Best Car To Buy
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The past year has been one of anticipation among green-car advocates, who've spent many months waiting for certain vehicles to emerge into production. At the start of the year, it was the Tesla Model X luxury electric utility vehicle, built in very low numbers for several months at the end of 2015. These days, it's the 2017 Chevrolet Bolt EV electric hatchback, with its 238-mile rating and a price below $40,000, slated to go on sale in some locations before the end of this year. DON'T MISS: Chevrolet Volt: Green Car Reports' Best Car To Buy 2016 Those two cars, along with the 2017 Toyota...
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Chevrolet Volt: Green Car Reports' Best Car To Buy 2016Every year, Green Car Reports picks a new car or model line that we feel is the best green car for that new model year. This year, we picked a car that's the all-new version of one that was revolutionary when it was introduced several years ago. The latest version improves on it in pretty much...
John Voelcker -
Green Car Reports 2016 Best Car To Buy Nominee: 2016 Toyota PriusThe Toyota Prius hybrid occupies a special niche in automotive history. It's the world's best-known and best-selling hybrid car, and it's the halo vehicle for one of the world's three largest automakers. This year, there's an all-new 2016 Prius, and it's quite a different car from its predecessors...
John Voelcker -
Green Car Reports 2016 Best Car To Buy Nominee: 2016 Hyundai Sonata Hybrid And Plug-In HybridHyundai is widely viewed as one of the most aggressive car companies in the world. In global industry terms, it's relatively young, having designed and sold its first car only in 1975. But the South Korean company has ambitious plans, including many on the green-car front; it wants to have the...
John Voelcker -
Green Car Reports 2016 Best Car To Buy Nominee: 2016 Honda CivicIt's important to understand how important a car the Honda Civic compact sedan is in the U.S. market. Between the Civic sedan and its coupe sibling, Honda sells more than 300,000 of them a year--or roughly 20 times this year's sales of the Chevy Volt. The Civic nameplate is more than 40 years old...
John Voelcker -
Green Car Reports 2016 Best Car To Buy Nominee: 2016 Chevrolet VoltThe first Chevrolet Volt range-extended electric car won all sorts of awards in 2011, the year it was introduced. But it didn't win that year's Green Car Reports Best Car To Buy award, because we deemed the world's first mass-priced high-volume battery-electric car more significant. That car, the...
John Voelcker -
We were impressed by our first drive of the U.S.-spec 2016 Audi A3 e-Tron Sportback, enough so that it's the first of five nominees for our Green Car Reports 2016 Best Car To Buy award. The compact hatchback is powered by a 150-horsepower 1.4-liter turbocharged four-cylinder engine combined with a 76-kilowatt (102-hp) liquid-cooled electric motor, sandwiched between the engine and a six-speed dual-clutch transmission. It's not one of Audi's quattro models--it drives the front wheels only--but the package is both every bit an Audi and a decent first effort at a plug-in hybrid from a brand...
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Green Car Reports 2016 Best Car To Buy: The Also-Rans That Didn't Make ItAs promised, we'll be announcing our nominees for the Green Car Reports 2016 Best Car To Buy award this week. But first, it's time note all those candidates that didn't make the final cut. This year, we're explaining why each one isn't on the final nominees list. Remember, to qualify for...
John Voelcker -
Green Car Reports Best Car To Buy 2016 Award: Nominees Coming Next WeekWe find ourselves, once more, in December, the last month of another year. And that means it's time once more for our annual Best Car To Buy award. Somewhat to our surprise, this is now the sixth time we've chosen the one car or lineup--newly introduced for the coming model year--that represents...
John Voelcker -
2015 Volkswagen Golf: Green Car Reports' Best Car To Buy 2015Our Best Car To Buy award can go one of several ways here on Green Car Reports. Sometimes it goes to a moonshot car, like the first Nissan Leaf (in 2011) or the Tesla Model S (in 2013). Those are cars that radically redefined what green transportation could be, changing the auto industry forever...
John Voelcker -
Which Car Did Readers Say Should Win The Best Car To Buy 2015 Award?Tomorrow morning, we'll be revealing the winner of our Green Car Reports Best Car To Buy 2015 award. But as we wrote about each nominee over the last week, we also polled our readers to find out which of the five contenders they felt was most deserving of the award. DON'T MISS: Green Car Reports'...
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2015 Volkswagen Golf Range: Best Car To Buy 2015 NomineeThe fifth and final of our five nominees for Green Car Reports' 2015 Best Car To Buy award is the new 2015 Volkswagen Golf range. It's a completely new, top-to-bottom makeover of the classic compact five-door hathback, now in its seventh generation since launching in 1974. DON'T MISS: Green Car...
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The fourth of our five nominees for Green Car Reports' 2015 Best Car To Buy award is the new 2015 Kia Soul EV. It's the Korean maker's first-ever electric car sold in the U.S., and an adaptation of the popular compact "tall wagon" that was entirely redesigned for the 2014 model year. DON'T MISS: Green Car Reports' 2015 Best Car To Buy: The Nominees (Video) With a lithium-ion battery pack slightly larger than the 23 or 24 kilowatt-hours used by most compact battery-electric vehicles, the Soul EV earns a rated range of 93 miles from its 27 kWh. That's toward the top of the range, especially for...
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2015 Hyundai Sonata Eco: Best Car To Buy 2015 NomineeThe third of our five nominees for Green Car Reports' 2015 Best Car To Buy award is the new 2015 Hyundai Sonata Eco, the most fuel-efficient non-hybrid version of the Korean maker's mid-size sedan. This new-for-2015 version of the Sonata is the sole model to use a turbocharged 1.6-liter engine, in...
John Voelcker -
2015 Honda Fit: Best Car To Buy 2015 NomineeThe second of our five nominees for Green Car Reports' 2015 Best Car To Buy award is the new 2015 Honda Fit, the well-regarded subcompact five-door hatchback. It's the third generation of the car sold in North America, and it's got a new powertrain, dubbed with Honda's EarthDreams label, that...
John Voelcker -
2015 Audi A3 TDI Diesel: Best Car To Buy 2015 NomineeThe first of our five nominees for Green Car Reports' 2015 Best Car To Buy award is the new 2015 Audi A3 TDI, the diesel version of Audi's new compact luxury sedan. All-new this year, as are most of its competitors, the TDI diesel version will be the highest-efficiency A3 model until the e-tron...
John Voelcker -
Which Car Should Be Named Green Car Reports Best Car To Buy 2015? (Poll)New-car ratings, driving impressions, and a lot of lengthy discussions go into picking our Green Car Reports Best Car To Buy award winner each year. We explained our process yesterday, along with all of our nominees for the 2015 award, but this year we thought we'd add a new element. DON'T MISS...
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Green Car Reports' 2015 Best Car To Buy: The Nominees (Video)It's time once more for our annual Best Car To Buy award. It's the fifth time we've chosen the one car or lineup, newly introduced for this model year, that represents the best new green car to enter the market. To qualify, a car must be all-new or substantially updated from the previous model...
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For 2014, our fourth annual Green Car Reports' Best Car To Buy award goes to the 2014 Honda Accord Hybrid. This new model of the redesigned Honda Accord sedan introduced last year is comfortable, quiet, stylish--and delivers real-world fuel economy from 40 mpg to as much as 52 mpg. And that's Toyota Prius liftback territory, in a mid-size sedan that's neither as polarizing nor limited to the underwhelming performance of Toyota's quintessential hybrid. Alert readers noticed we didn't post a nominee description of the 2014 Honda Accord Hybrid; that's because we've spent the last week driving...
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Green Car Reports' Best Car To Buy: Winner To Be Named TomorrowWe've driven the cars. We've discussed their pros, their cons, the overall technology trends, and the many unanswered questions about the future of green cars. Now we've chosen a winner. This being a teaser post, we're not going to tell you what it is yet. That has to wait a day. But to refresh...
John Voelcker -
Green Car Reports' Best Car To Buy Nominee: 2014 Mazda 3Even conventional gasoline cars--no plugs, no hybrids, no turbos--can be green. And we've long been looking forward to the debut of the 2014 Mazda 3, an all-new generation of the compact hatchback and sedan that have always been among the more rewarding cars to drive in the segment. With Mazda's...
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Green Car Reports' Best Car To Buy Nominee: 2014 Chevrolet Spark EVWhat do you call an all-electric minicar that has elements of the Chevy Volt, can spin its drive wheels if you have a heavy foot--and still ranks as the most efficient plug-in car sold in the U.S. this year? We'd call it the 2014 Chevrolet Spark EV. And it's one of our five nominees for Green Car...
John Voelcker -
Green Car Reports' Best Car To Buy Nominee: 2014 Chevy Cruze DieselThe 2014 Chevrolet Cruze Diesel is a somewhat daring car, and one that diesel fans have been urging a U.S. maker to sell for years, if not decades. It's the first diesel-engined passenger vehicle sold by General Motors since 1986, and it's a fully modern car with the latest in emissions control...
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Green Car Reports' Best Car To Buy Nominee: 2014 BMW i3The 2014 BMW i3 is the most audacious expansion of a well-known car brand in many years. BMW--the maker of "ultimate driving machines"--is using electric propulsion, a carbon-fiber reinforced body, and a Scandinavian Modern interior not in an expensive luxury sedan, but in a subcompact hatchback...
John Voelcker