Green Car News

There's a popular rumor going around that Robert Downey Jr.'s portrayal of Tony Stark, the man behind the mask in Iron Man, is based on Tesla founder Elon Musk. In fact, Musk himself made a cameo in an early scene in Iron Man 2, and a Tesla Roadster appeared in Stark's garage in the first film...

Cars of the future--especially those from the past--always exert a powerful pull on our imaginations. They range from the outlandish (no wheels) to the bizarre (extreme styling exercises) to the jaw-dropping (powered by tiny nuclear powerplants). While the Fifties and Sixties may have been the...

For a century, we've gotten almost all our gasoline and diesel fuel from petrochemicals. Now Silicon Valley startup Solazyme [NSDQ:SZYM] is testing diesel fuel derived from refining renewable oils--produced by specialized algae--in two Volkswagen turbodiesel models. Since July 2012, the VW Passat...

What a difference a few years makes. Startup electric-car maker Tesla Motors [NSDQ:TSLA] said it will repay its $465 million in low-interest loans from the U.S. Department of Energy five years earlier than originally scheduled. The news came yesterday in the company's annual report. Sourcing Tesla...

Kia has announced details of its updated Optima Hybrid, new for the 2013 model year. Just about every aspect of the car has been improved, resulting in a car that now offers greater fuel efficiency, improved space, better performance and a higher standard of equipment. Central to the changes are...

Fuel cells aren't the only way to use hydrogen as a fuel in vehicles--burning it works too. That's exactly what Aston Martin will be doing at the Nurburgring 24-hour race later this year, when it fields a hydrogen-fueled version of its Rapide luxury sedan. According to our sister site Motor...

Electric-car charging stations are being added to more and more public parking lots, curbsides, corporate garages, and a host of other locations. But as any electric-car driver can tell you, many of them are operated by specific networks. They often require drivers to have set up an account...

It isn't easy being a startup car company. Running a new business is difficult enough without others damaging the reputation of your product. That's why Tesla CEO Elon Musk fought so hard over The New York Times' assessment of its Model S in a recent road trip, and why the company sued Top Gear for...

Last summer he dropped a hint that it might be possible. Now Dan Akerson has confirmed it: GM is working on an electric car with a 200-mile range, according to its CEO. The chief executive officer of General Motors made the comment yesterday at an energy conference, as reported in Reuters. He...

It's very easy to be cynical when presented with the phrase, "Chinese car". For most of us, experience of Chinese vehicles is limited to horrific-looking crash test videos on the internet, or the occasional dubiously-constructed neigborhood electric vehicle. Qoros is seeking to change that as it...

Two days ago, we ran down all the rated ranges of every plug-in electric car offered for sale in the U.S. market this year. We did not include ratings for efficiency. In part, that's because the unit the EPA uses doesn't actually have much to do with the electricity owners use to recharge the...

Own a Nissan Leaf? Nissan wants to thank you for it. 2011 and 2012 Nissan Leaf owners, for their loyalty, will be eligible for $1,000 off any model in Nissan's lineup. The offer runs through December 31, 2014, so you've plenty of time to decide. Nissan's research shows most Leaf owners are new to...

The 2013 Volkswagen Jetta Hybrid is VW's second hybrid model, and the first hybrid sedan we've had in the U.S. market from the German automaker. It's also interesting because the Jetta is available with a fuel-efficient TDI turbodiesel engine--and VW discovered that hybrid and diesel buyers are...

News Flash: The next Chevy Volt will have less electric range than the current one, perhaps no more than 18 to 30 miles. Or perhaps not. We suspect that a comment by Thomas Sedran, GM's vice president of strategy and operations, is going to be one of those off-hand remarks that creates far more...

Mitsubishi doesn't sell a pickup truck in the U.S, but elsewhere around the world its L200 model is a highly popular utility vehicle. Typically powered by a 2.5-liter turbodiesel engine, the L200 mixes a one-ton payload with almost 6,000 lbs of braked towing capacity. It's smaller than many U.S...

The Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) target of 54.5 mpg by 2025 has caused cheers from some people, and jeers from others. In reality, that target won't be as difficult to hit as the numbers suggest, as the average on EPA window stickers will be lower--closer to 40 mpg in reality. For some...

The annual Geneva Motor Show is a haven for weird and wonderful concept vehicles, and one of the strangest this year is the Toyota i-Road concept. The i-Road is described by Toyota as "a new form of transport", designed as an easy-to-maneuver, zero-emissions form of inner-city transport. We've...

If you were to associate Volkswagen with one particular fuel-efficient technology, it'd probably be diesel. VW's range of diesels is expanding in the U.S, but it's massive in Europe--accommodating a market where over 50 percent of buyers choose diesel vehicles. As a result of Europe's love of...

Will this be the car that finally makes the ultra-aerodynamic and futuristic GM EV1 electric car look old-fashioned? Today, VW Group took the wraps off the production version of the Volkswagen XL1, a turbodiesel plug-in hybrid two-seater that will be its most fuel-efficient model ever offered. The...

A popular myth among detractors of hybrid and electric vehicles is that the energy and materials that go into making batteries far outweighs any good they do under ownership. Batteries aren't as damaging as many suspect though, since so many of a battery's components can be recycled. Honda is doing...