2011 Frankfurt Auto Show
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Back in in the Swinging Sixties, a small, light, fiberglass car was making a big splash up and down the West coast. That car was the Meyers Manx buggy, a Volkswagen Beetle-based buggy with very little in the way of bodywork but a heck of a lot of style, the brainchild of Californian Bruce Meyers. The world might now be a different place but people still love the feeling of freedom the buggy brought, so it's no surprise that Volkswagen has brought out the Buggy Up concept, a sixties throwback with all the economy and low emissions of the 21st-Century Up minicar. The Buggy Up went on display at...
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2011 Frankfurt Auto Show: Electric Two-Wheelers All The Rage
It isn't just the cars that are going electric at the Frankfurt Auto Show, currently open to the public until September 25. Two-wheeled electric vehicles are popular too. Frankfurt show is very much focused on urban mobility - and having driven through the city during the press days last week...
Antony Ingram -
2014 BMW i3 Electric Car Live Photos: Frankfurt Auto Show
The BMW i3's bigger brother the i8 may get all the attention from sports car fans, but as the smaller and more practical of the "i" range the i3 could be considered the more relevant of the two. We were at the 2011 Frankfurt Auto Show ready to capture both i-cars in all their glory. You can find...
Antony Ingram -
2011 Frankfurt Auto Show: 2013 Euro Honda Civic Is Complete Tease
The 2013 European Honda Civic Hatchback was unveiled earlier this week at the 2011 Frankfurt Auto Show. Sleeker, more aggressive and more practical, it showcases Honda’s ninth revision of this gas-sipping compact. Sadly, just like its predecessor, the 2006-2011 Honda Civic hatchback...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
2014 BMW i8 Live Photos: 2011 Frankfurt Auto Show
BMW has taken a radical departure from its traditional brand of teutonic sedans with its "i" range. The i3 is a carbon-bodied electric city car and the i8 a plug-in hybrid sports coupe, and both display wild styling and high-tech features. We were at the 2011 Frankfurt Auto Show to get a closer...
Antony Ingram -
Kia Rio Ecodynamics: Forbidden Fruit At 2011 Frankfurt Show
For fans of ultra-economical vehicles living in the United States, life just isn't fair sometimes. While the European market gets to play with dozens of high MPG turbodiesels, we're often told to make do with small capacity gasoline engines that don't come close to matching diesel, even if they're...
Antony Ingram -
Two weeks ago we brought you images of the Volkswagen Nils electric car concept to be revealed at the 2011 Frankfurt Auto Show. The car has now been unveiled and Green Car Reports can bring you a full gallery of Volkswagen's smallest electric car concept to date. The Nils looks very similar to the teaser images we showed you a few weeks back, but what surprises is how production-ready the car looks - on par with the 2013 Renault Twizy electric car we saw at the Geneva Motor Show. It's certainly far less dramatic than Audi's Urban Concept electric car, and more interesting as a result. The...
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Small Is The New Big: Mercedes Bringing B-Class, A-Class To U.S.
Mercedes-Benz is betting the time is right for a new range of compact and subcompact vehicles in the U.S. market. Expect to see the first of these, the B-Class wagon, in 2013.
Kurt Ernst -
Mercedes-Benz B-Class E-Cell Plus Extended Range Electric Vehicle
Mercedes will soon join General Motors and Fisker in offering an extended range electric vehicle. Shown as a concept in Frankfurt, the B-Class E-Cell Plus will see production in the near future.
Kurt Ernst -
2012 Mia Electric Microbus: First Drive Report
Sometimes a clever inventor or a team of engineers changes the way we think about an appliance or a concept we’ve lived with for years -- producing a revolutionary new design that makes us wonder how we ever lived without it. But sometimes a supposed revolutionary new design is little more...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
Infiniti: We’ll Have An All-Electric Sedan Ready For 2015
Infiniti -- the luxury sister brand of Nissan -- has been joining in the electric car hype at the 2011 Frankfurt Auto Show with talk of an all-electric subcompact car it will have ready for sometime in 2014. This isn’t the first time Infiniti has talked electric cars. Last year, Infiniti boss...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
2011 Frankfurt Auto Show: Brabus AWD Electric Mercedes-Benz E-Class
This year’s 2011 Frankfurt Auto Show has been heavily dominated by the drive towards greener vehicles, better gas mileage, and zero tailpipe-emissions motoring. So it’s no surprise that German tuning house Brabus has followed the trend set by most of the major automakers attending the...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
While Smart used the 2011 Frankfurt Auto Show to release its new, upgraded Fortwo Electric Drive and the production Smart eBike, the new Forvision concept previewed a few weeks ago gives us an idea what the next generation Fortwo might look like. Still a Smart... Importantly, the Forvision is instantly recognizable as a Smart. It's a two-seat, two door city car, with a visible "Tridion" safety cell, a wheel at each corner, and its motive force mounted under the trunk, powering the rear wheels. It also continues Smart's ideals of city mobility. It uses an electric drivetrain in common with the...
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2012 Smart Fortwo Electric Drive: Frankfurt Auto Show
The problems with the old Smart Fortwo Electric Drive were fairly easy to work out. It was too slow, had only an average range, took too long to charge and it was too expensive - even when leasing. Smart has taken the car back to the drawing board and fixed all these issues - and given the car a...
Antony Ingram -
2011 Frankfurt Auto Show: Opel RAK e Electric Concept
At this year’s Frankfurt Auto Show there’s a very clear theme among concept cars: ultra-small urban runabouts. Now Opel -- the European arm of General Motors -- has joined Audi, Volkswagen, Smart and many others with its own take on a lightweight electric-powered urban runabout. Called...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
2011 Frankfurt Auto Show: 2012 Volkswagen Up Family Gallery
Volkswagen has been working hard on the Up minicar since it first debuted at the 2007 Frankfurt Auto Show, but it has finally unveiled the production version of its gasoline-sipping city car at this year's 2011 Frankfurt Auto Show along with a whole family of concepts based on its tiny frame. The...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
2011 Frankfurt Auto Show: 2013 Fisker Surf Official Unveiling
The 2012 Fisker Karma extended range electric car (plug-in hybrid) may have been sold on its sexy good looks, and sporty performance -- but now the luxury sedan has a more practical sibling -- the Fisker Surf. Unveiled today at the 2011 Frankfurt Auto Show, the 2013 Fisker Surf is a crossover wagon...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
2011 Frankfurt Auto Show: Audi A2 Electric Concept First Pics
Audi has just unveiled its all-electric A2 Concept vehicle at the 2011 Frankfurt Auto Show. Placed somewhere between its two-seat electric Urban Concept which we saw yesterday and its A3 hatchback, the four-seat concept is a direct competitor to BMW’s much-anticipated 2014 i3 electric car...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
The 2011 Frankfurt Auto Show officially opens to the press tomorrow, but already the private parties and launch events have started. Sunday night, Audi officially unveiled its pair of two-seat electric concept cars, known jointly as the Urban Concept vehicles. One is a coupe, with a hatch over the cockpit that slides the roof and "doors" back over the rear of the car to allow two people to enter. The other is an open car with no top at all. In both cases, the Urban Concept vehicles are electrically powered minimalist transportation; the weight is just 480 kilograms (1,060 pounds). Each car...
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Jaguar C-X16 Sports Coupe Concept: 'Push-To-Pass' Hybrid (Video)
Innumerable design studies for a successor to the legendary E-Type Jaguar may finally have reached their conclusion: Jaguar's C-X16 concept sports coupe seems very likely to be built within a few years as the Jaguar XE. But the "production concept" to be launched at the Frankfurt Motor Show next...
John Voelcker -
GM's European Arm, Opel, Shows Two-Seat Electric Urban Concept
With the Frankfurt Motor Show launching in less than a week, the concept cars are starting to come thick and fast. The latest is a small two-seat electric urban car from Opel, the premiere European brand operated by General Motors. It's one of several tiny urban electric concepts, joining the Audi...
John Voelcker -
Fisker Surf Concept: Preview Of Plug-In Karma Shooting Brake
With Fisker just starting to deliver its first Karma plug-in hybrid sports sedans--no, still not a single road test by any journalist--attention now turns toward the Frankfurt Motor Show. Next week, the company will pull the covers off a concept for what it says will be the next model in the Fisker...
John Voelcker -
2011 Audi A2 Electric Car Concept: New Info, Images
Late last week Audi released some teaser sketches of its A2 concept car due at the 2011 Frankfurt Auto Show, now less than a week away. Due to be positioned between the A1 minicar and upcoming Audi A3 Sedan compact car, the new A2 is spiritual successor to the original A2, an aluminum-bodied...
Antony Ingram -
2011 Frankfurt Auto Show: Full Electric Car Preview
We thought the 2011 Geneva Motor Show was one of the best ever for electric cars and green vehicles, but the 2011 Frankfurt Auto Show, starting in less than a week, is shaping up to be even better. We'll be covering the show in-depth next week, but in the meantime we've rounded up all the electric...
Antony Ingram