John Voelcker, Contributing Editor
Articles
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Oh, North Carolina: Are you cutting off your nose to spite your face?
That's the impression at least some commentators have gained on learning of a state bill that will become law on August 25, with...
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Hybrid MPG Lowered, Electric-Car Crash Tests & Recalls, Cheaper Home Solar: Today's Car NewsToday on Green Car Reports, it's all about the 2013 Ford C-Max Hybrid and its EPA gas-mileage rating. Home solar gets cheaper, we have an electric-car recall and a crash test of a different electric model, and we finish with a fun photo gallery. All this and more in today's car news, right here on...
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2013 Ford C-Max Hybrid Owners Get Cash As Ford Lowers MPG RatingFor Ford, it's all about "customer satisfaction"--a phrase it's repeated hundreds of times over the past nine months. During that time, it's grappled with the realization that not only did its 2013 Ford C-Max Hybrid not achieve anywhere close to its 47-mpg EPA rating, but the shortfall had made...
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Ford To Lower Disputed C-Max Hybrid Gas Mileage Estimates: ReportFord will lower the 47-mpg gas mileage rating for its C-Max Hybrid hatchback, a much-disputed metric that was never backed up by real-world owner experience. Soon after the cars launched a year ago, widespread media coverage--on this site and Consumer Reports, among others--indicated that owners...
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Five Vehicles That Make Green-Car Drivers See RedDriving a Toyota Prius hybrid, a plug-in electric car from Chevy, Nissan, or Tesla, or even a small, fuel-efficient car isn't always about green sentiments. People buy those cars for many reasons: fondness for early-adopter gadgets, concerns over energy security, and total-cost-of-ownership money...
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U.S. Gas Prices Falling; Does It Matter For Green Cars?Gasoline prices rise. Gasoline prices fall. And every time there's significant movement, it's a news story. Last week, for instance, CNBC (via The Car Connection) reported that a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline dropped to about $3.59 last Friday. That's almost 8 cents lower than the cost two...
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As gas-mileage standards tighten steadily through 2025, how do you have a big, powerful, luxurious sedan more efficient?
The Tesla Model S shows one way--make it all-electric--but other makers are...
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Elon Musk's Hyperloop: 30 Minutes In Windowless 800-MPH Pod?Tesla CEO Elon Musk is a man of many and advanced interests, and his latest notion--the Hyperloop rapid transit system revealed as a concept yesterday--fits into his vision of a very different future. In a nutshell, the Hyperloop is a system in which people board pods inside an elevated metal tube...
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Half Of All Electric Cars Are Sold In 5 Cities; Can You Name Them?Different vehicles appeal to different markets. More than half of all Chevrolet Suburban extra-long full-size sport utility vehicles, for instance, are sold in the state of Texas. So where do plug-in electric cars tend to cluster? Not surprisingly, in progressive regions with activist governments...
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2013 Smart Electric Drive Cabrio: Brief Drive Of Electric ConvertibleIf you want an electric car, there are now 14 different models with plugs to choose from. But if you want an electric convertible, there's just one: The 2013 Smart ForTwo Electric Drive Cabrio. The little two-seat battery electric vehicle with the roll-back cloth roof is now on sale along with the...
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The New Diesel Cars For 2014With an increasing number of diesel passenger cars appearing in showrooms, car buyers have more options for fuel-efficient driving than they did only a few years ago. After a brief hiatus several years ago, when new and tougher emissions standards came into effect for diesel vehicles, the number...
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Tesla Takes The Lead On Dumping Door Mirrors For Video CamerasThe rear-view mirror has now been with us exactly 100 years, having first been introduced in 1914, and it hasn't changed much in all that time. It's a small area of mirrored glass--three of them now, actually--for the purpose of seeing through the rear window or along each side of the car without...
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The late and much lamented GM EV1 electric car is by now a mythical creature.
It's been the subject of a much-discussed documentary, and is still cause for blind loathing of General Motors in some...
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Bi-Fuel Mercedes-Benz E-Class Runs On Natural Gas, In GermanyWhile electric cars get a lot of press, electricity is hardly the only way to power vehicles without using gasoline. Discussion of natural gas as a vehicle fuel is rising again, in part due to huge supplies coming online in North America. Now Mercedes-Benz has launched its latest vehicle powered by...
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Reduce, Reuse, Recycle: Average Vehicle Now 11.4 Years Old, Oldest Since WW2How old is your car? Are you still driving a mid- or late-Nineties model, or maybe one (like us) from model year 2000? You're not alone. The cars on U.S. roads have continued to age, meaning that the average vehicle is now older than at any time since the aftermath of World War 2, when U.S...
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Wait, Tesla Owners And Fans Don't Care So Much About Green?It's dangerous to assume, as the saying goes. And a lot of assumptions about why people buy electric cars are wrong--including that they only do so because they're "green," meaning to help the environment. Now a new attitudinal survey shows this isn't much true for Tesla owners and fans. A study by...
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Tesla Earns 'Modest' Q2 Profit, Delivers 5,150 Cars, Boosts Margin On CarmakingTesla Motors [NSDQ:TSLA] slightly increased its profit in the second quarter, and delivered more Model S electric cars than last quarter. The company released its Q2 financial results this afternoon, with net income of $26 million compared to $15 million for Q1. The company said it delivered 5,150...
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2013 Smart Electric Drive Coupe Lease Price Lowered To $139The prices just keep falling on plug-in electric cars. The latest to announce a new, lower lease price is Smart, which cut the monthly cost of a three-year lease on its 2013 ForTwo Electric Drive Coupe from $199 to just $139. That's not the lowest single electric-car lease we're aware of in the...
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Electric-car advocates spend a lot of time grumbling about compliance cars.
But it turns out that even in low volumes, limited mostly to sales in one state, they've unexpectedly produced a benefit...
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2014 Chevrolet Volt Price Cut By $5,000, To $34,995The 2014 Chevrolet Volt electric car will carry a base price of $34,995, a cut of $5,000 from the 2013 model. That price includes an $810 destination fee, but not any optional equipment. Chevrolet has "made great strides in reducing costs as we gain experience with electric vehicles and their...
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Hey, Electric-Car Fans: Are You 'The Electric Generation'?Marketing plug-in electric cars isn't all that easy. There are many different reasons people buy electric cars, and for the mass market, the high prices against gasoline cars of the same size can lead to sticker shock. So among the many efforts to put a little muscle behind explaining why plug-in...
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Tesla's Musk Promises Deep Dive Into Electric-Car EmissionsThe environmental impact of plug-in electric cars is a hot topic right now, and a fiercely debated one at that. A couple of weeks ago, Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk pledged to dive into it himself. Musk tweeted, "Am seeing many poorly argued attacks on 'true' CO2 impact of electric cars. Will rewrite...
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Plug-In Electric Car Sales For July: Leaf Up, Volt Down (FINAL UPDATE)Sales of plug-in electric cars continued at a relatively steady pace in July, keeping the sector on track for something near 100,000 sales by the end of the year. While last month's half-year total wasn't quite enough to double the 2012 total of 53,000 electric cars, sales are now running at an...
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Facing Fuel-Economy Fracas, Ford Focuses On Gas Mileage Myths (Video)Many buyers of new Ford cars--both its 2013 C-Max and Fusion hybrids, and those fitted with its EcoBoost line of downsized, turbocharged engines--report real-world gas mileage much lower than the cars' EPA ratings. Ford is trying to counter almost a year's worth of media attention to these concerns...
John Voelcker