It's mixed news these days for those concerned about continuing manmade climate change. On the one hand, global carbon emissions were flat for the third year in a row, increasing numbers of global corporations have lined up to support climate-change reduction efforts, and electric power is getting cleaner as coal slowly ebbs as a fuel despite the... Is the science of climate change open to debate? Poll results
It's mixed news these days for those concerned about continuing manmade climate change. On the one hand, global carbon emissions were flat for the third year in a row, increasing numbers of global corporations have lined up to support climate-change reduction efforts, and electric power is getting cleaner as coal slowly ebbs as a fuel despite the...
Today, we've got three separate Volkswagen stories: one on a new all-electric concept car, one on the return of (a few) VW TDI diesels, and one on its Electrify America plan. Plus, more Tesla Model S electric luxury sedan changes! All this and more on Green Car Reports. As we've noted before, this week's Shanghai auto show is turning out to be a...
Two billion dollars is a lot of money. When VW Group of America agreed to fund a $2 billion project to spread zero-emission vehicle infrastructure across the U.S. as part of its settlements in the Volkswagen diesel emission scandal, that immediately changed the playing field for electric-car fast charging. Now the first of four phases of the...
It is widely accepted in the energy industry that U.S. coal production will fall as a percentage of the total electric grid mix. That has little to do with its high carbon footprint per kilowatt-hour generated; it is largely due to far greater supplies of much cheaper fracked natural gas. It is also widely accepted that renewable energy sources...
As its owners know, although much of the car-buying world doesn't, Tesla doesn't believe in the idea of model years. Rather than updating its electric cars each autumn, to correspond to a new model year, it simply changes them when it feels the updates are ready. This can lead to some confusion over the features and capabilities of a give car...
If you're a diehard diesel fan, you now have one last chance to buy a brand-new Volkswagen TDI diesel car. Well, almost brand-new, anyhow: the cars in question are 2015 models, and about 11,000 of them will go on sale after they have been modified. Once they're sold, there will likely be no more new Volkswagen diesels sold in the...
The Chinese government wants more plug-in electric cars sold in the country—and quickly. The Shanghai auto show this week demonstrates that multiple global automakers are stepping up to the plate, both with production cars and concepts. The Volkswagen ID Crozz Concept shows what a future all-electric compact crossover utility vehicle might...
Today, we've got another preview from the important Shanghai auto show, some Eurodiesel news, a first drive of a plug-in hybrid Cadillac, and the audacious idea of an electric airplane All this and more on Green Car Reports. A new electric-jet startup has some important backers: Boeing and JetBlue, though neither has committed yet to production or...
While the Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrid and the Chevy Malibu Hybrid rack up four-figure sales in most months, the third vehicle to use elements of that same drivetrain remains all but invisible in the U.S. That's the 2017 Cadillac CT6 Plug-In Hybrid, a version of the CT6 large luxury sedan from GM's luxury brand. The plug-in CT6 is the sole...
Despite efforts by Chevrolet to step into the void left by Volkswagen, sales of diesel passenger vehicles in the U.S. may have been permanently crippled by the VW diesel emission scandal. In Europe, however, diesel has been entrenched for decades as roughly 50 percent of the market. Even before the scandal, it wasn't expected to rise much beyond...
The Shanghai auto show is shaping up to be a showcase for all the green cars and concepts that were absent from last week's New York auto show. Among them is a concept for a "four-door coupe" version of the Audi e-tron all-electric SUV that'll go into production sometime next year. The Audi e-Tron Sportback Concept doesn't necessarily preview a...
Which carmaker launched the first-ever pursuit-rated hybrid police car? What do automakers really want the EPA to do about those 2022 through 2025 vehicle emission rules? This is our look back at the Week In Reverse—right here at Green Car Reports—for the week ending on Friday, April 14, 2017. Friday, we noted automakers saying they...
Today, Elon Musk tweets, Toyota offers a cheaper Prius, a luxury electric sedan crosses 200 mph, and ... adorable doggies, too! All this and more on Green Car Reports. Elon Musk tweeted some news about future Tesla products: how about an electric semi and then a pickup truck too? Sales of the Toyota Prius hybrid haven't been great, despite an...
Only a handful of people have ridden in one outside the company, but development of the Lucid Air luxury electric sedan seems to be proceeding apace. The company said yesterday at the New York auto show that a development prototype had reached an electronically limited top speed of 350 km/h (217 mph) in testing last month. Lucid Motors, formerly...
It hasn't been the greatest of years for the Toyota Prius hybrid, the Japanese carmaker's flagship product. The fourth generation hybrid hatchback debuted as a 2016 model into the teeth of continued low gasoline prices, and its radical design language apparently turned off at least some potential buyers. Now Toyota is taking steps to make the...
Relative few companies regularly make major announcements via their CEO's Twitter account, but electric-car maker Tesla is different. From software updates to dates for new product lines, tweets from Tesla's CEO Elon Musk routinely make news. And so it was this week, when Musk announced the months in which the company plans to reveal designs for...
Today, Shanghai proves much greener than New York (at least where auto shows are concerned), Trump may not be able to stop carbon-emission reductions, and why Tesla is now roughly equal in value to GM. All this and more on Green Car Reports. Electric-car maker Tesla has surpassed Ford in market value and is now rivaling General Motors, the largest...
Volkswagen appears to be quite clearly committed to an ambitious program of electric cars following its diesel emission scandal. But aside from two adapted models launched a few years ago—the VW e-Golf and e-Up hatchbacks—and a few low-range plug-in hybrids, it doesn't yet have much to put in showrooms. Instead, it's launching a series...
These days, it's all but de rigeur that concept cars from major global automakers be shown with some form of alternative propulsion. They may preview future production vehicles powered by plain old conventional gasoline engines, but a plug-in hybrid or other greener powertrain shows the automaker is forward-looking. Is that the case for the...