Green Car News

The best-looking (for now, anyway) electric-powered vehicle on the market is finally, well, on the market--or nearly so. Fisker's Karma extended-range EV entered production at Valmet's plant in Finland today. U.S. deliveries of the car are expected to begin next month. That jibes surprisingly well...

Gas mileage is on absolutely everyone's mind these days. Strife in oil-producing nations, and the associated rising gasoline prices, have already led to a surge of interest in any vehicle's MPG ratings. Now production in Japan (source of most of the world's hybrids) is shut down, at least...

If you listen to the enthusiastic founder and CEO of Better Place Shai Agassi, the ability to swap depleted electric car battery packs for fully charged ones at a dedicated swap station is an essential and much-needed part of electric vehicle infrastructure. But while the ultra-fast way of getting...

Expect to see smaller engines for BMW’s future models, as high fuel prices and greater environmental concerns push automakers towards engines with lower displacements. We’ve already seen this trend with the recent announcement of BMW’s new TwinPower Turbo 2.0-liter four-cylinder...

Quick, name the electric cars currently on sale. Nissan Leaf, Chevy Volt, and ... ummmm ... oh, yeah, Smart Electric Drive. Now name the ones built in the States. Hmmmm. Volt, right? Think about it Yes, but you've missed out on one--in both categories. It's the Think City, which is now being...

Mazda should be beaming as much as the front-end of their Mazda3s with the recent announcement from Insurance Institute of Highway Safety (IIHS). The 2011 Mazda3 has made the IIHS “Top Safety Pick.” The Mazda3 earns the top rating of “Good,” in front, side, rear and rollover...

For all the media furor over the 2011 Nissan Leaf and the 2011 Chevy Volt, you'd think that tens of thousands of them were flooding onto our streets each month. Not so. As of Feb 28, the total sold between both cars was just 1,102, made up of 928 Volts and 174 Leafs. Now, it may be that those...

The EPA rates the 2011 Chevrolet Cruze Eco at 28 mpg city, 42 mpg highway, when it's fitted with the six-speed manual transmission. But can the Cruze Eco really reach beyond that magic 40-mpg number, which is highway mileage only? VIDEO: 2011 Chevrolet Cruze Eco, Our Real-World Gas Mileage On our...

Can electric cars handle cold weather? It s a question which we’ve seen answered time and time again by the auto industry and journalists in an attempt prove or disprove that electric cars can operate in extremes of cold weather. We’ve seen Californian-designed Tesla sports cars...

We’ve known for some time that Porsche’s 918 Spyder plug-in hybrid concept from the 2010 Geneva Motor Show would eventually enter production but today, more than two years out from its debut, Porsche has announced that the order books have officially opened. We can confirm that the...

For those who travel very short distances, the Toyota Prius Plug-In could almost be thought of as an electric car. With a battery pack that's about 5 kW-hr—many times that of the standard Prius—it can, within reason travel at highway speeds on electric power alone, or up to 14 miles or...

What comes first? The electric car or the charging point? Of course it depends on who you ask. Generally if you’re an existing electric car owner the answer is likely to be the former. If you’re a government official, prospective electric car owner or automaker the answer is likely to...

We're all familiar with alternative lifestyles, but the EX electric tricycle looks like an attempt at an alternative deathstyle. Concocted in the mind of Nils Ferber and realized with the aid of a pair of Bosch drill/drivers, this is an EV for the motorist with a Rube Goldberg fetish and a death...

Americans rarely think much about zoning, but it governs almost every facet of how we live our lives. And unintended consequences of 50-year-old zoning codes may be about to turn some of our loveliest and quietest suburbs into the next slums. Why? Simply because they've been built too far away from...

We rarely think about what's in our gasoline when we fill the tank, but carmakers have to. Mercedes-Benz has just launched a new direct-injected 3.5-liter V-6 engine in its 2012 SLK model, with an innovative "lean burn" mode that will also be used on a smaller four-cylinder engine. The "Stratified"...

Back to the Future may have been right: The cars of tomorrow will be powered by capacitors (they will not, presumably, be able to time-travel). At least, that’s what Tesla CEO Elon Musk said at yesterday’s Cleantech Forum in San Francisco, unleashing a torrent of speculation that the...

If at first you don't succeed ... make your race car better. That's the principle behind yesterday's launch of the Porsche 911 GT3 R Hybrid 2.0. It's the second iteration of Porsche's ground-breaking 911 endurance racer fitted with a Kinetic Energy Recovery System, or KERS. The first version of the...

Chinese battery firm turned automaker hit the news a couple of times last week for all the wrong reasons. But less than a week after the firm was the center of a major auto scandal it has quietly started to prepare itself for a late 2011 U.S. Launch. So why is a company which previously been...

Renault’s paranoia over industrial espionage backfired earlier this week as it struggled with the reality that it had been duped into believing that three of its executives had been selling electric car secrets to the Chinese. But while Renault/Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn made a formal apology to...

While many Americans may still scoff at the idea of driving a reasonably sized car with an engine not much bigger than that found on a motorbike, sales numbers are showing that the tide is starting to turn and this archaic negative perception towards smaller engines may soon alleviate altogether...