John Voelcker, Contributing Editor
Articles
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If you're reading this site, there's a good chance that you're interested in driving green: saving fuel, perhaps reducing the overall impact of your transportation choices on the planet.
Or maybe...
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AMP Electric Thinks Soccer Moms Want Electric Equinoxes; Do They?Attending a conference in Detroit a couple of weeks ago, we had the chance to drive a converted "Amp'd Chevrolet Equinox" crossover, offered by AMP Electric Vehicles. Based in Cleveland, the company hopes to sell electric conversions of "best of class" vehicles in several segments to early adopting...
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EPA Certifies Fuel With Up To 35 Percent Renewable DieselWhile ethanol in gasoline remains a point of contention among automakers, ethanol producers, and the Congressman who love them, renewable diesel fuel seems to be moving quietly forward. Late last month, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency certified an ultra-low-sulfur diesel blend containing...
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Volvo Turns Gasoline To Hydrogen To Make Electric Cars More EfficientInternal-combustion engines typically convert only one-third of the energy stored in gasoline or diesel fuel into usable power. The rest is wasted as heat, noise, or even goes unburnt. So the question for designers of range-extended electric vehicles becomes: How can onboard liquid fuel most...
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The Magic Numbers In New Compact Cars: 40 MPG From 1.4 LitersTo achieve ambitious 2016 Federal fuel-economy goals, carmakers are working hard to make their engines smaller and more efficient. That's not news. But it's increasingly looking like we'll have a new target for compact cars over the next few years: a rating of 40 miles per gallon highway, from an...
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Audi To Add Diesel Versions Of Every Model It Makes By 2015In Europe, roughly half of all passenger cars sold come with fuel-efficient diesel engines. But for a variety of reasons, passenger diesels haven't caught on in the States, though the number is climbing slowly. Audi, proud of its diesel engine technology--which, among other things, has won the...
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Urban taxi service may be the equal of any proving-ground torture test. Taxis are driven hard, up to 20 hours a day, and must handle both bad roads and bad drivers. Those that survive without falling...
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15 Facts You May Not Know About Transportation Around the WorldThe oldest, and greenest, form of transportation is no further away than the ends of your legs. It's walking, courtesy of your feet. Today, rather to our surprise, it turns out that 51 percent of Americans who travel still walk regularly. And that's courtesy of the National Highway Traffic Safety...
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GE's 'Largest Order in History' To Boost Electric-Car MarketGeneral Electric, the conglomerate that produces everything from power-plant turbines to television shows, wants to jumpstart the electric-vehicle market. To do that, said CEO Jeffrey Immelt yesterday in London, it will place the "largest order in history" for electric vehicles, numbering in the...
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GM To Show All-Electric Car Next Year...In India, Not HereWhile General Motors is focusing its U.S. electric-drive efforts solely on the 2011 Chevrolet Volt, a range-extended electric car, elsewhere in the world it's experimenting with full battery electric vehicles. Now the company has said it will unveil a Chinese-built electric subcompact in the Indian...
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Tesla's Elon Musk Says Plug-In Hybrid Cars Are, Ummmm, FrogsWorking at Tesla Motors must be a lot of fun for many reasons. There's the chance of driving a lightning-fast 2011 Tesla Roadster Sport 2.5, for one. Then there's the chance that you'll be privy to hearing your CEO say something untrue. Or just wacky. Our latest example: On the sidelines of Tesla's...
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Wider 2012 Mitsubishi i-MiEV For U.S. Market: First SketchWe've been waiting eagerly for more details of the modified U.S.-spec 2012 Mitsubishi i-MiEV electric car. Now, Mitsubishi has started the long tease. The company tweeted a sketch this morning that shows a wider, slightly more angular i-MiEV that still preserves the now-familiar shape of the...
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Recycling old electronics isn’t necessarily something most Americans do. Many of us, it turns out, just stash our old computers, printers, and TV sets in the closet. Or we leave them at the...
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Can Smarter Red Lights Let Cars Drive Greener And Save Gas?We've all driven through--or waited a long time at--intersections that have car-sensing traffic lights. Now Denso has modeled the next iterations of a "smart traffic light" system. It would use messaging between vehicles and the traffic-light controller to let the light make better decisions about...
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2012 Toyota Prius Minivan: Better Images From Japan, Via Italy!Toyota announced a year ago that it would apply the Prius model name not only to the current five-door hatchback, but to other hybrid vehicles as well. The first of these will be a 2012 Toyota Prius minivan, variously called the Prius Alpha or Prius Verso, though we don't yet know exactly what...
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How Smaller Engines Offer More Power: Superchargers Vs TurbosTurbochargers have been with us in volume production only since the Seventies, but superchargers have a long and honorable automotive history. They were used on the Blower Bentleys that won Le Mans 80 years ago, and have appeared ever since on high-performance engines, often larger ones. A boost...
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First Hydrogen Filling Station In U.S. Opens For Fuel-Cell CarsDid you notice? Us either. Nonetheless, last week, the first commercial hydrogen filling station in the country was opened in Wallingford, Connecticut, by startup firm SunHydro. The company generates hydrogen onsite using electricity from an array of photovoltaic solar cells that splits apart water...
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EPA Proposes 10-to-20-Percent Gas Mileage Rise for Big TrucksWell, now we know the numbers. And there are a lot of them. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Transportation jointly proposed cutting greenhouse-gas emissions from medium and heavy duty trucks by 10 to 20 percent, starting in 2014 and extending through 2018. (The actual...
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The PR guy got us lost.
Twice.
But David Reuter, Nissan’s chief communications director, didn’t break a sweat even when the Remaining Range indicator fell below 5 miles and started...
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PETA Proposes Ads Urging Electric-Car Drivers To Go VeganAh, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the gift that just keeps on giving headline fodder to eager editors. Which is probably just what PETA intended. We learned last week that PETA proposed to Boston's chief of environmental and energy services, Jim Hunt, that it run ads promoting the...
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How To Pay Just $12,280 For A Brand-New 2011 Nissan Leaf Electric CarAll the different incentives to purchase electric cars can be confusing. But if all the stars align and you're the lucky person who can take advantage of multiple incentives, there’s a slim chance that you could buy a brand-new 2011 Nissan Leaf for a mere $12,300. Here’s how it works...
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2011 Nissan Leaf Electric Car: First Drive ReviewOctober has been quite a month. This week we drove a pre-production version of the 2011 Nissan Leaf, the first production electric car to be sold by a major automaker in more than 80 years. Unlike the range-extended electric 2011 Chevrolet Volt, which we drove last week, the 2011 Leaf is a pure...
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Leaf, Volt, Fiesta & More Named Green Car of the Year FinalistsFive finalists were announced today for the 2011 Green Car of the Year Award, which will be presented next month at the 2010 Los Angeles Aut o Show. The five contenders span two plug-in cars, two hybrid-electric vehicles, and one high-efficiency subcompact gasoline car: 2011 Chevrolet Volt 2011...
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Live: First 2011 Nissan Leaf Electric Car Rolls Off Production LineAfter years of anticipation and multiple media events, the day is here: The first production 2011 Nissan Leaf will roll off the production lines this Friday at 11:30 am Japanese time. The embedded video below shows the live event, and we hope that it remains archived after the fact. We'll shortly...
John Voelcker