John Voelcker, Contributing Editor
Articles
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Sometimes you have to ask, What were they thinking?
A recent article on five small cars with the worst gas mileage named four for which gas mileage may not even cross the minds of their buyers.
But...
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Electric Cars' Secret Advantage: They're Just Nicer To DrivePlug-in electric cars are now on sale from several carmakers, and their sales will rise slowly over the next decade. Right now, most of the marketing for those electric cars focuses on green themes or cost savings on the gasoline drivers don't have to buy. But there's one factor no electric-car...
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DoE Hires Restructuring Advisor To Monitor Fisker Funding: ReportThe main task for Fisker Automotive right now is to sell enough 2012 Fisker Karmas to keep the company solvent. It must take in enough cash to market the car, expand into new markets, and simultaneously develop its next vehicle, the Fisker Atlantic unveiled at the New York Auto Show. Now we learn...
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2013 Chevy Spark Vs. 1973 Full-Size Car: Helpful InfographicWe luv us some cheerful infographics, as we often say. Today's specimen comes courtesy of Chevrolet, which is preparing to launch the smallest Chevy it's ever sold, the 2013 Spark minicar. The infographic compares the Chevy Spark to a full-size 1973 U.S. sedan (using data for unspecified "popularly...
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Gas Prices Falling Now, But Will They Stay Low?Any reader who's not driving a battery-electric car (and there are relatively few of you) may have noticed that gas prices have stopped rising, recently. They're even falling slightly--and, more important, the national average price is slightly cheaper this year ($3.84 per gallon) than it was at...
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Five Best Used Green Cars To BuyAs cars get more reliable and last longer, the case for buying "gently used" cars gets stronger and stronger. But suppose you want to drive green, and you're aware that the newest cars get the best gas mileage. What used cars can you buy that will let you drive green and deliver the highest fuel...
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It's always interesting when companies change things between press releases.
In this case, the vehicle we described on Friday as the BYD Chin (based on BYD's own press release)--an updated version of...
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Honda Hybrid Concept S: Global People Mover At Beijing Auto Show?China's auto shows, which alternate between Beijing and Shanghai--just as Frankfurt and Paris alternate in Europe--are already significant global events with dozens of world premieres. Honda is taking its turn today, launching concepts for both a sedan and what it calls a "new-value passenger...
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Jaguar Joins Downsized Engine Parade With Very Familiar FourWriting about the latest carmaker plans to add smaller, more efficient engines is now almost a weekly occurrence. Today's lucky winner is Jaguar, which took the occasion of the Beijing Auto Show to announce some future powertrain plans--including its first production four-cylinder engine since the...
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Bridgestone Pledges One-For-One Old Tire Reuse Or RecyclingOld cars get crushed and torn into steel scraps for reuse, car batteries are the most recycled consumer good, but old tires are still a recycling challenge. Now, tire company Bridgestone Americas has launched a new program "designed to eventually assure" [sic] that for every tire the company sells...
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BYD Chin: World's First Plug-In Hybrid, Updated And Renamed
Remember the world's very first production plug-in hybrid? No, not the 2011 Chevy Volt. Not the 2012 Toyota Prius Plug-In Hybrid either. Way back in late 2008, it was the Chinese BYD F3DM, with a lithium-ion battery pack and a combined parallel and series hybrid powertrain inserted into the...
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Payback On Plug-Ins: Finance Commentator Misses The PointWe love data, and articles that analyze data. We love them a little less when their opening lines sneer at sites like this one by calling them the "sunshine, lollipops and rainbows electric car press." Still, there are far more interesting problems with a recent analysis on Seeking Alpha entitled...
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The 2012 Ford Focus Electric is the company's first-ever production battery-electric vehicle, and that alone makes it noteworthy.
But the fact that it's also pleasant to drive--somewhat on the fun...
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Electric-Car Politics: Attacks Hurt U.S. Innovation, SecurityThe partisan politics around electric cars have been poisonous pretty much since they launched in December 2010. But commentators are now raising two issues that had almost gotten lost amidst Congressional hearings on Volt battery fires, the GM bailout, the Solyndra collapse, and lazy reporting...
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Higher Gas Prices Don't Change Buyers' New-Car Choices Much
Fuel efficiency is making news headlines lately, with new-car sales achieving record high fuel-economy numbers in the U.S. (and in the U.K. as well). But a survey of car buyers last month by industry analyst AutoPacific seems to contradict the idea that high gas prices are leading buyers to change...
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More Doom & Gloom On Higher MPG Standards From Car DealersIt's not news that new, higher fuel-economy standards will raise the cost of future cars in real dollars. Now a new study, funded by the National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA), suggests that those increases will prevent up to 7 million buyers from affording new cars in 2025. That's out of a...
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2013 Chevrolet Volt Details: New EV-Hold Mode, MyLink, Safety SystemsIf you want a 2013 Chevrolet Volt range-extended electric car, searching the web may not get you much. Chevy hasn't yet put details of next year's Volt model on its website, for instance. But it did release ordering details to its dealers, and the intrepid sleuths at GM Inside News uncovered them...
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First Chrysler Plug-In Hybrid Minivans Delivered For TestingThere's likely a huge market demand for higher-mileage minivans and wagons, but so far, the 2012 Toyota Prius V is the sole entry that gets more than 40 mpg in EPA testing. So the news that Chrysler delivered four plug-in hybrid versions of its Town & Country minivan to the city of Auburn...
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George Lippincott was the founder and president of Nic-L-Silver Battery Company, Santa Ana, California, which made a popular line of American car batteries in the 1950s.Inspired by fiberglass-bodied...
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Big Ships To Use Biofuels To Cut Emissions, Spill Risks--EventuallyProgress comes slowly to the world of commercial shipping, but it is coming. Three years ago, we noted that one giant cargo ship emits as much as 50 million cars. Now, shipping lines are starting to experiment with biofuels, which offer several advantages: They contain no sulfur or so-called...
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Battery Cell Maker A123 Gets More Time To Use DoE Grant FundsThis is a tough time for lithium-ion cell maker A123 Systems, but the company did get one little piece of good news yesterday. The U.S. Department of Energy has agreed to lengthen the time period over which A123 can use funds from a $249.1 million grant it received from the DoE in August 2009 to...
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GM Battery Lab Explosion Attributed To Gases From A123 CellsUPDATE, Thu, April 12, 11:15 am: The Detroit News quotes an unnamed source this morning as saying that the battery pack being tested that caused yesterday's explosion at GM's Warren Technical Center contained lithium-ion cells from battery maker A123 Systems. The Chevrolet Spark EV is the only GM...
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Coloradans: Donate An Old Polluting Car, Get A Tree PlantedWhile it's not quite the 2009 Cash for Clunkers program, it's a nice gesture with a clear mission: get the most polluting cars off Colorado roads. If you're a Coloradan who owns a pre-1990 car, donate it to the Clear the Air Foundation and the ReForest Colorado program will plant a tree in an area...
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BYD e6 Electric Crossover: Now Coming In 2013, Fleets FirstYou don't hear as much worrying these days about the threat of Chinese automakers entering the U.S. market with inexpensive cars. Nor do you hear concerns over Chinese electric-car makers swamping sales of the Nissan Leaf and Chevy Volt, which have racked up more than 23,300 sales between them...
John Voelcker