Green Car News

The market for crossover vehicles grows with every passing year, so it's surprising that few automakers have offered the vehicles with hybrid or plug-in powertrains up until now. One that could is Audi's Q4 crossover, should a production version of the Beijing-bound concept appear in the next few...

A Nissan Leaf puts its regenerative brakes to good use traversing Hawaii's Haleakala volcano.

The 2015 Fiat 500 gains new technology features, and an automatic transmission for Turbo and Abarth models.

Overshadowed by their spectacular sales success in March, electric vehicles hit a momentous milestone in Norway last month. Fully one percent of Norway's passenger-car fleet now consists of battery electric vehicles. And this isn't a case of rounding up, either – this is a full 1 percent. As...

Auto writers tend to like Mazdas; they generally perform and handle well, and are far more fun to drive than the anodyne Fords, Hondas, and Toyotas that outsell them in the compact and mid-size categories. The newest crop of Mazda cars and crossovers, built around the company's highly...

Smart ForTwo city cars are apparently quite easy to tip over.

Many among the Detroit auto media were skeptical of Tesla Motors for years, correctly noting just how hard it is to start a car company and build a genuinely appealing product--electric car or not. But as Tesla continues to sell Model S electric luxury sedans, expanding into Europe and China as...

Leaking air-conditioner refrigerant may be increasingly contributing to global warming.

Over the last few years, China has experienced some of the highest city pollution concentrations anywhere on earth--with concentrations of pollutants climbing far past dangerous levels on official scales. Roughly a quarter of that is due to heavy traffic, and it's prompted legislation to clean up...

Ever since the first Honda Insight and Toyota Prius arrived on U.S. shores, hybrid vehicles have been among the most efficient vehicles on the road. The latest Toyota Prius is rated at 50 mpg combined by the EPA, a figure that only plug-in vehicles currently top. But in other countries, the Prius...

The Fomm Concept One is an electric car designed to take on a tsunami.

"Jailbreaking" used to mean... well, breaking out of jail. In the modern world though, it typically refers to the process of cracking software codes to take greater control of applications and user interfaces. It's rife in the world of smartphones, and now it's possible with electric vehicles...

Lexus and Tesla make headlines today.

In the last few years of electric car sales, the only records cars have been breaking are their own. Nissan, for example, has just had its best March ever for Leaf sales. And we know that global electric car sales have doubled each year for the past few years. But now, reports The Wall Street...

Access to carpool lanes on California's legendarily crowded freeways is a big perk. So is getting a check in the mail that cuts the purchase cost. These incentives were successful in spurring sales of hybrids years ago, and they've helped sales of modern battery-electric and plug-in hybrid cars...

Lexus has announced that its eagerly-awaited 2015 NX crossover will debut at the upcoming 2014 Beijing International Automotive Exhibition. Thanks to leaked images back in January, we already have a pretty good idea of what the production NX will look like--but largely the car will be a toned-down...

One of the alluring features of the Tesla Model S electric luxury sedan is its always-on 3G 4G cellular connection and built-in Internet browser. But have you ever wondered what all those wealthy electric-car drivers are actually looking at on their in-car browsers? Now we know. Or at least we have...

It's fair to say most Toyota Prius owners are probably quite happy with their cars. Sure, they aren't the quickest vehicles on the road, and plug-in cars use even less gas. But they're quiet, efficient and easy to drive. It might not have crossed many owners' minds to swap the clean-burning...

Read on for Porsche and Volkswagen plug-in news.

The trend of increasing average fuel economy continues.