Car Tech

It's baaaaaaaaaaaack. U.S. Department of Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz announced yesterday that the DoE had revised and updated its Advanced-Technology Vehicle Manufacturing (ATVM) program, which offers low-interest loans to carmakers and their suppliers. Any new loans, according to a Detroit News...

Using cameras for side mirrors isn't a new concept--manufacturers have been fitting them to concept vehicles for decades. But when it comes to road use, laws all around the world require proper mirrors, with no loopholes available for camera and screen-based systems. Tesla Motors [NSDQ:TSLA] is...

Human beings are curious beasts. Tell them something outlandish, even something backed by scientific method, and they'll try and prove it wrong anyway. Non-stick pans? Let's see what I can burn onto it! Unbreakable pen? Yeah, sure. ALSO SEE: Life With Tesla Model S: Is Pedal Placement A Problem?...

Is it possible to make a gasoline engine so efficient that it would emit less carbon dioxide per mile than is created by generating electricity to run an electric car over that same mile? Small Japanese carmaker Mazda says yes. In an interview published last week with the British magazine Autocar...

Yesterday's announcement by General Motors that it would launch a new line of three- and four-cylinder Ecotec engines for better fuel economy was short on some details. Notably, the carmaker only gave two examples of future cars they would power--and even declined to identify the three existing...

Fossil fuels may not be the cleanest way of powering us between two points on a map, but there's little doubt they offer convenience. So far, scientists have struggled to find batteries for electric cars that match the huge amounts of energy stored in a gallon of gasoline or diesel. As a result we...

Taking the average passenger car and making it more efficient is the combination of dozens of factors from engine technology to aerodynamics to more extreme measures like hybridization. But some factors you just can't control, like traffic, weather and the changing of traffic signals. ALSO SEE: Is...

Scrambling to do a bit of damage control after news broke last month that production of its Insight hybrid will end this year, Honda issued a press release touting its renewed commitment to hybrid technology. The death of the Insight model begged the question, what about the tiny two-seat CR-Z...

New emissions standards will reduce the amount of sulfur in gasoline to 10 ppm.

Running a diesel engine on gasoline could significantly improve efficiency, researchers say.

Ford isn't having much luck with its hybrid vehicles. Don't get us wrong, they're selling well, but after complaints that Ford's hybrids couldn't hit their stated EPA mileage figures, Ford is now facing a lawsuit that accuses it of infringing on technology patents in its hybrid vehicles. Bloomberg...

Electric vehicles already offer car designers much greater freedom than internal combustion vehicles, eliminating the need to find space for the rigid shape of an engine, its transmission and its ancillaries. That's not to say electric vehicle packaging can't be improved though, and Mitsubishi is...

Last year French automaker PSA Peugeot-Citroen launched a whole new take on the hybrid system: Hybrid Air. While previous air-powered cars have had little more substance than the air that drives them along, the French carmaker's system is set to appear in actual Peugeot production cars over the...

Three large global companies--Bosch, GS Yuasa, and Mitsubishi--have announced a joint venture to improve development of the next generation of batteries for electric vehicles. The group's aim is to double energy capacity, helping electric cars become truly mass-market in the next decade. Today...

The latest film in Honda's Environmental Short Film series focuses on the company's response to 1970s California air pollution.

In the world of green cars, Nissan is best known for its Leaf electric car--which is the world's best-selling electric vehicle ever, with more than 100,000 delivered. But like any global automaker, Nissan is pursuing a variety of powertrain and other technologies to boost the efficiency of all its...

Audi is launching a technological offensive over the next few years, and among its innovations are a new hybrid powertrain and a wheel design featuring active aerodynamics. The details were revealed in patent drawings, and were spotted by Autocar. Most complex, though perhaps most interesting, is...

Humans and batteries--and indeed most other things in the natural world, operate on largely similar principals. Energy is generated somehow, stored, and expended for work. It's only the details that separate these processes, but the gap might shrink with the advent of biobatteries. As ExtremeTech...

Rossi Honda of Vineland, New Jersey is the first dealer to go electric-grid neutral.

Minicars are the worst-scoring group in the small-overlap frontal crash test, the IIHS says.