Green Car News

Buying used cars is always a little bit of a risk--you can never quite be sure what condition the previous owner has left the car in. That's where manufacturer-certified used car programs come in, and Nissan is launching just such a thing for used examples of its Leaf electric car. While we still...

Sometimes the most significant divorces are handled in the most minimalist way. So it was with a brief press statement from Toyota today, noting that after completing a "feasibility study" that took almost two years, the two companies have chosen not to pursue a collaboration on hybrid powertrains...

As any parent will tell you, watching children grow up and mature is a powerful, life-changing experience. We’re not sure the same can be said watching a car or a motorcycle grow and evolve from one generation to the next--but if the 2013 Zero S were to have parents, we think they’d be...

Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words. Above is a graph comparing the relative sales volumes of hybrids (starting in 2000) to those of plug-in electric cars (starting in 2011). It comes from the U.S. Department of Energy, which tweeted the image last Friday. (We're not sure why the units on...

Back in 2010, we asked why so few of today's cars were among the most fuel efficient ever. Look down the list of the most fuel-efficient vehicles sold in the U.S, and only a small handful had been built in the previous decade--cars such as the familiar Prius, and the all-too-brief but brilliant...

The 2014 Porsche Panamera S E-Hybrid will be the first-ever plug-in electric car sold by the German brand. And the company's engineers are still testing the car in driving tests through the heart of Silicon Valley, where the luxury four-door plug-in hybrid sedan will compete with the Tesla Model S...

There's currently a significant gap in the Volvo range between the sporty C30 hatchback and sleek S60 sedan. That gap used to be filled by the S40 sedan. It's a car Volvo no longer sells in the U.S, but for European buyers its role is now occupied by the V40. Not only that, but the V40 comes with a...

Now that Chrysler-Fiat reluctantly has the surprising good 2013 Fiat 500e--its first electric car--on the market, what's next for the smallest of the Detroit Three? There will be more plug-in vehicles, according to an interview in the Detroit Free Press with Mike Duhaime, the company's global...

Mercedes-Benz is best known for its big sedans, but lately the German automaker has been looking into smaller and more efficient vehicles. That lineup is expected to increase over the next few years, reports Automotive News. Mercedes will expand its roster of front-wheel drive models when a new...

Electrically-powered vehicles that match regular combustion cars for performance are no longer a surprise, many of those barriers eroded thanks to companies like Tesla Motors. Now it's the turn of the performance plug-in hybrid, with Mitsubishi's next Evolution model expected to deliver a...

America's wide open spaces have never been conducive for small car sales success, but the story is quite different elsewhere. We already know how popular the tiny kei-class cars are in Japan, for example--but some automakers are exploring even smaller vehicles to meet future transportation needs...

Readers of our monthly analysis of the Canadian plug-in electric car market know two things well: a) the Chevy Volt dominates, with sixteen consecutive months of sales leadership; and b) Canadian plug-in figures are hard to come by. Our posts on June plug-in sales in the United States and Canada...

As Tesla Motors [NSDQ:TSLA] faces the obstacle of obstreperous dealer organizations, rides the wave of its strong production figures, and quietly welcomes recent evidence that its batteries in the Roadster are lasting longer than predicted, another development: the electric car company has...

We haven't heard much about Fisker Automotive in the last few months. The company still hasn't declared bankruptcy, it hasn't yet been bought, and it is still apparently in default on its Department of Energy loans. But now there's a new suitor who's at least kicking the tires. According to China...

Among the many advocacy and lobbying groups that weigh in on automotive and energy policy matters in our nation's capital, Secure America's Future Energy (SAFE) isn't necessarily among the most high-profile. But now the group is offering something that should make civilians sit up and take notice...

The Honda Fit today is the oldest subcompact sold in the U.S., but there's an all-new one on the way. Now Honda has released the first official photos of the entirely redesigned Fit for the Japanese market, though only so far in the form of the Fit Hybrid model not sold in the U.S. The images show...

If there's one thing that most people agree on when it comes to electric cars, it's that powering them with electricity generated by renewable energy is generally the greenest thing to do. Solar is a popular choice with those in warmer climates, but even that endless nuclear furnace we call the sun...

It was the terrible smog of cities like Los Angeles in the 1970s that prompted a huge change in the efficiency and pollution controls of automobiles. Today, cars are many orders of magnitude cleaner than their counterparts from previous decades. But what if our roads could help further? No, not by...

Electric cars are certainly becoming a more familiar sight on the roads these days, but in the ultra-competitive world of professional motor sport they're also beginning to get a foot-hold. Regular readers will be no stranger to many of these vehicles, tackling disciplines as diverse as crossing...

"History is littered with big companies that ignored innovation that was coming their way because you didn’t know where you could be disrupted." General Motors will be hoping those words, from vice chairman Steve Girksy as the automaker begins to study electric upstart Tesla Motors...