Hybrids

What if you could fully restore your charge in a plug-in hybrid, on the fly, just by driving? It’s a feature that’s unparalleled in mass-market plug-in hybrids—that in the 2016 Hyundai Sonata Plug-In Hybrid you can enter not the charge-sustaining mode that some models have, but a...

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...

Chrysler may add electric all-wheel drive to the next-generation Town & Country minivan.

There's been a rash of Toyota Prius battery thefts in San Francisco, and speculation that the stolen packs are being peddled as cheap replacement parts.

The 2015 Toyota Prius gets bigger discounts in certain areas of California.

Toyota Camry Hybrid battery packs will be used to store power from solar panels at Yellowstone National Park.

Mazda and Toyota will collaborate on future products.

Could the Volkswagen GTI and the all-wheel-drive Golf R high-performance compact-car models be headed toward a plug-in hybrid future? One new concept, the Golf GTE Sport, proposes that—while clearly aiming more than a few years into the future. A May gathering at Austria’s Lake...

These are the best deals on hybrids, electric cars, and diesels for May 2015.

Access to the carpool lane in California with only a single occupant has proven to be one of the more effective incentives to get the state's drivers to buy electric cars. The first year and a half of Chevy Volt range-extended electric cars didn't qualify, but Volt sales in California surged once...

XL Hybrids unveils a conversion kit for the Ford Transit full-size van.

Toyota Prius Plug-In Hybrid production will end next month, but a new version won't arrive until next year.

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...

While hybrid cars have had a good 10-year run in North America as the most fuel-efficient alternative, Europe never warmed to hybrid-electric powertrains. With roughly half the passenger cars sold in the European Union being powered by more efficient diesel engines, the difference between hybrid...

We're not entirely sure what it has to do with Earth Day, to be honest, but here's an odd little statistic. Turns out that buyers of green cars--whether they're hybrids or plug-in electric cars--are somewhat more likely to pay cash for their cars than are buyers of all vehicles on average. DON'T...

Automakers and their dealers know that when a vehicle is updated, redesigned, or discontinued, the last lagging examples of the old model may sit on lots for months, perhaps even years. So it appears to be with the Honda Insight, the subcompact mild hybrid hatchback that the company discontinued...

Hybrid models are a very significant part of the lineup for both the luxury brand Lexus and its mainstream counterpart (and parent company) Toyota. Hybrids accounted for about 16 percent of the brands’ U.S. sales, while they encompass nearly 70 percent of the U.S. hybrid market and about 85...

The topic of the press release issued late last Wednesday was not the sort of thing to set green-car fans' hearts racing: "Statement...Re: North American Production Portfolio". But buried in several paragraphs of detail from John Mendel, executive vice president of American Honda, was one...

Toyota’s Scion small-car brand has been called a laboratory; and it seems like the perfect testbed for new plug-in hybrid or full electric-car products. Yet you won’t see any of those from the brand—not even hybrids—in the lineup anytime soon. The reason why is that the...

There are several green car deals available in April.