Range-Extended Vehicle
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Put them side by side, and they could be vehicles from two different planets. The new 2011 Chevrolet Volt range-extended electric car is GM's green halo car, its foray into the future of electric drive vehicles, and the focus of a huge marketing and publicity effort. The 2011 Chevrolet Tahoe Hybrid is a big, old-fashioned, body-on-frame full-size sport utility vehicle that happens to have a Two-Mode Hybrid transmission behind its V-8 engine. Two-Mode DNA Nonetheless, it turns out the Volt has more than a little Two-Mode Hybrid in its DNA. Chevy will release more details this morning, but we...
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Video: Chevrolet Explains Home-Charging The 2011 Volt
We know all about the new 240-volt upgraded charger for the 2011 Chevrolet Volt, and we're even more familiar with the standard 120-volt unit. But it's one thing to read about them and another to see them in action. Perhaps most interesting is the new upgraded 240-volt charger and how it looks on...
Nelson Ireson -
Paris Motor Show: Jaguar C-X75 Turbine-Electric Supercar Concept!
We don't use exclamation points all that often, but once in a while it's justified. In this case, the Jaguar C-X75 Concept supercar just unveiled at the 2010 Paris Motor Show deserves one. If not several: !!! Not only is it sleek, sexy, and stunningly beautiful (to our eyes, anyhow). It returns...
John Voelcker -
GM, Nissan, Tesla Focus On How To Recycle Used Electric-Car Batteries
Electric cars may be coming out in force come December, but the spotlight is now on how their batteries will be resold and recycled several years down the road. There’s been a recent spate of announcements from Nissan, General Motors and Tesla on this topic. All three companies are looking...
VentureBeat's GreenBeat -
Will Old Chevy Volt Batteries (Eventually) Store Solar Energy From Your Roof?
Pretty much everyone loves renewable energy. The problem is that wind usually blows at night--often sporadically, at that--and solar power is unpredictable. Suppose the secret to harnessing their potential was ... used electric-car batteries? GM said today that it would work with ABB Group to...
John Voelcker -
Waiting For Fisker: First Factory-Built 2011 Karma At Paris Motor Show
It's been a year of press announcements but no cars from Fisker Automotive. Now the company says that the first factory-built 2011 Fisker Karma will debut at the 2010 Paris Motor Show, to be held at the end of the month. That may allow Fisker to keep its promise to deliver a handful of production...
John Voelcker -
Since Ford sold Jaguar Land Rover to Indian carmaker Tata in TK, the luxury maker has stepped out a bit. Their green efforts have taken down several interesting technology paths that seem unlikely had they stayed underneath the Blue Oval of Dearborn. The latest to surface is a demonstration vehicle that uses a Formula 1-style Kinetic Energy Recovery System to store energy that would otherwise have been wasted as brake heat. Regenerative braking--like that of a conventional hybrid-electric vehicle like the Toyota Prius--is used to produce electricity via a generator connected to the road...
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Audi A1 E-Tron Pilot Project To Start In Munich, 2011
With BMW slowly revealing further details of their upcoming Megacity EV and teasing us with the 2009 MINI E, and Mercedes-Benz giving us the A-Class E-Cell, it was only a matter of time before rival Audi hit the roads with their own small EV. Revealed at the 2010 Geneva Motor Show in March, their...
Antony Ingram -
GM Turns To Scare Tactics To Sell The 2011 Chevrolet Volt
Fear is a powerful motivator. It has been used in the past to start wars, persuade kids to study at school and of course, sell life insurance. But now GM appears to be gearing up to use the fear of running out of electricity to give the extended-range 2011 Chevrolet Volt a competitive edge over...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
GM's Volt Heads For China, But As a Chevy--Not a Buick After All
Ceremonial handshakes offer photo opportunities the world over, and so it is with the arrival of the first running Chevrolet Volt range-extended electric car in China. And despite earlier reports--including ours--to the contrary, General Motors plans to sell the car as a Chevrolet, rather than as a...
John Voelcker -
Electric Car Buying Guide
We've been watching it roll closer for years, and now it's all but here: A new era of electric cars. Just three or four months from now, the first highway-capable electric vehicles sold in volume by global automakers will appear in showrooms in California and other regions. By the end of 2011...
John Voelcker -
2011 Chevy Volt Danger: Rapacious Dealer Surcharges Could Turn Off Buyers
Last week GM announced pricing for its upcoming 2011 Chevrolet Volt, revealing that its range-extended electric vehicle will have a MSRP of $41,000. This came as quite a shock to many considering that the similarly advanced Nissan Leaf all-electric vehicle will have a starting MSRP of just $32,780...
Viknesh Vijayenthiran -
We are mostly humble peasants here at Green Car Reports. We just try to report on green cars fairly, with an occasional bit of acerbity tossed in for flavor. Once in a while, we post a story that hits a chord, including our discussion of why the 2011 Chevrolet Volt may not get either an EV purchase rebate from the state of California or single-driver access to that state's HOV Lanes--unlike the 2011 Nissan Leaf electric car. Well, that one got enough attention that on Friday, our phone rang. A very pleasant producer asked if we could make it to a radio studio to appear on ... 'All Things...
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BREAKING: GM Boosts 2011 Chevrolet Volt Production 50 Percent
There's no better time to make a public announcement than when you have the President of the United States with you. Today,President Barack Obama visited the Detroit-Hamtramck plant where GM is building its 2011 Chevrolet Volt extended-range electric vehicle. And the company took full advantage of...
John Voelcker -
2011 Chevy Volt: Official GM Propaganda On Why It's Better
Forgive us our weariness, please. It's only Thursday, but the barrage of news about the two upcoming electric cars that will go on sale for the 2011 model year is wearing us down. Nonetheless, we have manfully pulled ourselves together to bring you the video at the bottom of this piece, in which...
John Voelcker -
2011 Chevy Volt: No $5K Rebate, HOV-Lane Access For CA Buyers
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...
John Voelcker -
Nissan Leaf to Chevy Volt: You Can't Beat Zero
Now that the world knows the price of the 2011 Chevrolet Volt and of the 2011 Nissan Leaf...let the PR games begin. To the educated consumer, the difference between a Volt and a Leaf may be slight. Though the Volt uses a range-extending gasoline engine, it's an electric car--since its wheels are...
Martin Padgett -
GM To Build All-Electric Cars Again: A Very Few, Just For Tests
The big news in green cars today will be the noon release of pricing and ordering information for the 2011 Chevrolet Volt, GM's upcoming range-extended compact electric car. But GM had more noteworthy news today, all the way from the other side of the world. General Motors, the company pilloried...
John Voelcker -
Three weeks ago, Chevrolet unveiled two new launch markets for its 2011 Volt electric car and described some of the things dealers would need to do in order to be granted the privilege of selling GM's most advanced and most eagerly awaited car in decades. Now it appears that pretty much every Chevy dealer plans to do whatever it takes. General Motors said today that about 90 percent of dealers in the five launch regions--more than 600 from California, Texas, Michigan, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and the Washington, D.C. area--have applied to sell the Volt, slightly more than it had...
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Will EV Range Extenders Give Rise to a Rotary Renaissance?
Four months from now, the world's first extended-range electric vehicle will start showing up at dealers. The 2011 Chevrolet Volt will introduce car buyers to the idea of a range-extending combustion engine that turns a generator to power the car electrically. But the generator in an E-REV can be...
John Voelcker -
Leno Wants It Known: He Likes the 2011 Chevy Volt, Really Likes It
OK, file this one in the Tempests & Teapots folder: A "visibly annoyed" Jay Leno has now defended Chevrolet's 2011 Volt electric car. He wants it known that he likes the car. Really, he does. The comic claims he was quoted out of context by Detroit News reporter Robert Snell, who wrote that...
John Voelcker -
Obama Meets The Volt: Sparks Barely Fly
President Barack Obama’s electric vehicle tour climaxed last Thursday with a visit to the Compact Power battery plant in Holland, Michigan, where he was treated to his first extensive experience with the upcoming 2011 Chevrolet Volt. The Holland plant just happens to be the place where LG Chem...
Viknesh Vijayenthiran -
Fisker Dealer: Karma Plug-In Sedan Deliveries Start March or April
We've written before about the schedule for the 2011 Fisker Karma, which (like many other electric cars) has slipped a bit since the car was first unveiled. Now Fisker's newest dealer, located in none other than LA's epicenter of green consciousness--namely Santa Monica, California--says that the...
John Voelcker -
Can GM Convince You a 2011 Chevy Volt Is the Go-Anywhere EV?
As we count down the months before the first 2011 Chevrolet Volts arrive at dealers in California, New York, Michigan, and Washington, D.C., it's time for the latest reboot of the Chevy marketing machine to kick into action. Chevrolet said in a press conference last week it would start running ads...
John Voelcker