Buick eAssist

General Motors announced today that it will recall more than 38,000 Buick and Chevrolet sedans fitted with its eAssist mild-hybrid system, to check for a possibly defective electronic component. The vehicles, from both the 2012 and 2013 model years, are the Buick LaCrosse and Buick Regal sedans...

The eAssist system may have entered production less than a year ago, but General Motors is clearly making a big bet on the mild hybrid system to help its Buick brand meet rising fuel economy regulations. First offered on the base 2.4-liter engine in the 2012 Buick Lacrosse, the eAssist system was...

It takes a lot of money and time to develop and produce hybrid cars and electric vehicles, but that's not to say regular gasoline cars can't benefit from some of their technology. Mild hybrid technology is a cost-effective way of improving the gas mileage of a car using a fairly simple electric...

The Buick Fuel Efficiency Games App teaches players about mild hybrid systems, aerodynamics and maximizing fuel economy.

We drove the prototype, and liked it. Now we've driven the real thing. We still like it. In this case, "it" is the 2012 Buick Lacrosse with eAssist, the only four-cylinder model that Buick offers in its Lacrosse large luxury sedan. While large Buicks aren't known for their gas mileage, this one is...

Buick announced today that it would offer the eAssist mild-hybrid technology on its mid-size 2012 Regal sedan as a $2,000 option over the base 2.4-liter model. That brings the price of the 2012 Buick Regal with eAssist to $29,530, including a mandatory $860 destination charge. The EPA rates the...

Buick announced today that it would price the four-cylinder version of its 2012 Lacrosse large sedan at $29,960. That sneaks the advertised price neatly under the $30,000 mark, although a mandatory $860 destination charge means buyers will see a sticker of at least $30,820 before they start adding...

Suzuki has had a rough time of it lately, with its only new product being the well-received but still low-volume Kizashi sports sedan, halfway between a compact and a midsize car. But for this week's 2011 New York Auto Show, they're display a couple of Kizashi concepts that point toward what the...

To date, Buick and "fuel economy" haven't often been used in the same sentence. But the 2012 Buick LaCrosse, the brand's largest surviving car, will offer one engine option that's projected to deliver 25 mpg city, 37 mpg highway. That's not bad for a midsize near-luxury sedan (though 1 mpg lower on...

We asked last year if the new GM would be a cleantech play. It’s looking more and more like that’s the case. Yesterday, the company announced it would be rolling out a hybrid technology system called eAssist in the Buick Regal 2012 that will boost fuel economy by 25 percent. The system...

Buick plans to add its eAssist mild-hybrid system to the 2012 Regal sedan as an option, making the Regal its second model to offer the mileage-increasing system. According to trade publication Ward's Auto, Buick will introduce the option at the Chicago Auto Show next week. Last November, General...

Among car buyers, none of the four surviving General Motors brands are really associated with hybrid vehicles. Now that customer deliveries have started for the 2011 Chevrolet Volt extended-range electric car, GM's other brands will need some green cred too. What's the future of GM's Two-Mode...

The 2011 Chevrolet Volt has gotten all the attention lately, including a narrow second-place finish in our GreenCarReports 2011 Best Car To Buy award, but General Motors also has a significant hybrid-electric vehicle program. While its full-size Two-Mode Hybrid trucks have had mixed success, the...