Green Car News

It’s a little-known fact that between the late 1970s and mid 1990s Volkswagen made a series of limited-run electric cars based on the VW Golf platform. Thirty years later, VW’s latest offering, the 2013 Golf Blue-e-motion made its first appearance in the U.K, winning an eco-driving...

First came the sketch, now come the photos. Mitsubishi has released the first official images of the U.S. version of its 2012 i-MiEV electric minicar, just a week before the car is unveiled at the 2010 Los Angeles Auto Show. The company also released some specifications for the little i-MiEV...

In a continuing run of managerial musical chairs and corporate re-structuring at CODA Automotive, CEO Kevin Czinger has resigned. CODA automotive’s first car, the 2011 Coda Sedan is due to launch before the end of 2010. Priced at $44,900, it costs $12,000 more than its closest rival, the 2011...

Tesla knew what they were doing when they selected the chassis from the British Lotus Elise sports car as the basis for their Roadster. The bonded aluminum chassis is spectacularly light by modern standards and also incredibly strong and rigid despite being a roofless design. It also has a large...

In Europe Fiat sells its funky 500 minicar with an optional 0.9-liter two-cylinder engine that when equipped with an automatic transmission returns an impressive fuel economy of 57.4 mpg for the European combined cycle. With Volkswagen now working on a similar sized vehicle, the upcoming Up...

For the next few years, the 2011 Chevrolet Volt range-extended electric car will be the sole focus of GM's advanced powertrain efforts for U.S. car buyers. But that hasn't stopped it from putting battery electric cars into production elsewhere in the world. Electric minicars in China Last week, in...

A single zero-emissions 2011 Nissan Leaf electric car served as pace car for the world renowned New York City Marathon, held this morning in crisp, sunny autumn weather. Its presence slightly reduced the exhaust that surrounded the lead racers as they covered the 26.2-mile, five-borough course amid...

The Chevrolet Cruze has been getting a lot of good press from the safety ratings to the interesting commercials they have been running to the Department 180 in-depth video on how Chevrolet is making sure the Cruze is durable. GM ran into a little snag back in October when they announced that they...

VW hasn't yet unveiled the final version of its upcoming Up minicar, which will be smaller than the smallest vehicle it sells in Europe today, the Volkswagen Polo subcompact. But the company has already discussed the car's price there: around 10,000 Euros, or about $14,100 at today's exchange rate...

We've taken a look recently at the five EVs we're most looking forward to driving, and another look at the five EVs you should do your best to see at the upcoming 2010 Los Angeles Auto Show. We're clearly at the beginning of something big for personal transportation, an age where electric travel is...

BMW is moving full steam ahead with its plans to offer new, radically more fuel efficient vehicles in the next decade. Today, the company said it would put its striking Vision EfficientDynamics concept car into production, to be offered for sale starting in October 2013. And, it signed off on an...

NOTE: Your faithful editor, John Voelcker, moderated this panel at VentureBeat's GreenBeat 2010 conference. As electric cars move towards the smart grid, there’s been a lot of worry about the cars overstraining the grid. But at least for now, GM and PG&E are united on the answer: Not a...

Deliveries of the 2012 Nissan Leaf is about to start in just over a month but attention is already turning to what Nissan has in store for us next in the area of electric vehicles. The automaker recently showed off a new concept vehicle dubbed the New Mobility Concept, essentially a rebadged...

Since its introduction to the U.S. market in 1989, the Mazda MX-5 or Miata, as it is known here in the States, has been one of the all-time best two-seat roadsters in sales. However, you might have noticed that the Mazda Miata doesn’t get a lot of press these days, especially not in the...

Car assembly will never be the cleanest of processes, despite the efforts of people like Gordon Murray whose i-Stream production method for his T25 and T27 microcars is said to reduce the energy of car production by as much as 80 percent. Still, some companies do make the effort to bring down the...

As these things often happen, it was rumored in the Japanese press and then confirmed hours later. Panasonic, the huge Japanese consumer electronics conglomerate, is investing in Tesla Motors, building on a previous agreement to work together on large-format lithium-ion cells for electric car...

German automakers have spent time and money on ad campaigns promoting clean diesels as the better way to improve fuel economy, so far with limited results. But that could change when Audi brings a TDI diesel version of its best-selling A4 model to the U.S. So far, its only TDI offerings are the Q7...

We have to hand it to Tesla Motors. Over the past year the Californian-based automaker responsible for the fast, sexy 2011 Tesla Roadster 2.5 and 2011 Tesla Roadster Sport 2.5 has experienced a pretty good year. Not only has the Palo Alto firm survived its initial public offering, generating over...

Electric car start-up Tesla Motors currently only sells one model, the high-performance--and high-pricetag--Roadster, but the company is currently working on a new sedan model dubbed the Model S that’s due to hit the streets in mid-2012 with a base price around the $57,400 mark. However, to...

Imagine what a city totally switched onto electric cars would be like. Discount parking, HOV lane access and perhaps even free charging is what might come to mind. But just how many chargers should you expect in a city switching on to the benefits of all-electric motoring? 200? 600? 1000?...