Fuel Efficiency

The Ford EcoSport may be offered in the U.S. after an upcoming facelift.

The 2015 Hyundai Sonata Eco is the Korean maker's most fuel-efficient mid-size sedan that doesn't use a hybrid powertrain. And it highlights the two parallel paths that automakers are taking as they work to boost gas mileage ratings to meet steadily rising corporate average fuel economy rules. The...

Mazda has taken its own road toward boosting the fuel economy of its vehicles, and its latest small SUV manages to break the critical 30-mpg combined rating barrier. The 2016 Mazda CX-3 subcompact crossover utility is rated at 31 mpg combined with front-wheel drive, and 29 mpg combined with...

New legislation sets ambitious goals to combat climate change.

The Mazda CX-5 has always been one of our favorite compact crossover utility vehicles, not only for its fuel efficiency but also for its capacious functionality and fun-to-drive nature. First launched as a 2013 model, the CX-5 has been lightly updated for 2016 with minor tweaks to styling...

A large red electrical shutdown switch inside a car says it all: You're driving a prototype. New York City passers-by who looked approvingly at our shiny bronze Volkswagen Beetle Dune concept car didn't know it, but the butcher-looking Beetle was running on a hybrid system not currently offered in...

Carbon guilt weighed heavily on my mind as I approached the car rental counter at the Salt Lake City Airport. The book I was reading on the plane (Sustainable Energy, by David JC Mackay) suggested that my portion of the energy for the round-trip plane ride from Boston and back would amount to...

You may not hear about the thermal efficiency of engines much: It's the ratio of how efficiently they use the energy in the fuel they burn. Conventional gasoline engines have long run about 25 percent, diesels at 30 to 35 percent. But the gasoline engine to be used in the next generation of the...

Miles driven in the first quarter of 2015 were at a record high for that period.

Muscle-car fans pretty much set the Internet on fire this weekend as news and photos of the redesigned 2016 Chevrolet Camaro coupe emerged. The second generation of the reanimated Camaro pony car has tauter styling, more power, and less weight. All of that adds up to a car with tauter handling that...

The 2015 Ford Focus EcoBoost may be the most European car Ford sells in the U.S. It's fun, but not fast. It handles well, and has a small engine that requires energetic use of the manual gearbox to keep up with traffic. That all means that very few U.S. buyers will ever consider it, since fewer...

Turbocharger cooling demands overtax batteries in V-8 BMWs.

Sport-utility vehicles are all about hauling stuff, so collecting a set of 40-year-old wheels seemed like the perfect road test for the new 2015 Chevrolet Trax. The subcompact SUV offered cargo space for the wheels--which, frankly, would have fit into a sedan--along with decent gas mileage on our...

The sales-weighted average fuel economy of new cars and trucks was 25.2 mpg for April 2015.

The Toyota Prius will go down in history as a truly ground-breaking vehicle, both the first and the highest-production hybrid vehicle built to date. It's also the sole vehicle sold in the U.S. this year that is rated at 50 miles per gallon combined--for three different models, no less. But a new...

If you need to fit more than five into your vehicle—even just sometimes—and the thought of getting less than 25 miles per gallon in daily driving repulses you, the pickings for U.S. vehicle shoppers are still surprisingly slim. Why are there no hybrid minivans at all, no three-row...

The difference between unadjusted CAFE figures and window-sticker fuel economy.

Gas-mileage ratings for the 2016 Mazda MX-5 Miata are in.

In various forms, the MINI has been with us for more than half a century--but its image has always been shaped by the two-door model. The original BMC Mini had two doors and a small trunk; the BMW MINI from 2002 is a more conventional three-door hatchback. Now there's a five-door hatchback model as...

Many of the cars are more like enclosed bicycles, and virtually none of them could operate on public roads or highways. But the Shell Eco-Marathon offers some useful lessons for the more than 100 high-school and college teams that compete in it--many of them having little to do with the cars...