Green Car News

  • Electrify America chargers at San Francisco Premium Outlets

    As world leaders gather at a climate conference in Poland, the U.S. EPA proposes new looser standards for coal plants. A VW executive says electric cars could spell the end of front-wheel drive. And Electrify America opens its first two 350-kilowatt DC fast chargers a few miles from the Tesla factory. All this and more on Green Car Reports. Prosecutors in Japan filed formal charges against former Nissan chairman Carlos Ghosn, the company, and an American Nissan executive for failing to report up to $44 million in income over eight years. The EPA released new standards for coal-fired electric...

  • Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn, at the 2015 Tokyo Motor Show
    Japanese prosecutors charge former Nissan chairman Ghosn, automaker itself

    Japanese prosecutors charged former Nissan chairman and CEO Carlos Ghosn on Monday with underreporting his income for eight years. He was arrested Nov. 19 and has been held in a Tokyo jail since, but has not been formally charged until now. Ghosn is known as the father of the Nissan Leaf electric...

  • Electrify America DC fast chargers at San Francisco Premium Outlets, Livermore, California
    Electrify America turns on first 350-kw fast charger in California

    Electrify America installed its first 350-kilowatt fast chargers next to a Tesla Supercharging station at an outlet mall outside San Francisco last week. The two new 350-kw chargers are among the fastest publicly available units in the U.S., capable of recharging certain cars at up to 20 miles per...

  • Coal power plant in China
    EPA rolls back emissions standards on coal plants

    On Thursday, EPA Acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler announced a new rule that will allow coal-fired power plants to emit more than 35 percent more global warming pollution than the current law allows. The proposal came on the eve of a climate summit in Poland that started over the weekend where...

  • Volkswagen ID Crozz concept
    Electric cars could spell end of front-wheel drive, VW exec says

    First it was Tesla, now Volkswagen. Ever since British designer and engineer Alec Issigonis developed the original Mini Cooper for 1959, front-wheel-drive vehicles have been consolidating their hegemony on the car market. Volkswagen itself was one of the main champions of front-wheel drive when it...

  • 1970 Aston Martin DB6 MkII Volante with electric powertrain
    Classic Aston Martin features plug-and-play electric power

    Wealthy buyers looking for an electric Aston Martin may not have to wait until the brand's new Rapide E performance car—at least not previous owners who may already have an old Aston Martin lying around. The company has joined other European automakers in developing an electric drive system...

  • Rivian R1T electric pickup concept

    Which automaker made a commitment to end gas engine production (eventually)? What electric car may finally have gotten a name? This is our look back at the Week In Reverse—right here at Green Car Reports—for the week ending Dec. 7, 2018. This week our news came mostly from follow-up insights from the LA Auto Show as well as mainly disheartening climate reports being released in conjunction with a summit of world leaders on climate change convening in Poland this month. Along the way, there were details to report about upcoming electric cars, and encouraging news about batteries...

  • 2019 Audi e-tron first drive  -  Abu Dhabi UAE, December 2018
    2019 Audi e-tron first drive: Redrawing the electric-vehicle boundaries

    Road-tripping along in the 2019 Audi e-tron, your passenger might not even know (or care) that you’re in an all-electric utility vehicle—rather than just an extraordinarily quiet gasoline one. And as the driver, you might even forget. It gets right to Audi’s point behind the...

  • Rivian S1T, 2018 LA Auto Show
    Audi e-tron first drive, how to buy a Rivian, Toyota Prius AWD-e tech: Today's Car News

    We had the first chance to drive the new electric Audi e-tron quattro SUV. Startup electric truck-maker Rivian says it plans to follow Tesla's lead in selling cars directly to consumers—mostly. Toyota reveals how the new Prius AWD-e gets great gas mileage. And a new report shows greenhouse...

  • Rivian R1T electric pickup concept
    Electric upstart Rivian plans for dealers, but not to sell trucks

    Electric cars worry traditional car dealerships. Tesla sells cars nationwide without dealers—even if buyers have to drive over state lines to get them in some cases. Electric cars eat into one of dealerships' main profit centers, service, because they don't need oil changes, spark plugs, or...

  • Smokestacks [CREDIT: Global Climate Budget 2018]
    Report: Global CO2 emissions at record levels in 2018

    Blame China—and India. Global carbon emissions are on the rise, and hit record levels in 2018, after remaining flat in 2016 and experiencing a small gain last year, a new report shows. The report by the Global Carbon Project came out just as world leaders gathered in Poland to discuss the...

  • 2019 Toyota Prius
    Toyota Prius AWD-e: Going light on the rear motor helps it hit 50 mpg

    The all-wheel drive version of the Toyota Prius introduced last week at the LA Auto Show earns an astoundingly good EPA fuel economy rating of 50 mpg combined—nearly as good as the 52 mpg earned by much of the Prius lineup (LE, XLE and Limited). But the system isn’t nearly as capable as...

  • Left to right: Volkswagen ID, ID Buzz and ID Crozz concepts

    VW announced that it is now designing the last combustion engines it will sell. Ford trademarks two possible names that could go on its upcoming electric SUV. Toyota explains why it still uses nickel-metal hydride batteries. And a Chinese battery company says it will pass the magic $100-per-kilowatt-hour threshold as soon as 2020. All this and more on Green Car Reports. At a conference in Germany, VW's strategy chief said the company will reduce products with internal combustion engines to "the absolute minimum" and is currently developing what will be the last such engines in its cars, to...

  • 2018 Toyota Prius
    Lithium-ion vs. nickel-metal hydride: Toyota still likes both for its hybrids

    Toyota continues to stay the course with nickel-metal hydride battery cells for many of its hybrid vehicles, even though most other hybrid vehicles from other brands have moved on to using lithium-ion cells exclusively. According to Prius chief engineer Shoichi Kaneko, in an interview this past...

  • Teaser for Ford Mustang Mach-E debuting at 2019 Los Angeles Auto Show
    Trademark filings show Ford may call electric SUV the "Mach E"

    Fans of the Ford Mustang didn't take it well earlier this year when Ford suggested it might call its upcoming 300-mile electric SUV the Mach 1. Now new trademark filings discovered by The Drive show a new possibility for the name: the "Mach E" or the "Mach-E." Ford filed trademark applications for...

  • Lithium-ion cell and battery pack assembly for Nissan Leaf electric car in Sunderland, U.K., plant
    Electric cars cheaper than gas ones by 2020, says Chinese battery supplier

    Envision Energy, a Chinese company that bought Nissan's former AESC battery business, says it will be able to make battery packs for less than $100 per kilowatt-hour in the next two years. That number is significant, because it's the threshold at which automakers and analysts say electric cars will...

  • VW MEB platform
    VW says it is now developing its last generation of gas, diesel engines

    Our readers speculate a lot on this site about how long it will be until gas and diesel engines fade out, and the transition to electric cars is complete. Volkswagen may just have given an answer to that question in a conference at the automaker's headquarters in Wolfsburg, Germany, on Tuesday. The...

  • 2019 Volvo XC40
    2019 Toyota Prius AWD price, more VW electrics, French protests: Today's Car News

    Toyota announced pricing for the new 2019 Prius AWD-e. In trade talks with the Trump administration, VW's CEO revealed the company could use Ford factories in the U.S. to build new models—which could include electric cars. Rioters in France this month won what they wanted: a reprieve from...

  • VW ID family

    In trade talks in Washington D.C. on Tuesday, Volkswagen CEO Herbert Diess revealed the automaker is talking with Ford about using its factories in the U.S., and possibly sharing its upcoming electric car platform the American automaker. The two automakers announced in June that they planned an alliance to collaborate on some future products. Diess said that alliance would not include equity stakes for the automakers. READ THIS: Volkswagen details the foundation for 10 million electric vehicles Diess didn't say what models those may be, but Volkswagen has said in recent months that it is...

  • Rivian R1T electric pickup concept
    What electric car are you most excited to hear about from the LA Auto Show? Twitter poll results

    Pickups and electric cars. Two opposites that haven't been attracted to each other—until now. Our readers, though, seem excited about the possibility of combining the two. In our Twitter poll last week, we asked, "What electric car are you most excited to hear about from the LA Auto Show?"...

  • Gasoline prices in California, August 2012 [photo: Brenda Priddy]
    Rioting protesters win delay of new French carbon tax

    Rioting in the streets is the sword of Damocles hanging over every decision a politician makes—especially when those streets happen to be French. And rioting in the streets is what put an end to a new gas-tax proposal in France this week. Technically, its wasn't even a straight gas tax. DON'T...

  • 2019 Toyota Prius
    2019 Toyota Prius AWD-e priced at $27,300

    Toyota has released pricing for the new all-wheel-drive version of the Prius that it revealed at the LA auto show last week. The base version of the all-wheel drive model will start at $27,300, including a $920 destination charge, according to our partners at CarsDirect.com. That's a premium of...

  • 2019 Chevrolet Volt
    Tesla Model 3, long-range Nissan Leaf, cutting tax credits: Today's Car News

    The Trump administration plans to end tax credits for plug-in cars. The EPA released official range and efficiency estimates for the Tesla Model 3 Mid Range. The long range Nissan Leaf is a no-show at the 2018 LA Auto Show—now we hear why. And we ask what should happen with the Chevrolet...

  • 2018 Tesla Model 3
    Tesla Model 3 Mid Range goes an EPA-official 260 miles

    EPA range ratings are funny things—they're never official until they're official. Tesla released its Model 3 Mid Range in early November, in an effort to offer a lower-priced base model, with an estimated range of 260 miles. Now the EPA has released final range figures confirming that number...

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