John Voelcker, Contributing Editor
Articles
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You can break down car companies into three groups, depending on their electric-car activities.
The leaders are Nissan, General Motors, BMW, and upstart Tesla, all of whom have developed...
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Chevy Corvette Hybrid: Not Nearly As Horrifying As Purists ThinkTraditionalists may be feeling faint right about now. The thought of a Chevrolet Corvette with a hybrid-electric powertrain threatens to make their heads explode. But that's exactly the concept at which GM president Mark Reuss says, "Don't laugh." Reuss made the comment during a Los Angeles Times...
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Men Love Tesla, E15 Challenges, Traffic-Jam Hell: The Weekend's Car NewsThis weekend on GreenCar Reports: Men love Teslas (is this really a surprise?), Big Oil may be blocking the rollout of more ethanol in gasoline--which most likely irritates Big Agriculture--and China too faces Traffic-Jam Hell. All this and more in today's car news, right here on Green Car Reports...
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Gas Stations Claim Oil Companies Block E15, FTC To InvestigateThe idea is simple: Replace refined hydrocarbons yanked deep out of the earth with vehicle fuel derived from crops. The ongoing politics of ethanol remain anything but simple. The latest salvo sally in the ethanol wars was fired by two U.S. senators from agricultural states, Amy Klobuchar [D-MN]...
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Toyota's 23 Hybrids, Better Battery Sensors, Musk Unimpressed: Today's Car NewsToday on GreenCar Reports: Elon Musk says "meh" to the Nissan Leaf and Chevy Volt, better sensors may cut battery costs, and we challenge you to name all 23 hybrids Toyota sells globally. All this and more in today's car news, right here on Green Car Reports. Tesla is now worth more than Fiat, the...
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Tesla: Worth More Than Fiat, Which Is 100 Times Its Size?Is startup electric-car maker Tesla really worth more than century-old Italian carmaker Fiat? Not to mention more than Mazda, Mitsubishi, Suzuki, and Isuzu--the last two of which no longer sell cars in the U.S.? The Italian maker sells roughly 2 million cars a year globally (plus 1.6 million more...
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By this point, pretty much everyone can identify a Toyota Prius by its shape, and knows that it's a hybrid-electric vehicle.
And most people know that Toyota sells many more hybrids as well.
But how...
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Toyota Crown Royal Saloon: Driving The 'Hybrid Brougham' Luxury SedanHave you ever wondered what a mid-size hybrid sedan would be like if it had the ride and handling of a Sixties Cadillac: big, soft, and wallowy? If so, Toyota has an answer for you, assuming you're willing to travel to Japan. All told, Toyota makes 23 different hybrid passenger vehicles for its...
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2016 Toyota Prius: Next Hybrid Aims For 55 MPG, More Room, Better HandlingToyota today released a few more nuggets of information about the next, all-new generation of its Prius hybrid car. The all-new Prius, to be released in 2015, is likely to continue each generation's 10-percent improvement on the fuel economy of its predecessor. With the current Prius Liftback rated...
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Driving Nissan's Micra Minicar, Which We Can't Legally Do Any Other TimeThe smallest car Nissan sells in the U.S. is the Versa subcompact, which comes both as a sedan and the new 2014 Versa Note hatchback. But last week, we were able to drive the latest Nissan Micra, a high-volume car sold outside the States that's an entire car class smaller. In Europe, the Micra is...
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Tesla: As Disruptive To U.S. Car Market As Toyota, Nissan Were?
In its decade of existence, electric-car startup Tesla has accomplished many things the auto industry didn't think it could do. But could Tesla Motors [NSDQ:TSLA] be as disruptive to the existing industry as were Toyota and Nissan, the two largest Japanese car importers during the Sixties...
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Tesla Sales, Nissan Batteries, Fisker Fire Sale: Today's Car NewsToday on GreenCar Reports: Tesla outsells luxury makes in California--but is the electric-car company really a luxury brand? Plus former arch-enemy Fisker may be sold, and the EPA stands by its fuel-efficiency tests. All this and more in today's car news, right here on Green Car Reports. You read...
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The Nissan Versa is one of the largest "subcompacts" on the market.
For 2014, a new hatchback model called the Versa Note joins the all-new sedan launched last year.
We spent several hundred miles...
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Nissan Tests New Heat-Resistant Battery For Leaf Electric CarNissan is testing a revised lithium-ion cell chemistry for its Leaf electric car that the company says appears to be as durable in sustained extreme heat as its current battery is under normal conditions. If tests confirm that the new cells degrade at no more than the standard rate, even at high...
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Tesla In China, Diesel Debate, Wireless Charging In Volt: Today's Car NewsToday on Green Car Reports: Two Tesla topics, an electric car that folds itself up, a policy debate over diesel incentives, and wireless charging comes to your garage. All this and more in today's car news, right here on Green Car Reports. Wireless charging hasn't rolled out for electric cars yet...
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Will Tesla Trademark Tangle Delay Electric Car's China Launch?With its Model S on sale in the U.S. for more than a year now, and the first European delivery in Norway this month, Tesla is turning its attention to China. The company has already built a showroom in Beijing's Parkview Green Fangcaodi mall, says Reuters, but it sits boarded up without the...
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NHTSA Rebukes Tesla Over Non-Existent "5.4-Star" Safety RatingSmall and startup companies often resort to attention-getting publicity to further their causes. Occasionally they get their wrist slapped for overreaching. And that's what happened to Tesla Motors [NSDQ:TSLA] yesterday. In a statement both on its website and the SaferCar.gov site, the National...
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Five 40-MPG Mid-Size Sedans You Can Buy TodayImagine it's 2025 and the full impact of tougher gas-mileage regulations has taken effect. That year, it's easy to buy a mid-size sedan--perhaps even something a bit larger--that returns 40 mpg in regular use. Here's the thing, though: For 2013, there are already a handful of sedans that do that...
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The 2014 Nissan Pathfinder Hybrid hasn't quite hit the dealerships yet, but already Nissan is promising more models that use the same hybrid system.
When they're redesigned during the next couple of...
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Energy-Efficient Cars, Agassi On Tesla & Ford's C-Max Mess: Today's Car NewsToday on Green Car Reports, we look at the most energy-efficient cars on sale, dive into Ford's C-Max gas-mileage mess, and offer career advice to potential repo men. All this and more in today's car news, right here on Green Car Reports. How to figure out what are the five most energy-efficient...
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The Five Greenest, Most Energy-Efficient Cars of 2013What cars available in dealers today make the most efficient use of energy? The answer turns out to be four battery-electric vehicles and one plug-in hybrid. Gasoline and diesel cars don't even come close; internal combustion engines waste two-thirds to three-quarters of the energy in their fuel on...
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Shai Agassi Weighs In On The Lessons Of Tesla & Electric CarsShai Agassi, founder of the now-defunct Better Place electric-car service in Israel, hasn't been in the public eye much of late. But on the business network LinkedIn this morning, he emerged to weigh in on the lessons of Tesla Motors [NSDQ:TSLA] and what the auto industry at large could learn from...
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Ford's C-Max Mileage Mess: How It Happened And What It MeansFord spent nine months justifying the 47-mpg fuel-efficiency rating of its new 2013 C-Max Hybrid--before it bowed to public pressure and lowered it to 43 mpg late Thursday. While its three latest hybrid models continue to sell well, the latest reversal draws attention to Ford's challenges when the...
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UPDATED: Green Car Reports Switches To Disqus For Reader CommentsWe love our commenters: You all are an informed, passionate, and very active group, and we thank you. So, here's some news. As of this morning, we've switched our commenting system from the old homegrown one to the Disqus system you've likely seen on an increasing number of websites. There are two...
John Voelcker