Gas Mileage

The auto industry tends to oppose, viscerally and viciously, all attempts to regulate any aspect of its products or business operations for any reason. With President Trump in the White House, the industry has succeeded in getting the comment period reopened for the EPA emission standards finalized...

At the 2017 Geneva auto show, General Motors announced the sale of its entire European operations—comprising factories and the Opel and Vauxhall brands—to PSA Peugeot Citroën. German Opel and its British Vauxhall sibling have represented GM's main presence in Europe for decades...

A common refrain among critics of current and future fuel-economy standards is that the need to comply with them produces job cuts in the auto industry. It's a theme picked up by President Donald Trump during a much-publicized visit to Detroit last week. In the hometown of the Big Three U.S...

The mid-size sedan was once the default for a majority of U.S. car buyers. While the segment's position has been eroded by the rise of crossover utility vehicles of many sizes, these sedans still remain quite popular. Given the number of options available among hybrid mid-size sedans, that should...

However you choose to view the 2017 Kia Niro hybrid—Kia says it's a crossover utility, we call it a wagon—it's a good-looking and relatively capacious small car. The debate over segments comes because the Niro has neither the ground clearance of a utility vehicle nor available all-wheel...

Automakers may gradually be putting more emphasis on plug-in electric cars and conventional hybrids, but they are far from done with plain old internal combustion. Over the past few years, automakers have applied more technology to a wider array of cars in order to boost their efficiency to meet...

Automakers are expected to offer greater incentives on sedans and hatchbacks as sales of these models continue to slow. Overall new-car sales fell 1.1 percent in February compared to the same month a year ago, according to Autodata Corp. But sales of passenger cars were hit particularly hard as...

Automaker lobbyists continue to push back against the stricter fuel-economy and emissions standards scheduled to take effect in the U.S. over the next decade. Many of their arguments center on costs—not only to the carmakers themselves, but also to car buyers. Regulators and automakers...

The average fuel economy of the new cars and light trucks sold in the U.S. is appreciably higher than it was 10 years ago. The University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute has demonstrated that in its regular reports calculating new-car average fuel economy since October 2007. But...

Crossovers are so popular right now that several automakers are even trying to pass off conventional hatchbacks as high-riding utility vehicles. The latest example of this trend is the Honda WR-V, a new pseudo-crossover for the Indian market. Despite the extra plastic body cladding and...

Smaller engines with turbochargers have spread throughout new vehicles as a way to meet the increasingly stringent fuel-efficiency rules that started in 2012. But no maker has been as forward about marketing that technology as Ford, which now offers a range of downsized and boosted engines under...

Elio Motors continues to drag its feet regarding the start of production for its three-wheeled, two-seat, "84-mpg" vehicle, but it may now be running out of time. The company previously said it had received 55,000 reservations for the car, representing potential sales of $300 million. Last year, it...

It's one of the most frequent questions asked by shoppers interested in utility vehicles with better gas mileage: why aren't there more hybrid SUVs and crossovers? Following the 2012 demise of the much-loved Ford Escape Hybrid, it took four years for the 2016 Toyota RAV4 Hybrid to emerge. This...

When it comes to improving fuel efficiency, simply making an engine smaller is a fairly direct way to get results. It's the approach that many automakers have taken in recent years. They have downsized engines across model lines, usually adding turbochargers at the same time to match the power...

Regardless of political persuasion, there are some issues almost everyone can agree on. One of them, for example, is likely gas prices. It's hard to imagine anyone who enjoys paying more every time they fill up their car. DON'T MISS: Emissions/MPG rules could cost 1 million jobs, Ford CEO tells...

The differences between gasoline and diesel engines lie not only in their fuels, but in how those fuels are ignited. Gasoline engines use spark plugs, while diesels simply use compression. But it is possible to ignite gasoline in an internal-combustion engine with compression, as in a diesel. DON'T...

Seven days before the advent of a new presidential administration, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has locked in planned auto-emission standards through 2025. The emission limits tie directly to fuel-efficiency rules issued by the NHTSA, effectively requiring those rules to stay the same...

Since Ford launched its line of downsized EcoBoost engines in 2009, the "eco" part of that name has often required an asterisk. That's because some owners have found that real-world fuel economy results don't always live up to the vehicles' official EPA ratings. The phrase "you can have Eco, or you...

For nearly a decade, the average fuel economy of new cars sold in the U.S. steadily increased—but that moment has stalled in recent years. Low gas prices and increased consumer interest in SUVs has caused calculated average new-car average fuel economy to plateau and, in the case of 2016's...

The Mitsubishi Mirage is the underdog of small cars: slow, loud, and archaic, but scrappy. And it's been a much bigger sales success than Mitsubishi expected, given the small numbers of minicars and subcompacts sold in the U.S. these days. For 2017, Mitsubishi added a four-door sedan model dubbed...