John Voelcker, Contributing Editor
Articles
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EV battery recycling, VW's next electric cars, CA carpool stickers, Teslas and rebates: Today's Car News John VoelckerToday, we dug up an interesting legal commitment by Volkswagen, added detail to our explanation of California's revised clean-car carpool-lane permits, consider the intersection of pricey Teslas and...
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VW committed to sell 2 new electric cars in California by Dec 2019: what are they?The Volkswagen diesel emission scandal has now largely vanished from U.S. media coverage, much to VW's relief. Tens of thousands of bought-back TDI diesel vehicles still sit in fields awaiting modification and resale, or some other disposition. But among the thousands of pages of legal documents to...
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Nissan, Sumitomo open electric-car battery recycling plant in JapanThe town of Namie, in eastern Japan, was devastated by the earthquake and tsunami of 2011, and has struggled to recover from the devastation of that day. Almost seven years later, the first new plant in town is set to open, one contributing to clean energy and zero-emission vehicles to boot...
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“Electric cars are disasters; they are evil," says Hyundai union head“Electric cars are disasters. They are evil." Not something you'd hear every day, certainly not from a powerful executive in the auto industry. Yet those are the words of Ha Bu-young, head of the Hyundai motor union, both the largest and the most powerful union in South Korea. DON'T MISS: UAW...
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2019 Honda Insight, Lexus UX Hybrid, electric van test, EPA to ease emission rules: Today's Car NewsToday, we've got new hybrids at the New York auto show, more than 100 electric vans plus battery storage, and EPA plans to permit more emissions from future cars. All this and more on Green Car Reports. Over the weekend, as we do every seven days, we ran down last week's most important green-car...
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2019 Lexus UX small SUV emerges in US trim, hybrid included, at NY auto showAfter a gestation period of 18 months, the 2019 Lexus UX small crossover utility vehicle is emerging in its U.S. form at this week's New York auto show. One full size smaller than the Lexus RX that launched the luxury crossover segment 20 years ago, the UX gives Toyota's luxury brand an entry in...
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The omens have been accumulating for months, as bits of information dribble out of the regulatory rumor mill in Washington, D.C.
Now we have the most concrete reports yet that the U.S. EPA plans to...
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UPS adds battery energy storage for 118 electric vans in UKElectric vehicles are not only zero-emission and quieter and more pleasant to drive, they also clearly lower emissions of the carbon dioxide linked to climate change under most circumstances. For fleet operators who recharge large fleets of electric vehicles overnight, however, the load on electric...
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Tesla Model 3 drive, 2018 Accord Hybrid, future BMW i4, longer-range Fusion Energi: The Week in ReverseWhich important new electric car did we finally get a chance to drive and report on? What good-looking new 47-mpg hybrid sedan went on sale this week? This is our look back at the Week In Reverse—right here at Green Car Reports—for the week ending on Friday, March 23, 2018. Friday, we...
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5 electric cars in winter, BMW EV volume, 2019 Toyota Corolla, a little i-MiEV luv: Today's Car NewsToday, we've got a fond look back at the world's first affordable modern electric car, winter EV testing in the snows of Norway, the new 2019 Toyota Corolla Hatchback, and BMW's big plans for volume production of plug-in cars. All this and more on Green Car Reports. A Norwegian club tested five...
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Appreciating the i-MiEV: oldest modern electric car still in production after 10 yearsThink back, if you can, to early 2008. In the real world, that's just 10 years ago, but in electric-car time, it's several millennia. The Tesla Roadster had been announced, but hadn't yet struggled into production. The Nissan Leaf and Chevy Volt were still deep in development, and the plan for a...
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BMW: we won't mass-produce electric cars until 2020, with cheaper cellsBMW sold more than 100,000 cars with plugs last year, adding together its battery-electric and plug-in hybrid models. That's roughly on a par with Tesla, and ahead of both General Motors and Nissan, two other pioneers in modern electric cars. The company has put far more plug-in cars on the road to...
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Drivers in the parts of North America that get winter weather are deeply familiar with snow-clogged wheel wells, iced-in wipers, and weak batteries, to list just a few.
Our counterparts in Norway...
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Via update, CAFE support, Costa Rica electric cars, BMW i4 vs Model 3: Today's Car NewsToday, we've got electric cars for Costa Rica, support for keeping CAFE rules, a Via Motors update, and the future BMW i4 electric sedan that looks like it will face off against the Tesla Model 3. All this and more on Green Car Reports. Costa Rica works hard toward maintaining its reputation for...
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All-electric BMW i4 to be production version of i Vision Dynamics conceptVery few automakers these days build concept cars just for fun, and only occasionally are they pure styling concepts intended to showcase future design language. So when the BMW i Vision Dynamics Concept emerged onto the auto-show circuit last fall, it seemed obvious it previewed a future...
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Via Motors to collaborate with Chinese maker Geely on electric trucksElectric trucks are getting more attention now than they did eight years ago, as the world prepared for the launch of the first modern electric cars to be sold in volume. The Tesla Semi tends to draw enormous amounts of attention, while less glamorous fleet buyers are ever more favorable toward...
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Auto parts suppliers support current fuel-economy rules, overwhelmingly: surveyAs the auto industry and environmental groups count down the days until the NHTSA releases proposals to revise fuel-economy standards, surveys show one industry wants the standards to stay just as they are. That is the auto-parts supply industry, according to a study released Thursday morning by...
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Mitsubishi helps Costa Rica toward goal of Latin American electric-car pioneerCosta Rica isn't what you'd call a bastion of automotive sales. Wedged between Nicaragua and Panama, the country is home to 4.8 million people who buy just 154,000 vehicles annually—less than 1 percent of U.S. vehicle sales each year. But that won't deter the Costa Rican government from...
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2019 Ford Fusion Energi, Nissan electric SUV, Feb plug-in sales, silicon battery anodes: Today's Car News John VoelckerToday, we've got a longer-range Ford Fusion plug-in hybrid, a breakthrough Nissan electric SUV, some whizzy new battery tech, and our final update on last month's U.S. plug-in electric car sales. All...
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Plug-in electric car sales in Feb better than Jan lows, winter doldrums not so bad (final update)Sales of plug-in electric cars tend to be lower during the winter months, unlike the rest of the market, and February was little exception to that rule, though not as bad as it could have been. After a whiz-bang December that took 2017 sales to their highest-ever number—just under 200,000...
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Silicon anodes to boost lithium-ion battery capacity within a few yearsThe main impediment to mass electric-car adoption is price, and the driving force behind that is the cost of lithium-ion battery cells. The performance of those cells improves at about 7 percent a year, give or take: Either the same cell costs 7 percent less after a year, or a carmaker gets 7...
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Nissan electric crossover utility with AWD will be breakthrough: execCould a specific vehicle give electric cars the breakthrough they need to reach the mass market? So far, neither the world's highest-selling battery-electric model—the Nissan Leaf—nor the Tesla Model S, starting at $75,000, has sold in mainstream U.S. volumes. You might ballpark that...
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In what segments will electric cars do best by 2025? Twitter poll resultsAs U.S. car buyers increasingly opt for crossover utility vehicles of all sizes over passenger sedans and hatchbacks, that shift has come to pose a problem for electric cars. The bulk of battery-electric models on offer today are compact five-door hatchbacks without available all-wheel drive. Think...
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2019 Ford Fusion Energi plug-in hybrid gets 25 miles from revised batteryFord was the first U.S. carmaker to sell a hybrid-electric vehicle, as well as the second to offer a plug-in hybrid. But since 2013, the carmaker hasn't released a single new electrified vehicle—including battery-electric cars as well as the two types of hybrids. Now, Ford has released...
John Voelcker