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How times change. Startup Bright Automotive announced last week that, once the company completes its funding, its advanced plug-in hybrid Idea delivery van would be assembled under contract by AM General. That's the outfit that built the Humvee and Hummer, and spawned the now-defunct HUMMER brand...

No sooner has Tesla announced a new "gallery" in the heart of oil country, than the Palo Alto-based electric car company has now revealed plans for three more retail stores in North America. The stores are part of the preparation for the upcoming 2012 Tesla Model S sedan that's due to go on sale...

Chevy has announced sales of the one millionth Cruze on the day that marks the automaker's 100th birthday.

Car companies are taking several different directions towards making their cars of the future more efficient. Some are going down the hybrid route, using electric motors to assist and occasionally take over from gasoline engines. GM is taking a two-pronged approach, with the range-extended Volt and...

We all know that exhaust fumes do bad things to us and our planet, and that gasoline fumes contain carcinogens, but the biggest risk to your health might come from the gas pump itself, not the gasoline. That’s the verdict of a recent study by Kimberly-Clark Professional, which found that the...

With good reason, it's often said that the toughest auto endurance testing in the world is in taxi duty on the streets of New York City (and Jakarta, and Beijing, and Rio). While the New York City Taxi & Limousine Commission has pushed aggressively for high-mileage hybrids--mostly Ford Escape...

It's been a tough week for Fisker. The startup electric-car company finally got its car approved for sale, many months late, only to have the EPA rate its gas mileage at just 20 mpg in range-sustaining mode. Now, a new wrinkle to those ratings has come out: Based on the volume measurements it uses...

Coverage of the low-interest loans granted by the Energy Department to Fisker Automotive has often been remarkably shoddy, so we provide some much-needed context and background.

Five months ago, we drove the 2012 Honda Civic Hybrid--which gave us slightly more than 45 mpg using "Econ" mode. That's the best gas mileage of any Honda Civic in recent memory. So we were eager to test the new-for-2012 Civic HF model, which forgoes the electric motor and lithium-ion battery pack...

It might be celebrating a global total of 15,000 all-electric Nissan Leafs since the model was launched last year, but Nissan isn’t planning to keep its plug-in technology inside pure electric cars, it has revealed today. Talking at an event in Yokohama, Japan earlier, Renault-Nissan CEO...

For some time now there’s been a battle raging between politicians, advocacy groups and the electric car industry over compulsory noise-makers in electric cars. Now the latest twist comes courtesy of Ford, which has announced that its 2012 Ford Focus Electric will initially ship without any...

Silverstone, the home of the British Grand Prix, normally rings to the sound of heavily tuned race-cars and squealing tires in almost continual gluttonous praise of gasoline, but yesterday it hosted a different type of motor sport event: the RAC Green Grand Prix. Sponsored by roadside assistance...

Amidst supposedly slow sales--actually limited mostly by low production--one benefit to automakers of offering electric cars has nothing to do with cars that plug in. Not only do electric cars attract radically different buyers to the brands that offer them, they also help sell conventional...

General Motors has just officially, finally confirmed news that this site has previously reported: The 2013 Chevrolet Spark minicar will be launched in the first half of next year An all-electric Spark EV model will be offered in selected regions of the U.S. and other markets New front-end styling...

GM [NYSE:GM] had hoped to announce its latest green vehicle tomorrow morning, at a nice, orderly, staged press event to celebrate Chevrolet's 100th birthday. But one of its hometown papers jumped the gun and broke the news: The largest domestic car company will launch a small battery electric...

The 2013 Ford Escape, the first entirely new design in more than a decade for its popular compact crossover, will be officially unveiled next month at the Los Angeles Auto Show. But before that, Ford is starting to trickle out bits and pieces of information to build buzz. The 2013 Escape will be...

Tesla would like all eyes to focus on its 2012 Model S electric sport sedan this week. But there's a second model lurking in the background: the 2013 or 2014 Tesla Model X crossover, the next vehicle to use the platform that underlies the Model S. A lot of information has emerged in bits and pieces...

It may not be delivering its much-anticipated 2012 Model S Sedan to the its first customer until the middle of next year, but Californian electric automaker Tesla [NASDAQ: TSLA] is now trading higher than many of its traditional gasoline rivals on the NASDAQ exchange. At a high-point of $24.95 so...

Of every 10 companies started by entrepreneurs, half or more fail. Some are sold for the parts or the people, a couple of lucky ones may be bought by larger companies, and only the very lucky ones survive as independent companies over the long term. Tesla: Apple or Altair? For every Apple, in other...

CBS raised a lot of eyebrows earlier this year when it canned the human trainwreck known as Charlie Sheen from its hit sitcom, Two and a Half Men, replacing him with the younger, saner Ashton Kutcher. But little did we know that producers were adding another supporting role to the show, in the form...