John Voelcker, Contributing Editor
Articles
-
In September, Chevy scored quite a publicity coup for its Bolt EV long-range electric car.
The car's chief engineer, Josh Tavel, took a pre-production 2017 Chevrolet Bolt EV to show Steve Wozniak,...
-
Bolt EV sales start, Trump meets Musk, Prius Prime gas mileage: The Week in ReverseWhich long-anticipated and long-range electric car went on sale this week (on schedule)? How many climate-science deniers can president-elect Trump choose to run big federal agencies? This is our look back at the Week In Reverse—right here at Green Car Reports—for the week ending on...
John Voelcker -
2016 BYD e6 electric taxi gets range increase to 187 miles: Forbidden FruitHow would you like an all-electric wagon with five seats, a rear liftgate, and 187 miles of EPA-rated range? Sounds pretty good, right? You'd think such a vehicle might sell well, since it would have more rated range than any other electric cars on the market except the Chevy Bolt EV and anything...
John Voelcker -
Reminder: buy that electric-car charging station (or electric motorcycle) this month!With any new presidential administration comes a certain degree of legislative uncertainty. Conflicting statements on many issues by president-elect Donald Trump have produced more questions than usual about what policies he and his administration may pursue. But for present and future electric-car...
John Voelcker -
Which green-car technology will matter least in 2025? Poll resultsThere's no single silver bullet that will reduce the energy consumption and emissions from the 80 million new road vehicles sold globally each year. Instead, thousands of individual efforts to improve the efficiency of powertrains, reduce vehicle weight, cut wind resistance, and all the rest come...
John Voelcker -
Fisker EMotion 400-mile luxury electric car: new teaser photo releasedWe've seen it teased a couple of times in shadowy photos, and now we have the first renderings of the whole car. In this case, "it" is the Fisker EMotion, the latest striking, low-slung sedan drawn by car designer Henrik Fisker. This is to be the second car to bear his name, following the 2012...
John Voelcker -
And now it's real.
Just 23 months after GM CEO Mary Barra unveiled the Chevrolet Bolt concept at the Detroit Auto Show, the very first production versions of Chevy's 238-mile electric car to be sold...
-
Tesla challenge: make money on electric cars when GM, Nissan, VW don't have toDebate over the profitability of Tesla electric cars has raged for years among its fans and detractors. Tesla supporters point to financial data from the Silicon Valley automaker to support the idea that it makes money on each car it sells. Skeptics point out that save for two marginally profitable...
John Voelcker -
2017 Chevy Bolt EV 10 to 40 percent battery-capacity loss: possible, but unlikely?When's the last time you sat down and read large parts of an owner's manual for a car? If it's been a few years—or a few decades—you may be surprised how frustrating they are if you're actually searching for specific information. By and large, their indexes are atrocious (often using...
John Voelcker -
Tesla CEO Musk, other Silicon Valley execs, to meet Trump WednesdayTesla CEO Elon Musk is among a roster of chief executives from Silicon Valley set to meet with president-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday, according to news reports. Musk has suggested that climate change is among the most urgent challenges facing mankind, one reason his company makes only...
John Voelcker -
2017 Toyota Prius Prime: gas mileage, electric range reviewThe 2017 Toyota Prius Prime turned out to be a better plug-in hybrid than we had expected when we drove it around sunny Ojai, California, on the press launch in October. It's a viable competitor to the second-generation Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrid, though the Volt has an EPA-rated 53 miles of...
John Voelcker -
Porsche too said to use 'defeat device' software for gasoline carsIt's been 15 months since news broke that VW Group had used "defeat device" software in its diesel cars and SUVs that let them emit far more than permitted levels of nitrogen oxides in real-world use. Even now, however, the Volkswagen diesel scandal continues to grow new tentacles as investigators...
John Voelcker -
With the introduction of the 238-mile Chevrolet Bolt EV this month, the aging Fiat 500e three-door hatchback's 84 miles of range becomes woefully uncompetitive.
So Fiat Chrysler Automobiles needs a...
-
Bolt EV info, EPA head, 20 years of electric cars, EU diesel suits: The Week in ReverseWhich climate-science denier has been tapped to run an agency he repeatedly sued for attempting to enforce its own rules? What does the Chevy Bolt EV owners manual have to tell us about the 238-mile electric car that goes on sale this month? This is our look back at the Week In Reverse—right...
John Voelcker -
Trump's EPA head Pruitt: climate-science denier who sued the EPA many timesIf there were any doubt that president-elect Donald Trump supports fossil fuels and does not believe in the scientific consensus of climate change, his pick to head the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency should put it to rest. Yesterday, he named Oklahoma attorney general Scott Pruitt, a...
John Voelcker -
Which type of Green Car Reports articles are least valuable? Poll resultsLast week, we wrote about the results of a Twitter poll we put up to get a feel for what our readers like best about the site. The flipside of "most valuable" is "least valuable," so we put up the same list of choices again, this time asking survey respondents to rank their least favorite types of...
John Voelcker -
Diesels to lose two-thirds of current market share in 10 years: reportSometimes interesting predictions come buried inside a completely different topic. Take, for example, an investment note on the auto-parts supplier Continental contained in a roundup of industry research, market analysis, and news items issued yesterday by investment bank UBS. It contains the...
John Voelcker -
Automaker lobbyists fail to overturn EPA emission rulesA week ago, the EPA recommended that U.S. vehicle emission standards stay put for the years 2022 through 2025. According to the Technical Assessment Report the agency issued in July, automakers have so far quite successfully met standards in place since 2012 to cut emissions of the climate-change...
John Voelcker -
Twenty years ago today, the very first GM EV1 electric cars were delivered to 40 lessees in California in a blaze of publicity.
Since then, plug-in electric vehicles have seen more than their share...
-
Plug-in electric car sales surge in Nov: Volt soars, Prius Prime arrives (final update)Traditionally, the North American winter months have seen a slowdown in sales of plug-in electric cars—but the rule didn't seem to apply last month. Strong vehicle sales for November led analysts to suggest this could be another record year for U.S. sales, or at close. And several plug-in...
John Voelcker -
Pacifica Hybrid electric ratings, EPA emission rules, Tesla stores, Trump team: The Week in ReverseWhich government agency jolted Washington with a surprise decision that will have a huge impact on future cars? What did Consumer Reports have to say about the Tesla Model X electric SUV? This is our look back at the Week In Reverse—right here at Green Car Reports—for the week ending on...
John Voelcker -
EPA keeps car-emission rules to 2025; what happens under Trump?Two days ago, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued a ruling that existing limits on tailpipe emissions of carbon dioxide for 2022 through 2025 should remain in place. The EPA's carbon limits correspond exactly to NHTSA standards for corporate average fuel economy, and the EPA decision...
John Voelcker -
Jeremy Clarkson seems to know very little about electric cars, sadlyOh, dear. The things celebrities say. One of three long-time hosts of BBC's long-running "Top Gear" TV show, Clarkson was fired after punching a producer. His costars quit soon afterward. Now the trio is back in Amazon Prime's new series, "The Grand Tour," and Clarkson has hit the road to do...
John Voelcker -
Which Green Car Reports articles are most valuable? Poll resultsWe've now been running a series of Twitter polls for several weeks, and last week we decided to use one poll for a different purpose. We wanted to survey our audience, which we haven't done in any large-scale or systematic way. A Twitter poll isn't particularly scientific, but like reading the...
John Voelcker