John Voelcker, Contributing Editor
Articles
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Call it the battle of the clean-car cargo ships.
First Toyota retrofitted its Auriga Leader car transporter ship with a diesel hybrid powertrain, allowing some energy to be recaptured in a bank of...
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Peak Oil Perceptions: If Gas Prices Soar, Who's Most Pessimistic?Just three months ago, the average gas price crossed 4$ a gallon. Now, oil prices have plummeted to their lowest level this year in response to the Standard & Poor's U.S. debt rating downgrade. We'll continue to be whipsawed by changes in oil prices, reflected in the price per gallon we pay for...
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More Volkswagen Diesel Woes: Feds Investigate 2011 Jetta TDIVolkswagen's TDI diesel engines have long attracted fans and repeat buyers. But now a second investigation this year into the reliability of its TDI engines may cast a shadow over its newest fuel-efficient clean-diesel vehicles. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration last week launched...
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Will GM's First All-Electric Car Be A Chevy Spark Minicar?Sometimes news comes out of adding up little pieces of information. Doing that with a few items from the past week, we're beginning to wonder if General Motors might launch an all-electric car in the U.S. in the next couple of years. Based on recent spy photos from renowned photographer Brenda...
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2012 Toyota RAV4 EV To Be Built In Toyota Plant, Not By TeslaThis much we know already: Tesla Motors will build battery packs and electric drive systems for the upcoming 2012 Toyota RAV4 EV electric crossover. What we didn't know was where that car would be assembled. Would it be the Canadian factory that builds standard gasoline RAV4s for North America, or...
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Reader Q: All-Wheel Drive Hybrid Or Diesel Cars (Not Trucks)?We get some of our most interesting topics from reader questions. Past questions include how emergency responders should react to hybrid and electric cars, and whether towing a Prius behind a motorhome is a good idea. Today, we have a query about green cars (not trucks) that offer all-wheel drive...
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Electric vehicles of various sorts are just now showing up in dealer showrooms. But that leaves a quarter of a billion gasoline vehicles running around U.S. roads. What to do to clean them up?
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Next Week, We Welcome All Cars Electric Into Green Car ReportsMany regular Green Car Reports readers also visit our sister site, All Cars Electric. Now we're pleased to announce that next week, the two sites will become a single destination, adding heft, expertise, and depth to our coverage of plug-in electric cars on a totally redesigned Green Car Reports...
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Next Fisker Model: Wagon-Crossover At Frankfurt This Fall? (Video)Fisker Automotive still hasn't seen fit to let more than a small handful of journalists drive its extended-range electric 2012 Fisker Karma luxury sports sedan, and not yet on public roads. But founder Henrik Fisker continues to wax eloquent about the company's future plans. At the launch of the...
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Chevy Confirms Smallest-Ever Spark Minicar For U.S. In 2012The 2012 Chevrolet Sonic subcompact just going into production this month is the smallest car sold by Chevrolet in the U.S., but the bowtie brand isn't finished downsizing yet. Today, General Motors confirmed that the Chevrolet Spark minicar will be sold in the U.S. GM's executive director of North...
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2012 Buick Regal With eAssist Mild Hybrid Priced At $29,530Buick announced today that it would offer the eAssist mild-hybrid technology on its mid-size 2012 Regal sedan as a $2,000 option over the base 2.4-liter model. That brings the price of the 2012 Buick Regal with eAssist to $29,530, including a mandatory $860 destination charge. The EPA rates the...
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2014 BMW i3 Electric Car: Motorcycle Engine As Range ExtenderDiversity among electric cars is rapidly expanding, from the all-electric Nissan Leaf and Mitsubishi 'i' to the upcoming Toyota Prius Plug-In Hybrid, which provides just 9 to 13 miles of electric range. Now, it turns out, the 2014 BMW i3--the all-electric urban four-door subcompact that BMW showed...
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Driving is often a pain, particularly in dense, congested urban cores.
Start and stop, brake suddenly, stay carefully in your lane, drive defensively, then park in tight spaces.
What if the car could...
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Electric Car Sales: Leaf Trounces Volt, But Don't Take It SeriouslyIt was a slow month for electric-car sales, with just over 1,000 Nissan Leaf and Chevrolet Volt vehicles together delivered during July. Nissan delivered 931 Leaf battery-electric cars, a decline from June's 1,708, and Chevrolet--which is suffering from a now-ended four-week summer shutdown for...
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2012 Audi A6 To Offer High-MPG Hybrid, Clean-Diesel ModelsDespite lack of an official confirmation from Audi of America, we'd bet significant money on the arrival of the Audi A6 Hybrid in the U.S. market. Why? Because the U.S. has the highest hybrid penetration of any market in the world except Japan, and "hybrid" means "high gas mileage" to a large...
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2012 Ford Edge With 2.0-Liter Ecoboost Four Gets 30 MPG Highway RatingIt's taken a very long time to get here, but the 2012 Ford Edge fitted with the Ecoboost 2.0-liter four-cylinder engine may be worth the wait. The website FordInsideNews reports that the Ecoboosted Edge will receive EPA gas-mileage ratings of 21 mpg city and 30 mpg highway, for a combined rating...
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Coming Soon: Bigger, Better, Easier-To-Use Green Car Reports!Get ready, folks, for a completely redesigned GreenCarReports. To bring you the best coverage of fuel-efficient, hybrid, clean-diesel, and electric cars, and some of the issues around them, we're preparing to launch an all-new look and feel. Among the changes, we'll have easier access to more...
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BMW i3 Electric Car And BMW i8 Plug-In Hybrid: OverviewBMW today revealed concept versions of its first-ever production electric cars: the i3 battery electric minicar and i8 plug-in hybrid sports coupe. The designs and details of both cars were unveiled in a Frankfurt press conference that was broadcast globally on the Internet. That degree of...
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The concept version of the 2014 BMW i3 unveiled today in Frankfurt shows just how radical a change BMW has made from its legacy of gasoline-powered, front-engine, rear-drive sporty vehicles.For...
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BMW i8 Concept: Plug-In Hybrid Sports Coupe—Full DetailsWhile its sports coupes are more of a known entity, the i8 Concept shown in Frankfurt today may be the most radical coupe BMW has ever built. Its “stream flow” lines, characteristic of the new BMW ‘I’ sub-brand, include an adaptation of the BMW twin-kidney grille and...
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5,000 Hydrogen Stations By 2020, For Forklifts, UPSes & CarsWe don't hear so much about hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles these days. Just five years ago, before the announcement of either the 2011 Nissan Leaf battery electric car or the 2011 Chevy Volt range-extended electric, several auto companies were in the process of developing test fleets of...
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First 2012 Fisker Karma Electric Car Delivered, Finally, To Investor Ray LaneAfter multiple delays and slipped deadlines, you might be forgiven for assuming it would never happen. But it did. Fisker Automotive has delivered one of its first production cars, a 2012 Fisker Karma extended-range electric sports sedan, to a paying customer. The video below shows the handover two...
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2012 Tesla Model S: 'Blank Slate' With 'Awesome Door Handles'Tesla Motors has a bit of a problem: It needs to keep itself in the public eye between its last electric Roadster and next summer, when its 2012 Model S electric sports sedan is scheduled to arrive. Toward that end, the company has been publishing regular updates on the new car on its blog. The...
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Shocker: Car Buyers Want Higher MPGs, Don't Want To Pay For ItReading the news reports, it looks like the White House and automakers may be closing in on an agreement to raise corporate average fuel economy standards to 54.5 mpg. Consumers are all in favor of raising gas mileage requirements for new cars, according to a new online poll of 1,100 U.S. drivers...
John Voelcker