Hybrids

One of the criticisms of hybrid cars has historically been that there's no payback, especially given the cheap gasoline prices in the U.S. The extra money you spend on a hybrid isn't returned in gas savings, say critics. Well, that may be true, especially when regular gasoline is averaging $2.77 a...

Hyundai is on a roll in general, and last week we published the first 2011 Hyundai Sonata Hybrid drive report, by our colleague Marty Padgett. This very important model is the carmaker's first-ever hybrid to be sold in the U.S., but far from the last.  In 2012, Hyundai plans an upcoming dedicated...

It's Friday, the day when we round up the random items we've received all week and decide what to do with them. This one, we decided, deserves a reader poll. What do you think, was this innocent grey second-generation Toyota Prius keyed by someone who hates the fuel efficiency and green image of...

The 2011 Ford Escape Hybrid will likely be the last year for Ford's original hybrid vehicle, launched way back in October 2004. At the end of July, Ford had sold 98,500 Escape Hybrids, more than half its total sales of 139,700 hybrids of all types. But all good things must come to an end. For 2012...

Well, business sense, that is.

The flurry of activity in hybrid and electric supercars has led to several concepts being approved for production, but BMW still hasn't publicly committed to a date for its high-tech green performance car. Mercedes-Benz has its SLS AMG E-Cell; Audi has the E-Tron; even Porsche gave the green light...

The Toyota Prius is the quintessential hybrid vehicle, with an instantly recognizable shape and a place in history confirmed by the South Park "Smug" episode. It seems like it's been with us forever, but in fact, Toyota only sold its very first 2000 Prius in the U.S. just 10 years ago. To celebrate...

Many global automakers have research outposts in Silicon Valley. BMW's is one floor of an unremarkable office building in downtown Palo Alto, while Volkswagen's much larger Electronics Research Laboratory (ERL) occupies a whole building in an office park nestled in the foothills above Stanford...

Green conscience and new technology are both laudable, but getting extra money in your back pocket is nice too. Now, after all those years of paying taxes on your hard work, you can finally get some of it back. Consider it a tax refund for buying an electric car. Now that we know the purchase and...

We've told you many times about the upcoming 2011 Hyundai Sonata Hybrid--delving into its cosmetic and technical changes in our live coverage from the 2010 New York auto show, discussing how it fits in the Sonata lineup in a New York preview, reporting live from Korea on the Sonata Hybrid's...

Toss everything you thought you knew about hybrid-electric vehicles out the window. Porsche has just green-lighted production of a car that will shake preconceptions about hybrids to their roots. The Porsche 918 Spyder hybrid supercar, first shown as a concept at this spring's Geneva Motor Show...

Now we know: The first two plug-in cars from major manufacturers will go head-to-head on warranties and lease prices: $350 a month for the 2011 Chevrolet Volt, $349 for the 2011 Nissan Leaf. Now the choice shifts to other measures, including electric and overall range, as well as the plug-in perks...

The convoluted twists and turns of possible Prius production in the U.S. have taken another unexpected bend. A Toyota executive has now told Reuters that the company intends to build the quintessential hybrid in the States, but not until its next generation is launched. That would be in 2016, since...

When we wrote about the debate over whether silent electric vehicles should have noise legislated into them, we obviously hit a nerve. Now EV enthusiast Mark Larsen has added further data to his original analysis of 1994-2008 traffic death figures from the Fatality Reporting System maintained by...

It's a wonderful TV news flash: Blind people in peril from killer electric cars! News at 11. The fear is that electric vehicles are so silent that blind people can't hear them coming, so new draft safety regulations may now require electric vehicles to emit sounds. There's just one problem...

What's it like driving the Porsche 911 GT3 R Hybrid, the world's fastest hybrid vehicle? Ask driver Patrick Long, and he'll tell you he's "still pretty charged up (forgive the pun)" after returning to the States following two weeks of testing the car on the Lausitzring circuit outside Berlin. We...

Fisker has finalized its purchase of the GM factory where it will build its new plug-in hybrids.

It's been a time of turmoil for Honda lately, with the company doubling down on hybrids and pulling back on its clean-diesel efforts. Now, according to a Reuters report, the company will introduce both a plug-in hybrid and a fully electric car for the 2013 model year. The electric car will be...

Although Honda designed and sold the world's second hybrid-electric car, the 1999-2006 Insight, the company hasn't done nearly as well in hybrids as its larger rival Toyota. Now the company has reinforced its earlier suggestion that it would significantly beef up its hybrid efforts by providing...

Sometimes, we get the most amazing stuff in our e-mail. Most spy shots show up on our sister site, MotorAuthority.com, but once in a while, sometimes they come directly to us here in green-car-land. Which is how we ended up with these spy shots, taken by a reader on his mobile phone while walking...