Electric

It's always good to be suspicious when an automaker sends out a press release saying customers are "delighted" with its products. In the case of the Mini E, BMW offered data to back up the claim. At the Washington Auto Show today, BMW released early results from a study of 57 customers who leased...

General Motors will become the first U.S. automaker to design and build its own electric motors for hybrid and electric cars, the company said today. While Toyota and Honda have long made their own motors, until now GM--along with Ford--has purchased them from third-party suppliers. GM views the...

You heard it here first, folks. Maria Rohrer, the Chevrolet Volt marketing manager responsible for the remarkably awful "Volt Dance" at last month's Los Angeles Auto Show, has been reassigned. An internal General Motors memo last week said Rohrer would become director of Chevrolet truck...

New York City often startles people, and it stayed true to form in a recent analysis done by McKinsey & Company for the city's PlaNYC planning group, "Exploring Electric Vehicle Adoption in New York City." In particular, one of the report's conclusions may come as a shock to many...

UPDATE: Well, it sounded too good to be true, and perhaps it was. We asked GM spokesman Dave Darovitz for comments on CEO Whitacre's "low-thirties" price for the 2011 Chevrolet Volt. Darovitz tells GreenCarReports.com that while Chevy "has not officially announced final Volt pricing, a price in the...

We somehow omitted one hybrid concept until now in our 2010 Detroit Auto Show coverage; it's the Hyundai Blue-Will four-door sports sedan, which is unusual in both name and looks. Some loved it, some loathed it, but we're as interested in its plug-in hybrid powertrain as in the rather nervous...

Nearing the end of our 2010 Detroit Auto Show coverage brings us to a vehicle that got a lot of media attention, though it's unclear when it will actually arrive in the U.S. That's the BYD e6 electric crossover, which could become the first Chinese vehicle sold in the U.S. The crisply styled...

If you think driving an electric sports car across the country is ambitious, wait till you hear what Radical Sportscars is planning. The UK-based company announced the creation of the Imperial College London’s Racing Green Endurance team today and concurrently unveiled their SRZero supercar...

We're back home from the mind-numbing madness of the 2010 Detroit Auto Show, unpacking, sorting press kits (well, these days they're just USB drives), and trying to work out what we thought of it all. This year, there's no question about the best green car there: It was the 2011 Ford Focus compact...

Last weekend, we finally got the chance to drive the 2011 Chevrolet Volt. By and large, we liked it; see our full First Drive report for more details. Riding shotgun was Andrew Farah, the chief engineer for the 2011 Volt. During our ride and after, we asked him five questions--just as we did Volt...

Only four electric vehicles really matter at the Detroit Auto Show: the 2011 Chevrolet Volt, the 2012 Nissan Leaf, and the 2012 Toyota Prius Plug-In Hybrid, plus the current 2010 Tesla Roadster. They're on sale, or destined for volume production. The rest fall into two categories:  low-volume...

Next month's North American International Auto Show in Detroit promises to be greener than ever before. That's a recognition that more fuel-efficient and smaller cars are a permanent part of the U.S. automotive landscape, but it's also desperation to fill space in a show that's losing exhibitors...

Electric vehicles are significantly quieter than their traditional gas-powered counterparts. Maybe it's fitting then, that Volvo doesn't plan to say anything when they unveil their electric C30 at the Detroit Auto Show next week. Volvo spokesman, Dan Johnston, told Inside Line that the new...

Volvo has now released more details of the all-electric C30 concept car it will launch at next week's 2010 Detroit Auto Show. We covered early details a couple of weeks ago; here's the rest of the story on the little electric hatchback with no tailpipe. The electric C30 concept car will let the...

The lithium-ion battery pack for the 2011 Chevrolet Volt extended-range electric vehicles officially went into volume production today. The 16-kilowatt-hour battery pack, containing 220 lithium-ion cells made by Korea's LG Chem, will be assembled in a 160,000-square-foot factory in Brownstown...

You have to give corporate PR guys some credit when they publish an article on the astoundingly high mileage their car got in a road test, and then dismiss the whole thing as "silly and totally unscientific." That's what Lexus magazine auto editor Clark Heideger did. When a coworker got 47.4 miles...

Our mission here at GreenCarReports.com is to cover the greener end of automobiles, for both new-car buyers and enthusiasts. But unlike other sites, we rarely cover conversions to add plug-in capability to existing cars or hybrids. Why? First, they're not available to mainstream car buyers and are...

After lagging in development of hybrid and plug-in cars for years, Mercedes-Benz is now attacking the new technology with a vengeance. The latest proof: reports that it will offer a pricey plug-in hybrid version of its next S-Class large luxury sedan in 2012. The British magazine Autocar writes...

Toyota and GM are the auto industry's heavyweights. Each has stumbled this year; General Motors collapsed into bankruptcy and Toyota is beset with embarrassing recalls that may dent its reputation for reliability. Each also has a plug-in car coming. The 2011 Chevy Volt will hit dealers in less than...

An electric Fiat 500 has been rumored for several months now, including before the lengthy October press conference where Chrysler laid out its survival plan. But now, it appears that Chrysler will show an electric Fiat 500 mini-car as one of two concepts it will have on display at next month's...