Gas Mileage

It's one of the main points of dispute among electric-car buyers and advocates: What is the "right" number of all-electric miles? Some say maximal range is needed, e.g. the EPA-rated 73 miles of the Nissan Leaf or the promised 320 miles of the highest-spec 2012 Tesla Model S (that's not an EPA...

More often than most automakers would care to admit, that new car that you see debuted at a major auto show will undergo some minor -- and sometimes major -- alterations before it hits the dealer forecourt. Take the 2012 Kia Rio, for example. Officially launched at the 2011 New York Auto Show, Kia...

With gas prices high, you'd expect people to buckle down and hang onto their existing cars rather than spending the money to buy new ones, right? Errrrrrr, actually not. According to Mike Jackson, the outspoken and always quotable CEO of AutoNation, buyers who've put off their new-car purchases are...

Ever since the early 1950s, Americans have loved the easy-to-drive charms of the automatic gearbox so much, that most Americans today don’t know how -- or want -- to drive a manual stick-shift car. Historically, those who want to drive manuals have been sports car fans eager for the extra...

It's not just cars that are getting bigger and heavier--a quick look around the local mall is enough to see that the average person on the street is more portly than their counterpart from a generation ago. Every year, obesity costs the country huge amounts of money, from $190 billion in extra...

The eagerly-awaited new 2013 Dodge Dart compact sedan will start arriving at dealerships in June. But the first volley of Darts won't include every model. The model with the highest gas mileage will be known as the Dart Aero, and it should go on sale sometime between July and September. At a Dart...

The trickle of European and Japanese small cars into the U.S. is slow but steady. We've got the MINI, we have the Fiat 500, and Ford and Mazda have graced us with the Fiesta and Mazda2. Compared to overseas markets though, there's still a lot of small metal that we're missing out on. So where are...

When Ford decided to kill its hybrid variant of the 2012 Ford Escape, there was much gnashing of teeth and wailing here at GreenCarReports. Giving an impressive 34 mpg city and 31 mpg highway, the first -- and maybe best -- hybrid crossover from Ford set a tough act to follow. But now we know...

If you haven't already clicked off the page in disgust, or headed straight to the comment section to voice your displeasure, then thanks for sticking with us on this one... No, judged against vehicles that are purpose-designed to be green, there's nothing particularly eco-friendly nor fuel-sipping...

Sometimes you have to ask, What were they thinking? A recent article on five small cars with the worst gas mileage named four for which gas mileage may not even cross the minds of their buyers. But it did remind us that the 2012 Toyota Matrix has pretty low fuel economy for a compact hatchback. In...

Writing about the latest carmaker plans to add smaller, more efficient engines is now almost a weekly occurrence. Today's lucky winner is Jaguar, which took the occasion of the Beijing Auto Show to announce some future powertrain plans--including its first production four-cylinder engine since the...

Fuel efficiency is making news headlines lately, with new-car sales achieving record high fuel-economy numbers in the U.S. (and in the U.K. as well). But a survey of car buyers last month by industry analyst AutoPacific seems to contradict the idea that high gas prices are leading buyers to change...

There was a time when most car buyers looked on small capacity four-cylinder engines with distain. To them, unless an engine had 6-cylinders or more, it was over-stressed, underpowered and only fit for use in small European or Japanese economy cars. Nowadays, increases in gas prices, combined with...

It's not news that new, higher fuel-economy standards will raise the cost of future cars in real dollars. Now a new study, funded by the National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA), suggests that those increases will prevent up to 7 million buyers from affording new cars in 2025. That's out of a...

Once a class full of lumbering--but extremely popular--dinosaurs, the large sedan is sometimes at risk of of going extinct among the SUVs, midsize hybrids and crossovers of this world. They still have a place in the market though. And like any other class, buyers now have not only more equipment...

Never mind range anxiety - that's old news these days. Most electric car owners say it lasts about a week after buying the car, and then you learn what you can and can't do. Much more concerning is gas mileage anxiety, we think. What is gas mileage anxiety? Let us explain... Back in the day, you'd...

It's working. Concerted efforts by automakers to meet new, more stringent fuel-economy requirements are gradually driving up the efficiency of new passenger vehicles sold in the U.S. A report from the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute pegged the average gas mileage of new...

The New York Auto Show, now open to the public, occupies two floors of the Javits Convention Center, and organizers this year were strict about relegating trucks to the basement. Chrysler was allowed only a single truck or crossover in its entire main-floor display. So it chose the 2013 Ram 1500...

At the 2011 Tokyo Motor Show, Honda unveiled the Earth Dreams Technology range, a set of new engines, transmissions and hybrid drivetrains which it claimed would help it lead the automotive industry in fuel efficiency for every segment within three years. Now the Japanese automaker has expanded...

Electric cars get a lot of press, and they'll increase in number--slowly--over the next decade. But more efficient gasoline engines are what will drive the increase in fuel efficiency for U.S. vehicles over the next decade. We've written many times about smaller, more efficient engines, and in a...