Hybrids

During the first half of 2010, nearly 13,000 U.S. taxpayers wrongly claimed a staggering $33 million under the electric tax credit incentive scheme, a Treasury Department inspector general report has revealed. The credits, designed to encourage the uptake of plug-in hybrid and electric-only...

Buick plans to add its eAssist mild-hybrid system to the 2012 Regal sedan as an option, making the Regal its second model to offer the mileage-increasing system. According to trade publication Ward's Auto, Buick will introduce the option at the Chicago Auto Show next week. Last November, General...

Sometimes you just never know where you'll dredge up technical details on vehicles that carmakers haven't yet launched. Technology conferences can be a good source. Take, for instance, the Advanced Automotive Battery Conference (AABC) held last week in Pasadena, California. A battery systems...

One of the biggest drawbacks to electric car ownership today is the time it takes to recharge the car when the batteries are depleted. So it comes as no surprise that the time it takes a car to charge from empty is a big selling point. A few weeks ago, Ford seemingly pulled ahead of its rivals...

Chrysler has come out of hibernation with a bang, as far as green and more fuel-efficient vehicles are concerned. The company announced Wednesday that it would partner with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to build and test prototypes of a different kind of hybrid vehicle, one that...

Chrysler's got bigger problems right now than whether or not it builds hybrid cars. After quickly spiffing up of its line of aging, unappealing cars and crossovers for 2011, the company's engineers are deep into designing modern, fuel efficient compact and midsize Chrysler, Dodge, and Jeep vehicles...

Audi loves clean diesels, but the German automaker certainly hasn't stacked its entire deck with them. In addition to the upcoming 2012 Audi Q5 Hybrid and the brand's e-Tron electric sports cars in the pipeline, it's now taking hybrids and electric cars seriously, too. And one of Audi's best...

As part of the family of four Toyota Prius hybrids that the carmaker unveiled at the today's Detroit Auto Show, it showed a concept for a new, compact Prius hatchback. Low, edgy, and relatively sleek for a highly aerodynamic Kamm-tailed car, the Prius C concept is actually Toyota's second concept...

Auto show press conferences sometimes resemble mosh pits, but savvy photographers know how to get the best angles while protecting vulnerable body parts. Photographer Joe Nuxoll got most of these shots from the event where Toyota launched its 2012 Prius V multi-purpose vehicle (or, for those of us...

At 50 miles per gallon, the 2011 Toyota Prius five-door hatchback is the most fuel-efficient car sold in the U.S. But, says Toyota, its customers told the company they needed more room--for people, for stuff, for stretching out. So the quintessential Prius hybrid is becoming not just a vehicle but...

Much of 2010 was spent learning more and more details about Chevrolet's exciting new range-extended electric car, the Volt. Towards the end of the year our colleagues at GreenCarReports finally got to drive the vehicle, and more recently the first owners have taken delivery. So what do owners...

Recently, we wrote about the move in the private sector to use electric and hybrid delivery trucks. Companies like FedEx and Frito Lay are tapping into benefits of greener cars — even ahead of the broader consumer market because they’re a hedge against volatile diesel prices and can pay...

We love looking back to see what's been popular over the course of a full year. And 2010 was definitely chock-full of green car news. Our 10 most popular posts this year are a little less random than last year's most popular, which featured Muslims and ethanol, urine, hybrid Ferraris, and our...

Now that the 2011 Nissan Leaf and 2011 Chevy Volt have reached showrooms--a handful of them, anyhow--a new crop of electric vehicles will launch into the market for 2011. One of those may be the e6 all-electric crossover built by Chinese manufacturer BYD. Famed financier Warren Buffet was so...

Start-stop systems, which shut off car engines when the vehicle comes to a stop, have been offered in Europe for several years. But until now, no automaker other than Porsche has offered them on U.S.-market cars. That's about to change. Ford said yesterday it will offer the systems on some of its...

In one particularly hilarious scene in the TV show Weeds, Mary-Louise Parker’s soccer mom/drug dealer character inspires a scary drug lord to buy several Toyota Priuses after he successfully carries out a drive-by shooting while riding in hers. The selling point? The quietness of the hybrid...

It looks like the 2011 Lexus CT 200h isn’t the only new hybrid vehicle Lexus has in the pipeline. New filings with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office have revealed that a hybrid version of the Lexus ES sedan is likely to be in the works, though apart from its new name we don’t have...

We love reader questions, and occasionally they prompt posts, like this one: I'm thinking of buying a motorhome. Can I tow my 2008 Toyota Prius behind it? Stumped us, so we turned to the good people at Toyota. They sent us excerpts from the Prius owner's manual, complete with many, many, many...

Auto executives always want you to buy their cars, today. That goes without saying. But it's slightly less common for them to say, in effect, "This is the month to buy, 'cause we're going to be discounting the heck out of 'em." Nonetheless, that was the message from Bob Carter, Toyota's group vice...

The 2012 Range Rover Evoque--the stylish new baby "soft-roader" that's Land Rover's smallest-ever luxury vehicle--will not be offered with a hybrid-electric version to improve its gas mileage. That's the word from John Edwards, Land Rover's global brand director, who noted that in Europe, the...