Hybrids

The easiest way to make a car is to get someone else to make it for you. That's the ethos Mitsubishi is subscribing to anyway, as it announces the Dignity, a luxury hybrid sedan for its home Japanese market. Rather than designing a luxury hybrid sedan from scratch, the Dignity is actually based on...

It's one of the most frequent questions asked about hybrids: What happens if I have to replace the high-voltage battery pack? While Toyota warrants its Prius batteries for 8 years/100,000 miles (or 10 years/150,000 miles in some states), cars more than a decade old won't be covered--and may still...

Say "hybrid car," and most people think Toyota Prius. The Japanese maker has sold roughly 3 million Prius models worldwide since 1997, which is more than half of all the hybrids in the world. The 2012 Toyota Prius remains the gold standard among hybrid-electric vehicles, with three of its four...

It’s one of the least popular luxury hybrids in the world, but at six years old, the current 2012 Lexus LS600h L -- just like the rest of the Lexus LS family -- is starting to show its age. Which is why Toyota has been working hard on a complete redesign of the Lexus LS range, which it will...

Whenever a new car hits the market, there’s always a website somewhere on the Internet keeping track of how real-world gas mileage differs from the EPA’s official quotes. So it’s no surprise that owners of the 2012 Toyota Prius C have started to keep track of the gas mileage of...

If you're showing off your flagship product in front of tens of thousands of people, you'd probably hope that everything goes without a hitch. Unfortunately for Infiniti, whose stunning Emerg-E plug-in hybrid was there to wow the crowds at the 2012 Goodwood Festival of Speed, things didn't quite...

The Lexus RX luxury crossover line is the mainstay of Toyota's luxury line in the U.S., representing fully 42 percent of the brand's total 2011 sales. And the hybrid Lexus RX 450h model finds many buyers among progressive, affluent suburban families. There's just one problem: Its real-world gas...

At the end of every month, major automakers participate in the age-old tradition of reporting their sales figures for the previous month. Frankly, those figures aren’t normally that exciting, but this month’s sales returns from Toyota caught our attention for one simple reason. During...

Toyota might be the current undisputed king of hybrid cars, but that fact isn’t about to stop Ford from going after the Japanese automaker’s crown. Its 2013 C-Max Hybrid, Ford says, will get an EPA city rating of 47 mpg, some 3 mpg higher than the official EPA city rating for the 2012...

As every automaker knows, getting Royal endorsement for a particular car or brand can help boost its image. Normally, such Royal endorsements are limited to luxury or prestige brands, but earlier this week, the 2012 Toyota Prius Plug-in Hybrid received its official royal appointment courtesy of His...

More than two years after Toyota and its luxury brand Lexus recalled the majority of its hybrid cars to stop the accelerator pedal sticking on aftermarket mats, yet more of its cars have just been recalled for the snip. This time, it isn’t Toyota’s Prius hybrid, but over 150,000 RX...

On Thursday, we brought you news that BMW was planning to ditch its partnership with GM to develop fuel cell vehicles, for Japanese rival Toyota. That news has now been confirmed, with a joint press conference on Friday heralding the start of BMW and Toyota's partnership. The automakers' Memorandum...

Thanks to data published by most automakers every month, it’s pretty easy to find out which cars sell the most. But before any cars are sold, which cars are the most researched by buyers? According to our own data, and some observations we’ve noted from the U.S. Department of...

It's hard to keep things secret in the auto industry. So when Bloomberg reported yesterday that German luxury maker BMW had broken off talks with General Motors on joint development of fuel cells, writer Dorothee Tschampa explained why. It appears BMW jilted GM because it found a more attractive...

We get to drive plenty of hybrid cars here at GreenCarReports, and naturally a combination of driving styles and road conditions play a part in the fuel economy figures we get. Unlike with some other vehicles though, hybrids sometimes require a slightly different technique to extract the best...

Hawaii, the land of sun, sea, sand and surfing. Green transport, too, according to the latest sales figures emerging from the islands. In fact, hybrids and electric cars are selling so well in the state they almost matched 2011's figures in the first five months of this year. We've already...

Toyota's fourth-generation Prius hybrid, expected in around 2015, has a tough act to follow. Still among the most economical vehicles on the market, the third-generation Prius has taken the internal combustion engine to new levels of efficiency--and the new Prius will have to beat it. To ensure the...

Have you ever wondered what life would be like if one tiny thing in your world changed? For example, what if you earned more money? Or had a different name? What if Toyota made a 7-seat version of its Prius V wagon? We can’t tell you what life would be life with more money or a different...

Toyota's remorseless drive to maintain its largest-by-far share of the global hybrid vehicle market continues apace. The latest vehicle to add a hybrid variant is the all-new 2013 Toyota Avalon, the large, luxurious, mid-size front-wheel drive sedan sold only in North America. The 2013 Toyota...

Every now and then, we allow our thoughts to drift here at GreenCarReports. Naturally, we're thinking forward rather than back, and often to the cars we might be driving around in five or ten years time. We've compiled a list of five concept cars seen at auto shows over the last year or so. All are...