John Voelcker, Contributing Editor
Articles
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Most car sites run test drives of new cars. That is, cars that you can actually buy.
And now for something completely different: A test drive of an almost-brand-new, 35-year-old, 1975 Volkswagen...
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Can GM Convince You a 2011 Chevy Volt Is the Go-Anywhere EV?As we count down the months before the first 2011 Chevrolet Volts arrive at dealers in California, New York, Michigan, and Washington, D.C., it's time for the latest reboot of the Chevy marketing machine to kick into action. Chevrolet said in a press conference last week it would start running ads...
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2011 Chevrolet Aveo Shown Sans Disguise; Thanks, Photoshop!Some auto writers (not us, truly) have been known to sneer at car forum sites. But we try to monitor the forums regularly, 'cause sometimes you see the darnedest things. Take, for example, this photo of a 2011 Chevrolet Aveo in undisguised form, minus the usual spy-shot camouflage. It comes from...
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World-Record Gas-Mileage Champ For Sale, From 1959, For $425K. Ahem.It's the Friday before a long holiday, which means most of you aren't around to read this. But for those who are, here's our bit of green-car randomness to launch the Independence Day celebrations. How would you like to own a semi-derelict, half-century-old, very odd-looking German car that holds a...
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2011 Chevy Volt: Freedom Drive Underway, GM Offers T-ShirtsTaking a break from the relentless drumbeat of news about Tesla Motors, its stock offering this week, and the latest model of its electric two-seater, the Roadster 2.5--we bring you a story about the upcoming 2011 Chevrolet Volt range-extended electric vehicle. Specifically, a Volt is now en route...
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Why Is Tesla’s Stock Deflating After Only Two Days?Good news for those of you who shorted Tesla Motors' stock: the electric car company’s shares are already falling in price as the zeal around its $226 million public debut begins to fade — after just two days. TSLA closed at $21.96 today, its third day of trading, after falling $1.87. Yesterday...
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Like many site editors, we read our traffic stats religiously. Perhaps unlike other site editors, ours frequently make us laugh.
We try to provide practical information on navigating your way through...
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Want to Buy a 2011 Chevrolet Volt? More Details, Dealer InfoLess than six months from now, the first 2011 Chevrolet Volt extended-range electric vehicles will be sold by dealers in selected launch markets. Today, General Motors showed a few more cards, releasing news in various presentations on additional early markets, production numbers, and answering...
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2011 Tesla Roadster 2.5: New Looks, Wheels, Seats, Less NoiseTesla's on a roll, it seems. Two days after its successful public stock offering, the company has released details of the latest updates to its Roadster electric sports car--known as "Roadster 2.5" after software-release numbering. The 2.5 version sports some new styling at front and rear...
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Clean-Diesel Mini? Green! A 3500-HP Diesel Mini? NOT Green!We've written before about the diesel-engined Mini Cooper D that's sold in Europe, but not in the U.S. We really like the idea of a clean-diesel Mini. And now for something completely different. How about a 3500-horsepower V-18 diesel Mini? Ummmm, yes. At this week's Goodwood Festival of Speed...
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VantagePoint’s Alan Salzman on Tesla and how VCs should think greenI just sat down with Alan Salzman, CEO of VantagePoint Venture Partners — perhaps better known today as the first venture capital firm to invest in Tesla Motors — to see how he’s feeling about the big win, and what it might mean for VPVP’s growing green strategy. As you can imagine, he was...
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IPO Or Not, Tesla Won't Survive As Independent, Analysts SayQuick, name the last automaker to go public before yesterday's Tesla Motors IPO. Stumped? It was Ford Motor Company. The year was 1956. Perhaps buyers of Tesla Motors stock [NSDQ:TSLA] were optimistic because they had little context to assess the comapny. Tesla's stock soared from its offering...
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When auto editors go on vacation, we rent cars too.
Which is how a pair of very plain 2010 Toyota Corollas in South Africa taught us a few lessons about fuel economy, green value, and what other...
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How Short Is a Tata Nano? Enough To Ship Sideways On a TrainYou've surely seen car-carriers full of brand-new vehicles on the highways. But many new cars roll out of the factory onto trains that carry them over much of their journey. Now a new video from India shows a trainload of diminutive Tata Nano minicars passing by an onlooker in Bangalore. The...
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Last minute sprint boosts Tesla shares to $23.89, valuation to $2.2BThe Nasdaq is closed, and Tesla Motors [NSDQ: TSLA] is ending its first day on the market at $23.89 a share, a 40.5 percent increase over the $17 pricing it announced last night. This is a rock star showing for the electric car company, which has exceeded expectations that were already sky high. As...
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Drive An Electric Race Car From Alaska to S America? Why Not?The British have a long history of improbable and unlikely quests. Sometimes they succeed, sometimes they fail. So the attempt by a group of 20-something engineers to boost the image of electric cars in the public eye by driving the length of the Pan-American Highway in an electrically powered...
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Two-Mode Hybrid System: GM's Larry Nitz on Lessons LearnedThe Two-Mode Hybrid system for large sport utilities and trucks hasn't exactly set the world on fire. In 2006, General Motors, Daimler and Chrysler (then a single company) announced a partnership, soon joined by BMW, to develop the Two-Mode Hybrid system for large rear-wheel drive vehicles. But...
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How Many Million Priuses Would Offset the Gulf Oil Spill?One million gallons a day is a lot of oil. According to estimates late last week, that could be the daily rate of oil escaping from the Deepwater Horizon well in the Gulf of Mexico. To put that number in perspective, we decided to look at what it would take to compensate just for the lost gasoline...
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When it launched in the States in 2002, the Mini Cooper taught the auto industry that U.S. buyers will pay real money for very small cars. If, that is, they offer personality, charm, cheekiness, and...
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2011 Nissan Leaf Spied Testing on Arizona RoadsAs far as we know, no one has yet done a road test on the 2011 Nissan Leaf, which will go on sale in certain markets this December. We've driven the Leaf powertrain mounted in a Cube mule, and our colleague Bengt Halvorson has driven it in a Versa mule--but never the completed car. Still, we know...
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GM Sells 570 Hybrid Pickups To Phone Company, Jubilation EnsuesLast year, General Motors sold about 7,200 of its full-size hybrid SUVs--but just 1,600 hybrid pickup trucks using the same system. So the company took the unusual step last Friday of issuing a press release to announce that it had sold 576 of Silverado Hybrid pickups in one fell swoop. The buyer...
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GM Launches Venture Arm To Keep Up With Automotive TechCars are quickly become the new connected devices. Equipped with voice-command, streaming media centers, navigation displays and more, the newest line of vehicles out of major automakers are borrowing more from computers, the web and mobile technology than ever before. Now, riding this wave of...
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You'll Save Money With Higher-MPG Cars, But It'll Cost YouNew Federal standards for higher average gas-mileage in vehicles sold from now to 2015 will save consumers money on fuel. But the cars themselves are likely to cost more, according to a study released yesterday by the National Research Council. Regular readers know we've been saying that it'll be a...
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Friday Favorite: Best 2009 Tesla Roadster Video Review Ever!We've driven a 2009 Tesla Roadster, contributed to the complete review, and written about the torturous tradeoff between using the stupendous acceleration and maintaining enough battery range to get you home again. While the Roadster will go down in history for making electric vehicles sexy, Tesla...
John Voelcker