John Voelcker, Contributing Editor
Articles
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Nearing the end of our 2010 Detroit Auto Show coverage brings us to a vehicle that got a lot of media attention, though it's unclear when it will actually arrive in the U.S. That's the BYD e6...
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Jay Leno Gets 2013 Ford Focus Electric, But What Would Conan Drive?With the "Green Car Challenge" segment of his soon-to-be-terminated 10 pm show, Jay Leno has been a frequent proponent of electric cars--among them the upcoming electric version of the Ford Focus. Now that car has a name, as Ford happened to mention during a 2010 Detroit Auto Show press event. The...
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Best Green Car of the 2010 Detroit Auto Show: 2012 Ford FocusWe're back home from the mind-numbing madness of the 2010 Detroit Auto Show, unpacking, sorting press kits (well, these days they're just USB drives), and trying to work out what we thought of it all. This year, there's no question about the best green car there: It was the 2011 Ford Focus compact...
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Five Questions: Andrew Farah, 2011 Chevrolet Volt Chief EngineerLast weekend, we finally got the chance to drive the 2011 Chevrolet Volt. By and large, we liked it; see our full First Drive report for more details. Riding shotgun was Andrew Farah, the chief engineer for the 2011 Volt. During our ride and after, we asked him five questions--just as we did Volt...
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2010 Detroit Auto Show: Ford To Bring Hybrid Batteries Back HomeFord was on a roll at this year's Detroit Auto Show. It launched its new 2011 Ford Focus compact sedan and hatchback, which got rave reviews, and its 2010 Ford Fusion Hybrid won North American Car of the Year. The company added a late-breaking press conference on Monday to make a further...
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2010 Detroit Auto Show: The Confusing Wrongness of Electric AvenueOnly four electric vehicles really matter at the Detroit Auto Show: the 2011 Chevrolet Volt, the 2012 Nissan Leaf, and the 2012 Toyota Prius Plug-In Hybrid, plus the current 2010 Tesla Roadster. They're on sale, or destined for volume production. The rest fall into two categories: low-volume...
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Yesterday's Chevrolet press conference at the 2010 Detroit Auto Show was a pretty muted affair.
While Chevy unveiled one concept car--the Aveo RS--the photos and details had been released several...
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2010 Detroit Auto Show: Cadillac XTS Concept Revives GM's Plug-In Hybrid HopesSay "luxury hybrid," and very few people think of Cadillac. Sure, the Escalade Hybrid large luxury sport-utility vehicle has been around for a few years, but Cadillac has no hybrid sedans. That may be about to change, if the Cadillac XTS Platinum Concept unveiled this morning at the Detroit Auto...
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Surprise: You Save Gas, Drive Better If Your Boss WatchesWe don't write much about trucks here at GreenCarReports.com, but our friends at PickupTrucks.com follow them obsessively. Now they've provided the data for an obvious but revealing truth: People drive better and more smoothly, saving gas, when they're being watched. They report that truck fleets...
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2010 Detroit Auto Show: Full Details on the 2011 Honda CR-Z HybridThe 2010 Honda CR-Z hybrid is the first compact hybrid to go for a sporty edge.
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2010 Detroit Auto Show: Toyota FT-CH Concept To Expand Prius LineToyota announced this morning that it would launch a family of Prius vehicles, and unveiled a concept vehicle at the Detroit Auto Show that may foreshadow the shape of a new Toyota Prius coupe. The FT-CH concept shows a possible shape for a highly aerodynamic compact hybrid (or CH) vehicle...
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2010 Detroit Auto Show: Volkswagen New Compact Coupe Hybrid ConceptNow that VW has launched its new 2010 Golf hatchback, it will turn its attention to the 2011 Volkswagen Jetta sedan, which shares mechanicals with the Golf. This morning at the 2010 Detroit Auto Show, VW will take the wraps off a new hybrid concept vehicle called the New Compact Coupe. It's widely...
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Coming off the successful launch of its 2011 Ford Fiesta subcompact at last month's Los Angeles Auto Show, Ford is following up with its even more important 2012 Ford Focus compact.
This will be the...
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2010 Toyota Prius Is Best-Selling Car In JapanIn another sign that Toyota hit a home run with the third-generation Prius hybrid hatchback, the 2010 Toyota Prius was the best-selling car in Japan during 2009. It beat out the Honda Fit, followed by the Toyota Yaris (known in Japan as the Vitz), as well as its closest hybrid competitor, the new...
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Update: Green Cars at the 2010 Detroit Auto ShowNext month's North American International Auto Show in Detroit promises to be greener than ever before. That's a recognition that more fuel-efficient and smaller cars are a permanent part of the U.S. automotive landscape, but it's also desperation to fill space in a show that's losing exhibitors...
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Netherlands To Tax Miles Traveled, As Well As GasolineOne problem with raising fuel efficiency is that unless total miles driven rises radically, receipts from gasoline taxes will fall over time. And that poses a major problem for the steady stream of revenue needed for road construction and repairs. Taxing vehicle miles traveled has been one proposed...
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2010 Detroit Auto Show: 2011 Chevrolet Aveo RS ConceptThe current 2010 Chevrolet Aveo sedan and hatchback, the Korean-built subcompacts that are GM's contenders in that growing segment, are no longer competitive against upcoming entries like the 2011 Ford Fiesta, rated at 30 mpg city, 40 mpg highway. But that will change when a brand-new and entirely...
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Detroit Auto Show Preview: Volvo C30 Electric CarVolvo has now released more details of the all-electric C30 concept car it will launch at next week's 2010 Detroit Auto Show. We covered early details a couple of weeks ago; here's the rest of the story on the little electric hatchback with no tailpipe. The electric C30 concept car will let the...
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It's beginning to look as if the worst is over for U.S. auto sales. The year that just closed was, in the immortal words of Queen Elizabeth II, an annus horribilis, with only 10.4 million vehicles...
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2011 Chevrolet Volt Lithium-Ion Battery Pack Goes Into ProductionThe lithium-ion battery pack for the 2011 Chevrolet Volt extended-range electric vehicles officially went into volume production today. The 16-kilowatt-hour battery pack, containing 220 lithium-ion cells made by Korea's LG Chem, will be assembled in a 160,000-square-foot factory in Brownstown...
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Tata Nano, World's Cheapest Car, To Be Sold in U.S. in 2012The world's cheapest car, India's tiny Tata Nano mini-car, will be sold in the U.S. starting three years from now, says its maker. Company chief Ratan Tata told reporters at the New Delhi Auto Show, underway today, that it is now adapting the Nano to meet stringent U.S. crash safety requirements...
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Diesel Hybrids From Peugeot and Mercedes Get Closer to RealityPeugeot is still on track to launch the world's first diesel-hybrid vehicle late this year. Its 3008 HYbrid4 Concept is a thinly disguised version of a crossover fitted with a mild-hybrid system that will go into production late this year as a 2011 model. Now other manufacturers are joining the...
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New Way To Save Gas: An Accelerator Pedal That Talks BackNext year's all-new 2011 Infiniti M series of luxury sports sedans will spawn a hybrid version, the 2012 M35 Hybrid, a year later. But even standard gasoline-engined models will offer new technology to help drivers save fuel. In this case, it's an accelerator pedal that talks back, courtesy of the...
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How To Get 85 MPG In a 2010 Lexus HS 250h Hybrid: Go DownhillYou have to give corporate PR guys some credit when they publish an article on the astoundingly high mileage their car got in a road test, and then dismiss the whole thing as "silly and totally unscientific." That's what Lexus magazine auto editor Clark Heideger did. When a coworker got 47.4 miles...
John Voelcker