Green Car News

  • 2017 Tesla Model 3, 2017 Los Angeles Auto Show

    Today, news from Norway about electric cars (and streetlights), gas mileage stuck in a rut, a new wrinkle on ethanol, and a new diesel for the Ford F-150 pickup truck promises higher fuel efficiency. All this and more on Green Car Reports. Over the weekend, as we do every seven days, we ran down last week's most important green-car stories. How serious is Norway about addressing climate change? Enough so that it is experimenting with self-dimming streetlights that brighten only when a person or vehicle is nearby. In the same vein, China has extended tax breaks on plug-in electric and hybrid...

  • 2018 Ford F-150 Power Stroke
    As expected, 2018 Ford F-150 gets V-6 diesel engine option

    Ford's best-selling full-size pickup truck will be powered by a diesel engine for the first time in its 70-year history. Monday morning, Ford revealed details of the new diesel-powered 2018 Ford F-150 Power Stroke, which it claims will achieve an EPA-estimated fuel-economy rating of 30 mpg highway...

  • Sales-weighted fuel economy, 2008-2017, United States, from UMTRI
    Sales-weighted new-car fuel economy stuck at 25 mpg, for fourth year in a row

    Even as vehicles become more fuel-efficient, the unending market shift toward crossover utilities, SUVs, and trucks kept the overall average U.S. new fleet efficiency stagnant for the fourth year in a row. For 2017, sales-weighted new-car fuel economy landed at 25.2 mpg, an improvement over 2016 of...

  • Electric-car rally in Geiranger, Norway [Image: Norsk elbilforening via Flickr]
    Half of all new cars sold in Norway last year are electric or hybrid, as diesel ebbs fast

    Norway was one of the earliest nations to set a coherent and broad-based national plan to cut its carbon emissions, and then stick to it. For road transport, it plans to phase out sales of cars with internal-combustion engines by 2025 using a variety of carrots (financial incentives and special...

  • 2018 Honda Clarity Plug-In Hybrid drive, Napa Valley, Caifornia, Dec 2017
    Plug-in electric car sales in Canada for 2017: two Dec debuts before ZEV rules

    Plug-in electric vehicles topped 1 percent of Canadian new-car sales in the second half of 2017, but will fall just short of that milestone for the full year. They’ll probably end around 0.95 percent when final registration data arrives, easily surpassing their 0.57-percent market share of...

  • Big square baler harvesting wheat straw for production of cellulosic ethanol
    E10 gasoline now standard, but E15 push stalled, so here comes E30

    Though the Environmental Protection Agency has already ruled on ethanol-blended gasoline mixtures for 2018, that hasn't stopped ethanol advocates from pushing for a higher 30-percent blend for non-flex-fuel vehicles. The latest call for ethanol comes from corn-state ethanol refiners, farmers, and...

  • BYD Qin EV300

    As China stares down climate change and smog alerts in numerous cities, the central government has extended its tax rebates for hybrid and electric vehicles for another three years. Announced on December 27, the move is one of many recently that will eventually see traditional internal-combustion cars all but eliminated from new vehicles sales in the country. The changes to vehicle policy in China have sparked a growing electric vehicle industry, with both new and established companies vying for customers amid the shift. DON'T MISS: 2017's most important green car story: internal-combustion...

  • Self-dimming streetlights in Hole, Norway
    How serious is Norway about climate change? So much that its streetlights self-dim

    As children, we're all taught to turn off the lights behind us as we leave an empty room. But it seems Norwegians have taken that lesson one step further. Along a 5.5-mile stretch of road in Hole, Norway, smart streetlights automatically dim when nobody's around—then come back to full power...

  • 2018 Nissan Leaf electric car, test-driven by Shiva of Fremont, California, Oct 2017
    Tesla Model 3 numbers, missing hydrogen stations, electric-car sales, 2018 Leaf: The Week in Reverse

    How much did sales of plug-in electric cars grow during 2017? Why did China end sales of more than 500 separate cars on January 1? This is our look back at the Week In Reverse—right here at Green Car Reports—for the week ending on Friday, January 5, 2018. Friday, we noted that while the...

  • 2019 Aston Martin Vantage
    Electric-car batteries, media coverage, Model 3 range, missing hydrogen stations: Today's Car News

    Today, we've got a full slate of stories, from a bill in California to ban all but zero-emission vehicles in 2040 to a poll on climate change. Also, media coverage of electric cars and the story behind the 310-mile range rating of the Tesla Model 3. All this and more on Green Car Reports. As we had...

  • 2018 Chevrolet Bolt EV
    Plug-in electric car sales in Dec: 2017 set new record, Bolt EV ends strong (final update)

    It was clear late last year that the number of plug-in electric cars sold in the U.S. during 2017 would set a new record. December is always a strong sales month for all vehicles, and dealerships across the country have rushed to deliver new cars, crossovers, and trucks to hit their year-end...

  • Hydrogenics hydrogen fueling station
    California to fall short of 100 hydrogen fueling stations by 2020

    As electric charging stations continue to sprout across the country, hydrogen fueling stations haven't experienced the same rapid growth. That's an issue in California, where Assembly Bill 8 stipulates a goal of 100 functioning public hydrogen stations by 2020. The latest forecast predicts the...

  • 2017 Tesla Model 3, in photo tweeted by Elon Musk on July 9, 2017

    Amidst all the coverage on Wednesday of the Tesla Model 3 production numbers, we realized we'd forgotten one piece of the Model 3 saga. That would be the official EPA range and efficiency ratings for the 2017 Tesla Model 3 Long Range version. Those were issued at the end of November, and they seemed worth highlighting as a way to compare the Model 3 both to competing electric cars and its larger, heavier, more powerful siblings. DON'T MISS: Tesla delivers 1,550 Model 3s in Q4; Models S, X over 100,000 in 2017 The EPA says the Tesla Model 3 Long Range provides 310 miles of battery range, and...

  • Gas + Electricity sign: how long until we see this for highway rest stops?   [mockup: John Briggs]
    Gas prices primed to rise in 2018, highest in four years: report

    As Americans collectively sigh at their credit-card bills from the holiday season, GasBuddy has some bad news that won't help ease the financial pain. The fuel price-tracking website predicts the cost of a gallon of fuel will rise by $0.19 per gallon in 2018, on average, to the highest level gas...

  • Chevrolet Bolt EV being charged outside Go Forth electric-car showroom, Portland   [photo: Forth]
    Mainstream media on electric cars: more thoughtful on their growth

    As with any innovation, coverage of plug-in electric cars by mainstream media has been, shall we say, variable. Seven years after the first Nissan Leaf and Chevrolet Volt were delivered to their buyers in December 2010, misconceptions and misinformation abound. Technology is often not a strong suit...

  • Flooded car in parking lot. Photo via Flickr user waitscm/CC2.0
    Are you optimistic about efforts to address climate change? Take our Twitter poll

    Ten years ago, energy security may have been as much a driving force behind electric cars for U.S. policymakers as climate change. Now, with continuous growth in domestic oil and gas production over that period, you just don't hear energy security discussed as much. Scientists agree that the...

  • Lithium-ion cell and battery pack assembly for Nissan Leaf electric car in Sunderland, U.K., plant
    Batteries in autonomous electric cars must be more durable: lithium-ion pioneer

    We tend to take batteries for granted. Day after day, we recharge batteries and expect them to work without giving a thought to how they work or to their state of health. But Akira Yoshino is different. He's one of the pioneers of lithium-ion battery technology. DON'T MISS: Lithium-ion battery...

  • California state capitol, Sacramento
    California bill to ban new fossil-fueled car sales by 2040 introduced

    A California lawmaker has submitted a bill that will ban the sale of gasoline- and diesel-powered vehicles in the state starting in 2040. Assemblymember Phil Ting, a Democrat representing much of the Bay Area, introduced the bill on Wednesday, when lawmakers returned for the new legislative session...

  • Hyundai Nexo

    Today, we've got news on vehicles to be shown at next week's CES, Tesla's Q4 sales results—including the Model 3—a map to address climate change, and more than 16,000 all-electric city buses. All this and more on Green Car Reports. Tesla announced its fourth-quarter deliveries on Wednesday afternoon: it delivered more than 100,000 Model S and Model X electric cars, but only 1,550 Model 3s—and delayed a key production level by another quarter. A concept for the Kia Niro EV electric wagon will appear at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas next week, and we have the...

  • 2017 Hyundai Ioniq Electric (European spec), 2016 Geneva Motor Show
    South Korea to standardize on CCS fast-charging standard used by US, German makers

    Buyers of electric vehicles in South Korea won't need to consider the pros and cons of charging standards in the near future. The South Korean Agency for Technology and Standards announced in mid-December it would revise the current charging standard in the country to recommend the use of "Combo...

  • 2018 Smart ForTwo Electric Drive Cabriolet, First Drive
    Is 'Drawdown' the climate-change action map the world needs?

    We often speak of methods and technologies we can employ as a society to curb climate change, either by reducing carbon emissions or through other means. But less frequently do we talk about them in real terms, including how much excess carbon these methods and technologies can pratically remove...

  • Bus in Shenzhen, China, By GEei Ginhee wins (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0]
    Shenzhen now uses only electric buses: 16,500 of them

    Over the last few years, the Chinese government has begun to push electric vehicles with all its might. In addition to incentivizing the purchase of electric vehicles, the central government has recently banned the sale of some 553 fossil-fuel passenger cars in the country. But when it comes to...

  • 2012 Honda Civic Natural Gas
    What topic should we have covered less in 2017? Twitter poll results

    Over the nine years this site has published daily news about green cars, the focus of our coverage has shifted significantly. In February 2009, when we started daily coverage, our most popular topics were hybrid cars and the Toyota Prius. With Prius sales in 2017 less than half what they were just...

  • Teaser for Kia Niro EV concept debuting at 2018 Consumer Electronics Show
    Concept for Kia Niro EV all-electric wagon to appear at CES

    We've long known that the Kia Niro wagon would get an all-electric version to accompany the 2017 Niro Hybrid and the just-launched 2018 Niro Plug-In Hybrid. The battery-electric Niro will fill out the suite of six cars sharing the same underpinnings, with the others being the same three versions of...

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