Plug-In Hybrids

The 2016 Audi A3 e-tron will arrive in the U.S. this October, a new report says.

The Toyota Prius hybrid gets added incentives in southern California.

Last year, roughly 118,500 plug-in electric cars were sold in the U.S.--out of total vehicle sales of 16.5 million, the highest total since 2006. Since modern electric cars went on sale in December 2010, sales have increased every year. Any increase this year may not be as dramatic as in prior...

Olympic Gold Medalist Ross Powers drives a Ford Fusion Energi plug-in hybrid.

As spring arrives, sales of plug-in electric cars have traditionally risen from their winter levels. During the months of May through August, monthly sales are usually among the highest of the year. At least for May, that rule holds as strongly for 2015 as it did last year. DON'T MISS: Will 2015...

All good things must come to an end, and so it is with the green stickers that give plug-in hybrid drivers access to California's freeway carpool lanes with just one person in the car. A total of 70,000 stickers were allotted, and the supply is now almost exhausted. A bill to allocate 15,000 more...

California is introducing a new ‘Plus-Up’ pilot project that should make plug-in hybrids and electric vehicles a lot more affordable. Considering recent news that prices on used electric cars are on a downward spiral, and with families potentially eligible to receive as much as $12,000...

South Korean battery maker LG Chem continues to be on a roll, signing up automakers left and right that plan to use its lithium-ion cells in new electric cars. The latest to join the roster that includes Audi, Cadillac, Chevrolet, Ford, Hyundai, Renault, Smart, Volkswagen, and Volvo is the Chinese...

Porsche is recalling all 918 Spyders globally, including the 223 in the U.S.

What if you could fully restore your charge in a plug-in hybrid, on the fly, just by driving? It’s a feature that’s unparalleled in mass-market plug-in hybrids—that in the 2016 Hyundai Sonata Plug-In Hybrid you can enter not the charge-sustaining mode that some models have, but a...

Any insanely alluring, attractive, enticing car will likely see dealer markups when it first goes on sale. Ask any potential buyer of a new Chevy Corvette or Dodge Hellcat model how much their dealership added to the sticker price for the first ones on the lot. And the same applied as well to the...

The 2016 Volvo XC90 T8 "Twin Engine" will come standard with an AeroVironment TurboCord charging cord.

It's one of the big unknowns about plug-in hybrids: How much do they actually get plugged in? Battery-electric cars have to plug in to remain usable, but plug-in hybrids and range-extended electric vehicles don't. And while some makers--most notably Chevrolet and Ford--happily release data showing...

China has had difficulty getting its New Energy Vehicle program off the ground for a number of reasons. While it was initially focused on battery-electric vehicles, buyers have proven more receptive to plug-in hybrids--and virtually every carmaker selling in China will offer one or more in the next...

Could the Volkswagen GTI and the all-wheel-drive Golf R high-performance compact-car models be headed toward a plug-in hybrid future? One new concept, the Golf GTE Sport, proposes that—while clearly aiming more than a few years into the future. A May gathering at Austria’s Lake...

Access to the carpool lane in California with only a single occupant has proven to be one of the more effective incentives to get the state's drivers to buy electric cars. The first year and a half of Chevy Volt range-extended electric cars didn't qualify, but Volt sales in California surged once...

Sales of plug-in electric cars in April held few real surprises, coming in at about the average rate of previous months. The now-aging Nissan Leaf saw deliveries of 1,553 units last month, bringing the year's total to 5,638 and the total delivered in the U.S. since December 2010 to almost 78,000...

Toyota Prius Plug-In Hybrid production will end next month, but a new version won't arrive until next year.

The 2016 Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrid will be priced from $33,995 when it goes on sale sometime this fall, a GM executive said this morning. The price, which includes delivery, is $1,175 lower than that of the outgoing 2015 Volt. The old Volt lacks the 50-mile range, 41-mpg fuel efficiency, and...

While hybrid cars have had a good 10-year run in North America as the most fuel-efficient alternative, Europe never warmed to hybrid-electric powertrains. With roughly half the passenger cars sold in the European Union being powered by more efficient diesel engines, the difference between hybrid...