John Voelcker, Contributing Editor
Articles
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Oh, the pain. We hear about all those special European models with astoundingly high gas mileage ratings, and we wonder, why can't we have them here?
The latest is the 2012 Ford Focus ECOnetic, which...
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Chrysler To Join Honda In Selling Natural-Gas Cars...In 2017Ask anyone to name an alternate fuel, and natural gas is rarely the first one that comes to mind. Ethanol, perhaps, and increasingly electricity. But natural gas? Not so much. Yet in other parts of the world, as many as 2 percent of the vehicles on the road are fueled by natural gas, in countries...
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Miles-Per-Gallon Is Just Stupid. No, Really, It Is.Americans aren't stupid. We're just badly informed. And occasionally, stubborn. Why else would we ignorantly cling to using miles per gallon as the way to measure how efficiently a car uses fuel? But maybe you don't quite see the problem. OK, so here's a little test: Which saves more gasoline...
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Why Silicon Valley Won't Be Detroit For Green CarmakersWe don’t hear “death of Detroit” stories as often now as we did a year ago. When GM and Chrysler plunged into bankruptcy and the entire U.S. industry laid off tens of thousands of workers in one year, the effects on an already battered Detroit region were dire. And they led to a...
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Would Your Granny Buy A 2012 Toyota Prius Plug-In Hybrid? (Video)It's all about video these days. We do video here at GreenCarReports (discussing whether a 2011 Chevy Volt will save you money, for instance) and so do many other automotive sites. But we have to admit, we never thought about bringing grandmothers into the picture. Which is exactly what Kyle...
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Forget Hydrogen: Here They Are, The Two Fuels of The FutureForget hydrogen. You can mostly ignore natural gas. Even diesel may not grow much. The two fuels that will largely power us for the next 20, maybe 30, years are already here. They are gasoline (with some ethanol in it), and electricity. That's it. That's all she wrote. First, gasoline Those...
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Last week they teased it; this week, they took the covers off it.
In this case, "it" is the Lexus LF-Gh Hybrid Concept car that will be the centerpiece of the Lexus display at next week's New York...
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7 Ways To Save Gas And Go Green With The Cars You Own TodaySure, it'd be nice to have a brand-new, more fuel-efficient vehicle. But not everyone is able to buy one of the growing number of new cars with at least 40 mpg highway mileage. So here are our tips for getting better mileage out of whatever vehicles are in your driveway right now, today, from...
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BMW Hires Lead Electric-Car Engineer From Chevy Volt TeamNot so long ago, the notion of luxury German brand BMW hiring an engineer from General Motors might have been a stretch. The company prefers to promote engineers from within its Munich engineering headquarters. But reports that Frank Weber, the lead engineer of the 2011 Chevrolet Volt team, has...
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Taking Advantage Of Your IRS Mileage: Hybrid Cars Can HelpThis week is the heart of tax time. If you're like many other taxpayers or a small businessperson, right about now you're looking up the 2010 mileage rate that the IRS lets you use when deducting personal-vehicle use as a business expense. So here's the answer: The IRS mileage rate is 50 cents per...
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Ethanol Wars: Farm Senators Want More E85 Flex-Fuel Cars By 2016Let's be real: How many of you out there have ever driven a single mile on E85 ethanol fuel? Very, very, very few of you, most likely. The fuel composed of 85 percent ethanol blended with 15 percent gasoline is available only in a handful of Midwestern states. Yet a bill now under consideration by...
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2013 Chevy Malibu LTZ Concept Gets Only Four-Cylinder EnginesIt may be named after an exclusive Los Angeles beach community, but the Chevrolet Malibu is going global. In a big way. Chevy has just released a teaser photo and a few details of the 2013 Chevrolet Malibu LTZ concept car it will unveil at the Auto Shanghai 2011 show, just 36 hours before media...
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All-wheel-drive is an increasingly popular option in new vehicles, especially in areas of the country that get snow.
But the security of having all four wheels powered in your car can be offset by...
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2011 New York Auto Show: High-Mileage Compact Car Wars Heat UpWe're barreling toward the 2011 New York Auto Show, where media days kick off in two weeks. While concept cars like the Lexus LF-Gh luxury hybrid sports sedan will get lots of attention, once the media leave, actual car buyers will be just as curious about fuel efficient cars with high gas mileage...
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Lexus LF-Gh Hybrid Teaser Photos: New York Auto Show PreviewSay "hybrid" and most U.S. buyers think Toyota, if not Toyota Prius. Indeed, the company just sold its millionth Prius in the United States, where roughly half of the 2 million Priuses it had built as of last fall have found homes since 2000. But Toyota's luxury marque Lexus also has hybrid models...
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Is Obama's Goal of 1 Million Plug-In Cars By 2015 Feasible?Since 2008, Barack Obama has consistently promoted the goal of having 1 million advanced technology vehicles on U.S. roads by 2015. The number refers to plug-in vehicles that use grid power, stored in lithium-ion battery packs, to operate their electric traction motors. Regular hybrids like the...
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Want To Clean Up The Planet? Spay Your Pet, THEN Buy a PriusCutting carbon emissions is complex. And there are a lot of myths and misinformation out there. The effective impact of some actions--reusing your grocery bags, for instance--is relatively low. Other methods, things that many people never even consider, are considerably more effective. For...
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2012 Nissan Versa: New Compact To Launch At New York Auto ShowAll we know so far is that Nissan will show a small car at the New York Auto Show, where media days kick off two weeks from tomorrow. But it's highly likely that the car will be an all-new 2012 Nissan Versa. It will be the latest entrant in a brewing battle among new and recently redesigned compact...
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The Honda Civic is one of the best-known and best-selling compact cars in the U.S. market.
And it's just been entirely redesigned.
For all the details, you'll have to wait until Wedneday, April 20,...
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Chevy Volt Outsells Nissan Leaf Again: March Electric Car SalesThe 2011 Chevy Volt continues to outsell the 2011 Nissan Leaf, but during March, the Japanese battery electric car at last started to move noticeable numbers of cars--almost five times as many as it sold in February. The two major-manufacturer plug-ins currently on the market sold a total of 906...
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Startup Offers Gasoline-Tank Swaps Derived From Electric Car ConceptCars with electric drive motors are now midway through their second decade, and ideas from hybrids and electric cars are starting to filter back into mainstream gasoline vehicles. Ford, for one, adapted several ideas from its hybrid vehicles to reduce the fuel consumption of its 2011 Explorer...
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2012 Tesla Model S Prototype Workshop: Photo GallerySome of the loudest of the skepticism over Tesla's plans to design and build an all-electric luxury sports sedan have died down after the company showed an all-aluminum body-in-white at the Detroit Auto Show in January. Even Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda checked it out. Tesla is continuing its campaign to...
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VIDEO: Will Electric Cars Like The Chevy Volt Save You Money?The problem with shooting video is that there's always one thing you forget to say until the camera's gone. Especially if it's low-budget and done on the fly. That's when the onscreen talent tends to forget to qualify some of the things they say. Like, for instance, this discussion of the unlikely...
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Who Knew? A Car Battery Is the World's Most Recycled ProductA concern raised over upcoming electric-drive cars--the all-electric 2011 Nissan Leaf, the 2011 Chevrolet Volt, and the 2012 Toyota Prius Plug-In Hybrid--is what happens to their lithium-ion battery packs once the car's life ends. Images of those battery packs tossed over cliffs or littering...
John Voelcker