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The car you see here is Subaru's first production hybrid vehicle, the 2014 XV Crosstrek Hybrid. Launched today at the New York Auto Show, the hybrid crossover is set to hit dealerships in the fourth quarter 2013. Subaru has been careful to maintain the company's reputation for utility as well as...

Officially unveiled today at the 2013 New York Auto Show, the 2015 Volkswagen Golf is the all-new seventh generation of VW's best-known and highest-volume global car. The compact hatchback, along with its Volkswagen GTI hot-hatch sibling, is lighter, larger, and more fuel-efficient than past...

It might not look too different from the old model, but the car you're looking at here is the new 2014 Kia Soul. The Sould might have dropped a few MPG in Kia and Hyundai's gas mileage fiasco but there was little wrong with the way it looked, and the new car simply incorporates a few cues from last...

It's the sweetest dream of every electric-car fan: a battery that could store enough energy to offer up to 1,000 miles of real-world range. While it's not going to arrive in showrooms any time soon, Israeli startup Phinergy thinks its aluminum-air energy storage device might just be that battery...

The rate at which technology develops makes predicting the future incredibly difficult, but people get it right sometimes. They get it wrong sometimes too, and you'd have found a mixture of both in the April 3, 1988 issue of the Los Angeles Times Magazine, which peered 25 years into the future--to...

Next week at the New York Auto Show, the 2014 Subaru XV Crosstrek Hybrid will be unveiled. It's the first-ever production hybrid vehicle from the small Japanese maker of sturdy all-wheel drive cars and crossovers. Subaru announced the debut of the 2014 XV Crosstrek Hybrid in a press release this...

Tesla did it, Mercedes-Benz is doing it, so why can't a Detroit company do it too? In this case, "it" is building a pricey, limited-production, two-seat all-electric sports car. Detroit Electric, a famous name adopted by a five-year-old startup in the Motor City, will reveal its plans next month...

A couple of weeks ago, shortly after I took delivery of my 2013 Tesla Model S, I noticed that my home electric meter seemed to be running a bit faster than normal. I keep a close eye on my meter, but that seemed odd. After all, the long-awaited new luxury sport sedan delivered to my house in...

The news that Henrik Fisker had left Fisker Automotive came on Wednesday, leaving electric-car advocates and Fisker Karma fans wondering just what had happened. Fisker himself cited "major disagreements" over the company's "business strategy." A statement released within hours by Fisker Automotive...

The 2013 Nissan Leaf electric car has some lofty sales goals associated with it--certainly higher than the 9,750 deliveries that Nissan averaged each year in 2011 and 2012. So it's encouraging to see a new television ad for the 2013 Leaf that actually highlights the fun and special features of...

Two weeks and 600 miles ago, I took delivery of a 60-kWh 2013 Tesla Model S electric sport sedan. I won't dwell on the ear-flattening acceleration, nor the magic-carpet ride and handling, nor the mesmerizing 17-inch touch screen controls. Those features have been exhaustively analyzed and reported...

The upcoming 2014 BMW i3 electric car is generating a lot of quiet excitement--especially for its optional "ReX" range extender, a tiny two-cylinder engine that fits under the rear deck to power a generator. The i3 will be only the third high-volume dedicated battery electric car on the market...

Like a lot of news from Tesla, this came in the form of a tweet by CEO Elon Musk on Friday morning. It read, in its entirety, "Minnesota auto dealers tried to pass legislation to block Tesla stores. Bill was just defeated in Senate. Thanks MN!" And indeed, a Minnesota Senate committee voted down...

For a century, we've gotten almost all our gasoline and diesel fuel from petrochemicals. Now Silicon Valley startup Solazyme [NSDQ:SZYM] is testing diesel fuel derived from refining renewable oils--produced by specialized algae--in two Volkswagen turbodiesel models. Since July 2012, the VW Passat...

What a difference a few years makes. Startup electric-car maker Tesla Motors [NSDQ:TSLA] said it will repay its $465 million in low-interest loans from the U.S. Department of Energy five years earlier than originally scheduled. The news came yesterday in the company's annual report. Sourcing Tesla...

News Flash: The next Chevy Volt will have less electric range than the current one, perhaps no more than 18 to 30 miles. Or perhaps not. We suspect that a comment by Thomas Sedran, GM's vice president of strategy and operations, is going to be one of those off-hand remarks that creates far more...

Will this be the car that finally makes the ultra-aerodynamic and futuristic GM EV1 electric car look old-fashioned? Today, VW Group took the wraps off the production version of the Volkswagen XL1, a turbodiesel plug-in hybrid two-seater that will be its most fuel-efficient model ever offered. The...

It was a Mercedes-Benz icon before it became a performance flagship. Now it's a messenger for the future: the gullwing's going electric. The SLS AMG Electric Drive electric car is closing in on series production, converting the octane-addicted supercar to fit a greener vision of the future. We've...

The 2013 Ford Fusion Hybrid is the second of Ford's two hybrid models, both all-new for 2013. The Fusion Hybrid, unlike the C-Max Hybrid compact hatchback, is a four-door mid-size sedan aimed right at the heart of a high-volume market segment. Competitors for the Fusion lineup include the Toyota...

U.S. sales of plug-in electric cars continued at a reduced level, as seems to happen every winter. The best-selling electric car, the Chevrolet Volt range-extended electric car, logged deliveries of 1,626 units, compared to 1,140 last month. That's a better number than the 1,023 Volts sold in...