Green Car News

Naming new car models is always tough. The latest head-scratcher is GM's decision to rebrand the replacement for its Aveo subcompact as the 2012 Chevrolet Sonic, a name better associated in the U.S. with hedgehogs or hamburgers. But that's nothing compared to the challenge of naming electric-car...

First General Motors said it would add 1,000 workers purely to work on electric cars. Now it's BMW's turn. In a strong indicator of its commitment to developing hybrid and pure electric vehicles, BMW says it will hire an additional 2,600 employees over the next two years to work in these particular...

If it ever really needed to be said, Japanese car tastes can be... "alternative", to put it in polite terms. As well as their Kei-Jidosha class of city cars that are absolutely miniscule compared to U.S. monsters, the country has produced some fairly crazy production cars over the years. That trend...

Just as the excitement is growing over the first dealer deliveries of the 2011 Chevrolet Volt and 2011 Nissan Leaf, eagle-eyed EV enthusiasts have spotted General Motor’s previous electric car on Google’s Street View. Is it serendipity or a more carefully timed disclosure to coincide...

This year finally saw the return of the Fiesta nameplate to the Ford American model line-up—a vehicle that had a short run in the early ‘80s. The debut of the Fiesta this year was one of the most anticipated and most promoted by Ford probably in the history of the company. Between all...

Whether it's the hatchback body style or the modest stats, the 2011 Lexus CT 200h hasn't yet created much buzz in the headlines. A new video, however, showing the car moving through its different phases of production at Lexus’ plant in Kyushu, Japan, may help alleviate that problem. Unlike...

As any businessman will tell you, understanding your market is the key to selling your product. So as automakers worldwide ramp up electric car production ahead of a mass launch of plug-in vehicles they are seeking the answer to one very important question: What sort of person buys electric cars?...

Every now and then, readers write to grumble about new cars and their gas mileage. The gist is usually something like this: You wrote that the new 2011 [Make & Model] gets 40 mpg highway? Well, big whoop-de-doo. I always got at least 45 mpg in my 1992 Geo Metro, and it was a whole lot cheaper...

Compact cars are pretty much a known quantity, and hence easy to visualize. Many are headed for 40-mpg highway ratings, and Hyundai recently threw down the gauntlet in saying it would start to report sales of 40-mpg vehicles--and challenged other makers to do the same. Imagine a compact car,and...

Let us run a few engines past you. A warbling flat six. A growling V8. The howl of an inline four changing cam profiles. The smooth buzz of a rotary. How about some names now? Hemi. Vortec. Powerstroke. VTEC. Renesis. Ecoboost. Noticing a pattern? The first list is clearly engine layouts, and the...

If you’re a parent you’ll know how eager companies are to convince your kids how important their product is. Be it the latest toy, a new film release or even a holiday location, advertising companies know that pester power is one of the most effective ways to get a parent to make a...

The first of Ford’s new Transit Connect Electric commercial vans are being delivered to customers in North America and the UK, just 13 months after Ford initially announced plans to develop the zero-emissions vehicles. To help speed their development Ford joined forces with Azure Dynamics, a...

It's all very strange. Just last March, Chrysler definitively killed the Ram Hemi Hybrid pickup it had been developing for several years. RIP Hemi Hybrid. Now comes a mysterious post on fan site Allpar.com that proposes that the company's Ram 1500 pickup truck will offer a Cummins 5.0-liter...

One of the main reasons buyers steered away from the old Ford Explorer sport utility vehicle, according to Ford itself, was its fuel economy. So gas mileage had to be a major selling point for the all-new 2011 Ford Explorer. Like so many new cars and crossovers, the latest model does indeed get...

Is small the new large? In the next few months we’ll see three different electric vehicles hit the market from automakers keen to break into the city car market. But historically two-seat cars have made up less than 2% of total U.S. car sales. Why would an electric car be any different?...

Just days after Nissan confirmed that customer deliveries of the 2011 Leaf would commence in Japan on December 20, Nissan USA has confirmed that the very first customer vehicle will be delivered in a few days’ time, on December 11. The delivery will be to an unnamed Northern Californian...

We don't hear much about the 2011 Chevrolet Volt's half-brother, the Opel/Vauxhall Ampera, here in the States. But in the U.K., the president of GM Europe laid out that group's plans for future generations of Ampera--and they're significant for what they say about upcoming models in an expanding...

Sports car and hybrid aren’t two words that have been used together a lot in the alternative fuel segment of the automotive industry—unless you are Honda. The 2011 Honda CR-Z hybrid is the first vehicle we have seen marketed as a sports hybrid and also one of the few offered with a...

All kinds of green cars are eligible for tax breaks, but the 2011 Porsche Cayenne Hybrid could be one of the most expensive vehicles ever to get the IRS' nod of approval. The Cayenne S Hybrid earns its buyers up to $1,800 in federal tax credits, the automaker says, making it the first Porsche ever...

The F3e is officially dead. According to sources cited by China Business News, the battery firm turned electric-car maker has ceased plans for commercial production of its four door electric sedan. There has been little mention of the all-electric sedan since its plug-in hybrid sibling, the F3DM...