John Voelcker, Contributing Editor
Articles
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Alan Taub, 54, is currently Executive Director in charge of Research & Development at General Motors. He joined GM R+D as executive director in 2001, and on October 1, he will replace Larry...
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2010 Toyota Prius Sales Soar, Boosted By Clunkers CashNever let it be said US car buyers don't know a good deal when they see one. The Toyota Prius has become the fourth-most popular car purchased under the first 80,000 Cash-for-Clunkers vouchers processed by the US Department of Transportation. In fact, Toyota sold 19,173 Priuses during July, almost...
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Cash For Clunkers: The Data On Why It's WorkingWho knew? Turns out Americans just needed a little nudge to visit their car dealers, but the promise of an extra $3,500 or more in incentives was enough to push car buyers over the hump and get them to trade in their clunkers. And how. As we reported Friday on our sister site TheCarConnection.com...
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BMW To Launch Its First Two Hybrids Next MonthLike many European brands that rely on diesels, BMW has been late to the party in introducing electric-drive cars. That's a risky strategy for North America, where it has had to add incentives on diesels and try to tie them to the Cash-for-Clunkers program. Now it's making up for lost time, not...
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Killing Your Clunker Correctly: How a Dealer 'Disables' ItThe 135 pages of Cash-for-Clunkers regulations rules require the dealer who sells you your new, more fuel-efficient car to 'disable' the engine of your traded-in clunker. But how do those dealers actually destroy the engine? Three words: sodium silicate solution. It's a combination of water...
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July's Most Popular Prius Posts: 2010 Reference Guide Rocks, AgainIt's the very last day of July, so it's time again for us to recap the five most popular posts of the month on AllAboutPrius.com. Compared to June's most-popular list, we're back to the basics, with our posts on the the making of the "Harmony" commercial and the followup MPG advertisement falling...
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Once more, it's the end of the month, when we celebrate by recapping our most popular posts. For July, we completely turned over our most popular posts from June ... and, our VW diesel fanboys have...
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New 2010 Suzuki Kizashi: Suprising Source For AWD Sports SedanNear where we spend our weekends, in the hilly terrain of upstate New York, there are three Subaru dealers. For several years, the largest one has paired strong-selling Subarus with the Suzuki lineup of all-wheel-drive entries and small, relatively green cars. When we got the word about the...
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Electric-Car Startup Coda Gets More Cash Plus Hank Paulson As AdvisorNow that Tesla isn't the only electric-car startup in town, the news keeps coming. Today's updates are from Coda Automotive, based in Santa Monica, California. We've written before about their 2011 Coda Sedan all-electric car, which will beat Tesla, Nissan, and others to market when it launches...
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BMW Adds More Cash To Convince You To Buy Their DieselsDespite IRS tax credits and superior gas mileage figures, BMW is reportedly having a tough time selling its new diesels, the 2009 BMW 335d sports sedan and the 2009 BMW X5 xDrive35d (yes, that's really its name). We've thought from the beginning that Volkswagen would be the big winner in selling...
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Amsterdam Idiots Evolve: From Cow-Tipping to Smart-DunkingWe've said before that Amsterdam is a city of many and remarkably diverse joys and entertainments. Take, for instance, the beer bike, which was almost banned over concerns about drunk pedaling through the city streets. But beer bikes and other forms of guzzled and inhaled entertainment sometimes...
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Want That 50-MPG 2010 Toyota Prius For $21K? Keep WaitingOften we get our best topics for posts from AllAboutPrius.com readers. Yesterday, Steven Ileras sent us a note asking about the status of the mysterious Prius I trim level. When we ran down the 2010 Toyota Prius equipment levels and packages (numbered II, III, IV and V) right after introduction, it...
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As the saying goes, if the French didn't exit, we'd have to invent them: A nation that reveres Jerry Lewis, builds cars with single-spoke steering wheels or names like Kangoo BeBop ZE, and threatens...
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2012 Nissan EV Peeks Out From Behind The MonitorThis Sunday, August 2, Nissan will unveil the first of several electric cars it plans to offer globally at a ceremony held at its Yokohama plant. Meanwhile, it is now teasing expectant EV fans with ghostly glimpses of the car on a new website: Nissan-ZeroEmission.com. The 2012 Nissan EV will be a...
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Keep It Green: Add A Little PZEV To That Subaru!Like CVT, which stands for continuously-variable transmission, PZEV is one of those acronyms floating around the auto world that mean nothing to most car buyers. It stands for Partial Zero-Emission Vehicle, one of a number of arcane emissions brackets created by the very aggressive California Air...
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2010 Lexus HS250h Pricing Starts at Exactly $35,000The 2010 Lexus HS250h is an interesting beast. We've covered it quite a lot because, among other interesting traits, it pioneers a new market segment: the dedicated luxury hybrid sedan. We did an initial Drive Report and then, more recently, a full review, and now Lexus has completed the last piece...
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2011 Chevrolet Cruze: Good Reviews for US-Bound Global CompactWe write about a lot of advanced technologies here, including hybrids, diesels, electric cars, and even natural-gas vehicles. But the hard truth is that all of those added together will be only a small fraction of cars sold in the US, even 10 years from now. Most of the green cars of tomorrow will...
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2010 Lexus HS250h Pricing Slots Neatly Above 2010 Toyota PriusFrom our first Drive Report to our recent full review, we've covered the 2010 Lexus HS250h quite a lot here at AllAboutPrius.com. Now the other shoe has dropped: Lexus has released the pricing. And, surprise, surprise, the 2010 HS250h slots very neatly just above the highest-spec model of the 2010...
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Less than two weeks after a bipartisan bill was introduced in the Senate to provide tax credits for buyers of natural-gas vehicles, or NGVs, the House has passed an entirely different bill that...
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Surprise: Heavier, More Powerful Cars Get Worse Gas MileageHere at GreenCarReports.com, we read a lot. And increasingly, our friends send us stuff they think we'd be interested in. Which is how we came across an abstract of a study done by one Christopher R. Knittel at the University of California-Davis. Knittel looked at the factors affecting carmakers'...
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Toyota To Build Hybrid Auris In the UK Next YearAwhile back, we speculated that Toyota's new, smaller-than-Prius hybrid would be based on the Auris Hybrid compact hatchback sold in Europe. We were wrong; in fact, the US will get a hybrid version of the already-high-mileage Toyota Yaris subcompact instead. But the Auris Hybrid is moving along...
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First Tata Nano Delivered TodayWe've written before about the Tata Nano, India's revolutionary $2,500 mini-car. Unveiled in January 2008 by Tata (which now owns Jaguar Land Rover as well), it had a rocky launch as a near-completed factory had to be abandoned after local protests over land payments. Today the first Nano buyer has...
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Searches for Used Diesels Gaining On Hybrids, Says CarmaxThe price of gasoline may be falling now that the Fourth of July holiday is behind us, but that doesn't mean that car buyers have given up on fuel economy. According to Carmax, which operates 100 used-car superstores and says it's the country's largest used-car seller, last month's searches for...
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Prius Perks In Peril From Plug-In Privileges?
There's been a fair amount of grumbling about so-called "Prius perks," including parking spaces set aside for hybrid vehicles at Ikea, Whole Foods, and other retailers. In fact, the spaces--although designated "hybrid"--are more properly allocated to any alternative-fuel vehicle. That includes...
John Voelcker