Green Car News
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The Pacific Northwest is a remarkably scenic corner of the continental United States. The striking coastal ranges of Washington and Oregon offer dramatic vistas, temperature (if often damp) weather, and dozens of outdoor activities within a few hours' drive. Now those drives can be done in electric cars, courtesy of the country's first scenic byway and tourism route designed specifically for electric cars. Washington State and several businesses together plan to install a series of charging stations along U.S. Route 2, starting in Everett (just outside Seattle) and reaching 120 miles over the...
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Range Anxiety? Brit Proves Electric Cars Can Go The DistanceYesterday we covered the unexpected electric car challenge from a Tesla fan to the BBC journalist driving the 400+ mile trip from London to Edinburgh in a prototype 2009 MINI E David Peilow, a regular at TeslaMotorsClub.Com, took some time off from his work to prove that not all electric cars were...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
Video: 2012 Ford Focus Electric Live Unveiling At 2011 Detroit Auto ShowFord’s Volt and Leaf rival has been revealed, making its world debut last week at the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas and then reappearing again this week at the 2011 Detroit Auto Show. We are, of course, talking about the 2012 Ford Focus Electric, the Blue Oval’s first...
Viknesh Vijayenthiran -
Tesla Fan Drives Epic Electric Car Trip To Prove BBC WrongThe British Broadcasting Corporation, considered to be the center-pin of television and radio in the U.K., has always had a cautious view of the benefits of electric vehicles, often choosing to illustrate the limited range of electric cars in articles rather than the positive benefits. In typical...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
Battery Wars: General Motors Licenses American Argonne TechA long time ago in a galaxy far, far away... Actually, no--fairly recently and not so far from home, the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory patented a battery technology known as nickel manganese cobalt (NMC). Discovering and patenting new battery technology in an era so...
Antony Ingram -
German Tuner G-Power Builds World’s Fastest Natural Gas Powered CarThe G-Power name has become synonymous with extreme BMWs and the company’s latest Hurricane GS based on the M5 sedan fits in perfectly with that description. You may have read about G-Power’s past creations at our sister site MotorAuthority; such cars as the BMW M5 Hurricane RR, the...
Viknesh Vijayenthiran -
Ford is getting a lot of press with the introduction of their 10 small vehicles and electrification plan earlier this week at the 2011 North American International Auto Show (NAIAS). Of course, that isn’t the only news; they also announce the all-new Ford Focus Electric at the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show (CES). We have also seen the introduction of the Ford C-MAX Hybrid and C-MAX Energi (the BEV). It may seem like all of this news is a coincidence, but Nancy Gioia, director of Global Electrification at Ford, says that these releases were “all apart of the plan.” Gioia was...
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Ford: Era Of EVs Calls For Closer Eye On Conflict MineralsIncreasingly, in production electric vehicles such as the 2012 Ford Focus Electric and 2011 Nissan Leaf, automakers are turning to recycled and repurposed materials. But the rest of a modern car—even an ol' fossil-fuel burner—is no longer just sheetmetal, alloy, and plastics; extruded...
Bengt Halvorson -
Electric Car Crashes? Just As Safe As Any Other VolvoDespite thousands of automotive gasoline fires in the U.S. every year, we've pretty much normalized the risks of the highly explosive liquid that we use to fuel our cars. But for electric cars, there's a whole new set of potential fears. One may be driving through water--it's not like tossing a...
John Voelcker -
2011 Detroit Auto Show: Volvo Shows Off Crashed Electric C30You might think that having a twisted lump of metal on your auto show stand probably isn't the best way to promote your latest product. Most manufacturers would agree with you. The customers tend to prefer cars shinier and in one piece. Volvo aren't "most manufacturers" though and they've never...
Antony Ingram -
2011 Detroit Auto Show: Sexy Electric Mercedes SLS AMG Due 2013If the shots we showed you last year of Mercedes-Benz’s electric offering on the now iconic SLS AMG super-car were enough to get your juices flowing, you’ll be pleased to know that Mercedes announced yesterday at the 2011 Detroit Auto Show that the all-electric SLS AMG E-Cell will be...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
Fighting The Electric Car Pirates: Renault Gets ToughTake one look at the news coming out of Detroit this week and you’ll know that the electric car revolution seems well and truly under way. Nearly every major automaker is now extolling the virtues of electric car technology when a few years earlier, they were dismissing them as impractical...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
Where is Noah's Ark to save human beings? People pass their eyes drilling into the Earth up to the sky. Each loop of human civilization is closely linked to the exploitation of solar energy—even coal and petroleum. Since sunshine is vital to everything, why human beings don't obtain energy directly from the sun? That's just one excerpt of the puzzling video BYD showed before its presentation at the 2011 Detroit Auto Show. In a presentation, the company presented large-scale battery-energy storage stations to help moderate changes in power supply and demand—including that for...
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2011 Detroit Auto Show: 2012 Audi A6 HybridAudi loves clean diesels, but the German automaker certainly hasn't stacked its entire deck with them. In addition to the upcoming 2012 Audi Q5 Hybrid and the brand's e-Tron electric sports cars in the pipeline, it's now taking hybrids and electric cars seriously, too. And one of Audi's best...
Bengt Halvorson -
Ed Begley, Jr. Launches Ford’s Electric Car War On Chevrolet, Nissan (VIDEO)Choosing a spokesperson for a new brand is pretty tough, especially if someone else has already had a go at selling what you’re trying to. NIssan chose world-champion cyclist Lance Armstrong to be their public face on early Nissan LEAF commercials. It appears Ford has chosen American actor...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
Confirmed: Toyota Could Consider Prius-Based Pickup TruckAuto shows are a great place to get rumors--or even wild fantasies--confirmed. (Or, occasionally, dismissed contemptuously--but that's a different story.) Following today's Toyota press conference that introduced the Prius V multipurpose vehicle that will go on sale as a 2012 model, and unveiled...
John Voelcker -
2011 Detroit Auto Show: Tesla Celebrates 1500 Roadsters SoldTesla celebrated the start of the 2011 Detroit Auto Show today by announcing that it had now sold over 1,500 of its iconic electric sports car, the Tesla Roadster. It was November 18, 2006 when we were first shown the sexy two-door car that very few believed could be as good as the then unknown...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
2011 Detroit Auto Show: Akio Toyoda Checks In On Tesla Model SWhat do you do when the president of the world's number-one global auto producer stops by your stand? Give him the tour around the car that you're planning to assemble in his former factory, of course. By chance we were hanging around the Tesla stand at the 2011 Detroit auto show when Akio Toyoda...
Bengt Halvorson -
As part of the family of four Toyota Prius hybrids that the carmaker unveiled at the today's Detroit Auto Show, it showed a concept for a new, compact Prius hatchback. Low, edgy, and relatively sleek for a highly aerodynamic Kamm-tailed car, the Prius C concept is actually Toyota's second concept on the compact hybrid theme, the first being the lime-green FT-CH Concept that was unveiled at the same show last year. The Prius C Concept is still only a styling exercise, but watch for Toyota to launch a production version of the car sometime during the first half of 2012. Like the Prius V...
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2011 Detroit Auto Show: 2012 Toyota Prius V, Photo GalleryAuto show press conferences sometimes resemble mosh pits, but savvy photographers know how to get the best angles while protecting vulnerable body parts. Photographer Joe Nuxoll got most of these shots from the event where Toyota launched its 2012 Prius V multi-purpose vehicle (or, for those of us...
John Voelcker -
Ford Shows They Aren’t Afraid Of Small Cars With 10 New Models At NAIASWith CES last week and the 2011 North American International Auto Show (NAIAS) this week, there is a lot of news hitting the wire. In fact, a lot of news is coming out of one auto manufacturer in particular—Ford. Last week, AllSmallCars.com was right there with the breaking news of the 2012...
Jonathan McGrew -
2011 Detroit Auto Show: 2012 Toyota Prius V, Wagon / MinivanAt 50 miles per gallon, the 2011 Toyota Prius five-door hatchback is the most fuel-efficient car sold in the U.S. But, says Toyota, its customers told the company they needed more room--for people, for stuff, for stretching out. So the quintessential Prius hybrid is becoming not just a vehicle but...
John Voelcker -
2011 Detroit Auto Show: Ford Focus, C-Max, Vertrek Photo GalleryFrom the moment Ford CEO Alan Mulally drove onstage in a 2012 Ford Focus ST, the first of half a dozen new compact Ford models, it was all about small cars. There were small fast cars (that Focus ST) and small gasoline cars (the four-door Focus sedan and five-door Focus hatchback). There was the...
John Voelcker -
2011 Detroit Auto Show: Ford In Love With Electric CarsJust a few days after unveiling the 2012 Ford Focus Electric at the 2011 Consumer Electrics Show in Las Vegas, Ford has expanded its green fleet for 2012/13 with yet another plug in vehicle: The C-MAX Energi Plug-in Hybrid From the specifications and the way Ford is talking about its new vehicles...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield