John Voelcker, Contributing Editor
Articles
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Fisker is coming back, he says, with 400-mile electric car using graphene cells (updated) John VoelckerHenrik Fisker has designed some remarkable cars, among them Aston Martins, the BMW Z8, and of course the striking Fisker Karma range-extended electric luxury sedan.
That vehicle, launched in 2012 by...
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How many Toyota Prius Primes will be sold in its first 12 months? Poll resultsNext year should be an interesting one for sales of plug-in electric cars, with the 2017 Chevrolet Bolt EV rolling out to selected dealers in all 50 states, Chevy says. The 2017 BMW i3 gets 50 percent more range, and the Ford Focus Electric and Volkswagen e-Golf are expected to get range upgrades...
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One of these 3 cars will be Green Car Reports' Best Car To Buy 2017The past year has been one of anticipation among green-car advocates, who've spent many months waiting for certain vehicles to emerge into production. At the start of the year, it was the Tesla Model X luxury electric utility vehicle, built in very low numbers for several months at the end of 2015...
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Was Paris a tipping point for electric cars? We mull it overAuto shows are sometimes hot, sometimes not. A lot of it has to do with what cars are shown, whether they're pure design studies, concepts pointing toward future vehicles, or actual production cars. And whether a show has "buzz" largely depends on the cadence of when automakers choose to release...
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When will plug-in electric car sales exceed hybrid sales? Poll resultsThe questions of whether and when sales of plug-in electric cars will resume their climb after a static 2015 are much on the minds of green-car advocates these days. It's taken as an article of faith that cars with plugs will grow as a proportion of the global market, ultimately supplanting large...
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Smart Electric Drive has a little Renault-Nissan underneathOne of several new electric cars and concepts at last week's Paris Motor Show was the electric version of the second-generation Smart minicar. As Smart pointed out, it's the only maker that offers the option of gasoline or electric powertrains in every model it makes. Those are the ForTwo two-seat...
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Sales of plug-in electric cars in September chugged along steadily, with consistent sales from the Chevy Volt plug-in hybrid and a stronger number for the Nissan Leaf battery-electric car.
Chevrolet...
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2017 Toyota Prius Prime: first drive of new plug-in hybridThe 2017 Toyota Prius Prime is a considerably better car than a few electric-car fans had feared. In fact, with an EPA-rated range of 25 miles (more than projected) and energy efficiency so high—at 133 MPGe—that it matches the BMW i3 with all its whizzy advanced technology, it’s a...
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Electric cars in Paris, new Jeep Compass, Tesla discounts, charging etiquette: The Week in ReverseWhich makers unveiled new electric-car concepts or production vehicles at this week's Paris Motor Show? And what exactly did Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk have to crack down on? This is our look back at the Week In Reverse—right here at Green Car Reports—for the week ending on Friday...
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How many Chevy Bolt EVs will be sold in the U.S. in its first 12 months? Poll resultsThe largest number of one single battery-electric car sold in the U.S. in a single year is 30,000, the total logged in 2014 by the Nissan Leaf. (Of course, we don't know Tesla's sales because the company doesn't break out its quarterly global delivery totals by country.) But those were back in the...
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New Nissan Micra debuts in Paris, not for US but Canada perhapsWhile Nissan sells many different types of vehicles in the U.S., there's one that's globally very popular that has never shown up in the States. That would be the Nissan Micra, a smaller car than the Versa sedan and Versa Note hatchback, the largish subcompacts that are its smallest U.S. offerings...
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2017 Renault Zoe electric car: larger battery doubles rangeThe Renault Zoe electric car is by far the best-selling plug-in vehicle in Europe. Now in its fifth year, the Zoe received a significant battery capacity upgrade at today’s Paris Motor Show. The Zoe will now have a 41-kilowatt-hour battery pack, up from 22 kwh in earlier versions, giving it a...
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This morning, Volkswagen held one of the first press conferences at the Paris Motor Show, unveiling the first of several electric cars from different makers.
Its Volkswagen I.D. Concept is a...
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VW shows renderings of ID electric-car concept for Paris Motor ShowVolkswagen presently sells just one all-electric car under its own brand in multiple markets, the e-Golf electric variant of its well-known five-door compact hatchback. But in the wake of continuing fallout from the Volkswagen diesel scandal, the company is wrenching itself toward a more electric...
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Nissan Note hybrid leaked, but not likely for North AmericaThe Nissan Versa Note has never been a particularly big seller in North America. Its sedan counterpart is one of the largest and most capacious vehicles in the subcompact segment, but the Note has always been more of a car for European and Asian markets. There, it does fairly well, in part due to a...
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Nissan partners with oil company for electric-car fast charging sites in CharlotteIt's one of the questions for future electric-car charging infrastructure: what about putting them at gas stations? On the one hand, drivers are used to going to gas stations, which are often conveniently located on both local and long-distance routes. On the other hand, gas-station stops generally...
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Nissan electric subcompact below Leaf in future electric-car lineup?The 2011 Nissan Leaf was the first mass-priced modern electric car when it launched in December 2010. Nissan has since sold close to a quarter of a million Leafs, and together with its alliance partner Renault it has now sold more than 350,000 all-electric vehicles. But the Leaf is still with us...
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VW Dieselgate one year later: what have we learned about diesel cars?It's now a year and eight days since the EPA broke the news that Volkswagen had admitted to including "defeat device" software in almost half a million so-called "clean diesel" vehicles sold in the U.S. from 2009 through 2015. That software detected when the cars were undergoing laboratory tests...
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Sometimes journalists miss the forest for the trees, and we'll plead guilty on this one.
When we wrote last week that the Toyota Mirai hydrogen fuel-cell sedan was little-changed for the 2017 model...
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Bolt EV risks, VW diesel emissions, Tesla sues Michigan, are you a baller? The Week in ReverseWhich additional language now proves to cause confusion between the Chevy Volt and the Chevy Bolt EV? And why does VW come out looking like a (relative) hero on diesel engines in Europe? This is our look back at the Week In Reverse—right here at Green Car Reports—for the week ending on...
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2018 Chevy Equinox diesel, electric land-speed record, Tesla sues: Today's Car NewsToday, Tesla fights back, a manual gearbox reappears, a new electric land-speed record emerges from the desert, and an unexpected diesel engine arrives in a key compact crossover. All this and more on Green Car Reports. Electric cars today are just 1 percent of the vehicle market, but perhaps one...
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Tesla sues Michigan over ban on direct sales of its electric carsEarlier this month, an application for a dealer license submitted by Tesla Motors was denied by the state of Michigan. It was the final decision in a process that kicked off in October 2014. That was when a last-minute wording change in state franchise law foreclosed the electric-car maker's...
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2018 Chevrolet Equinox crossover: only turbo engines, diesel optionalThe 2018 Chevrolet Equinox crossover utility vehicle, unveiled last night in Chicago, will have three engine options, all turbocharged. And bucking recent "death of diesel" predictions, one of those three will be a 1.6-liter diesel that gets a 40-mpg highway rating. The 2018 Equinox will be the...
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When will electric car sales exceed those of cars with engines? Poll resultsCars that plug in to recharge, whether all-electric or plug-in hybrid, are a very small proportion of total U.S. vehicle sales today. And the same applies to their global sales, which are less than 1 percent of a total worldwide volume now headed toward 90 million vehicles a year. So today, the...
John Voelcker