John Voelcker, Contributing Editor
Articles
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Add another entry to the growing list of electric vehicles going on sale in the next year or so.
Think North America, maker of the two-seat City electric car, announced that its 2011 Think City had...
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First 2011 Chevy Volts Leave Plant, Head To CA, TX, DC & NYProduction of the world's first range-extended electric car is now a reality. Today, the first shipment of 2011 Chevrolet Volt electric cars left the Detroit-Hamtramck assembly plant. The cars are bound for dealers and buyers in the initial launch markets: California, Texas, New York, and...
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2011 Detroit Auto Show Preview: New 2012 Honda Civic ConceptNews from next month's 2011 Detroit Auto Show is coming in almost daily now. The latest announcement: Honda will present the world debut of a concept car that shows the styling direction of its next--and crucially important--Honda Civic. In reality, this means that the Honda Civic Concept shown in...
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First 2011 Nissan Leaf Delivery, To Northern Californian BuyerThe first page of a new chapter in green-car history was written yesterday, as Nissan formally handed over a 2011 Leaf electric car to Olivier Chalouhi of Redwood City, California. He was the very first person in the U.S. to order the all-electric vehicle, and the first to take delivery. Leaf...
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2011 Detroit Auto Show Preview: 2012 Volkswagen New Midsize SedanWith the 2010 Los Angeles Auto Show past us, it's time to look toward January's 2011 Detroit Auto Show. Which should have a lot of interesting green cars, if early reports are any guide. Never mind the debut of what's now called the 2012 Chevrolet Sonic (nee Aveo). One of the most eagerly...
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Naming Electric Cars And Companies: Is Anything Good Left?Naming new car models is always tough. The latest head-scratcher is GM's decision to rebrand the replacement for its Aveo subcompact as the 2012 Chevrolet Sonic, a name better associated in the U.S. with hedgehogs or hamburgers. But that's nothing compared to the challenge of naming electric-car...
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Today's small cars are better than they've ever been, even if few of them are among the EPA's all-time gas mileage champs.
And spurred by tighter fuel-economy laws, 40 miles per gallon on the highway...
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Why Are Few Of Today's Cars Among The Most Fuel-Efficient Ever?Every now and then, readers write to grumble about new cars and their gas mileage. The gist is usually something like this: You wrote that the new 2011 [Make & Model] gets 40 mpg highway? Well, big whoop-de-doo. I always got at least 45 mpg in my 1992 Geo Metro, and it was a whole lot cheaper...
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How To Enjoy Your Compact Car: A 455-Horse, 6.75-Liter V-12Compact cars are pretty much a known quantity, and hence easy to visualize. Many are headed for 40-mpg highway ratings, and Hyundai recently threw down the gauntlet in saying it would start to report sales of 40-mpg vehicles--and challenged other makers to do the same. Imagine a compact car,and...
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2011 Hyundai Sonata Hybrid Delayed A Month, Misses Tax CreditThe U.S. launch of the 2011 Hyundai Sonata Hybrid has slipped a month, just enough to preclude buyers from taking advantage of a $1,300 Federal tax credit that expires December 31. According to Hyundai, the first cars will now reach dealers in January or perhaps later, rather than in early or mid...
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Still Dead: Dodge Ram Hybrid Pickup, With Or Without DieselIt's all very strange. Just last March, Chrysler definitively killed the Ram Hemi Hybrid pickup it had been developing for several years. RIP Hemi Hybrid. Now comes a mysterious post on fan site Allpar.com that proposes that the company's Ram 1500 pickup truck will offer a Cummins 5.0-liter...
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2011 Ford Explorer At 25 MPG Highway, 20 MPG Combined, EPA SaysOne of the main reasons buyers steered away from the old Ford Explorer sport utility vehicle, according to Ford itself, was its fuel economy. So gas mileage had to be a major selling point for the all-new 2011 Ford Explorer. Like so many new cars and crossovers, the latest model does indeed get...
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We don't hear much about the 2011 Chevrolet Volt's half-brother, the Opel/Vauxhall Ampera, here in the States.
But in the U.K., the president of GM Europe laid out that group's plans for future...
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Is Natural Gas The Green Solution for Hybrid-less Chrysler?Last summer, when Fiat-Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne lauded his company's line of European vehicles that run on compressed natural gas, it may have seemed like an off-the-cuff remark. But in fact, natural gas may be the only green or alternative fuel that Chrysler can feasibly adopt in any kind of...
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Hertz To Launch Electric-Car Rentals in NYC, Add Smart To FleetAs it gears up to offer electric cars in selected rental fleets across the country, Hertz has dribbled out details of how its Global EV program will actually work. Today we learn that New York City will be the first region to receive the electric and plug-in hybrid rental cars, with rentals to...
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Video: GM's Two-Seat Autonomous Electric EN-V Spins Into ActionTo comply with upcoming gas mileage rules, automakers will launch appealing and economical compact or subcompact cars in the U.S. market over the coming years. But car designers are thinking far smaller yet. At the 2010 Los Angeles Auto Show two weeks ago, General Motors showed off an operating...
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GM Doubles Down on Electric Cars, Will Hire 1,000 Engineers For ThemIt doesn't really matter whether GM sells the first Chevrolet Volt electric cars at a loss or not. The company announced yesterday that it plans to hire 1,000 new engineers over the next two years to focus exclusively on developing and expanding its work in electric-drive vehicles, everything from...
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2010 Los Angeles Auto Show: 2012 Fiat 500 Minicar UnveiledThe launch of the 2012 Fiat 500 at the Los Angeles Auto Show wasn't only the first new model from Chrysler's partnership with Italian automaker Fiat. It also added a new and attractive model to a category of cars that have always been an afterthought in the U.S. market: minicars, those even smaller...
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Just a month ago, we suggested that 40 miles per gallon is the new bragging threshold for subcompact and even compact cars.
Now, Hyundai has dropped the gloves (or thrown down the gauntlet) with a...
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GM Confirms, Yes, We're Losing Money on Every Volt We BuildDoug Parks, vehicle line executive for the 2011 Chevrolet Volt, GM's range-extended electric vehicle, confirmed Tuesday that the company loses money on every Volt it sells. This should hardly be a surprise. It's called R&D, folks Every major automaker spends billions of dollars a year on...
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Follow Green Car Reports On Our Facebook Page Too!EDITOR'S NOTE: We originally published this article on September 20, but we wanted to alert readers once more that you can now follow us on Facebook. We're eager to reach out and connect with you wherever you're spending your time online, and the discussion on our Facebook page has gotten pretty...
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2010 Los Angeles Auto Show: 2012 Infiniti M Hybrid DetailsFirst previewed at last year's Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance, we've been hearing about the 2012 Infiniti M Hybrid for more than a year. Now, finally, Infiniti has officially unveiled the M35h, its very first hybrid-electric vehicle, at the 2010 Los Angeles Auto Show. First of many? It's the...
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Try Again: Honda's Big-Car Hybrid System Has Plug-In AbilityIt wasn't even at the 2010 Los Angeles Auto Show, where Honda only showed a video of the new plug-in hybrid platform it only discussed But details of the new powertrain point the way toward a range of future hybrid Honda models. It uses two separate motor-generators, as does Toyota's Hybrid Synergy...
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2010 LA Auto Show: Volvo C30 DRIVe Electric First Drive ReportOne of the great things about auto shows is the chance for journalists to drive prototype cars, especially at the Los Angeles Auto Show, known for its green-car test drives. We got a chance to spend 20 minutes behind the wheel of the Volvo C30 DRIVe Electric car, with Volvo's Lennart Stegland in...
John Voelcker