proposed fuel economy standards for 2017 through 2025 vehicles...

One of the biggest criticisms of electric cars is that they only move the pollution from the tailpipe of a car to the smoke stack of a power station. But a new application developed by General Motors' OnStar devision aims to help Chevrolet Volt owners charge their plug-in hybrid when it will have...

There are two kinds of traffic, neither of which is particularly pleasant. The first is moving traffic. It's slow, tedious, and something many of us are unable to avoid on our daily commutes. Movement is movement though, which makes stationary traffic a hundred times worse. Not only are you not...

Last year, Chris Paine’s sequel to Who Killed The Electric Car? --Revenge Of The Electric Car -- premiered to a packed audience at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City. Since then, the independent docufilm has shown at various art houses and community theaters across the U.S, but...