Last Wednesday, a broad coalition of environmental groups sued the Trump Administration over an executive order that lifted a moratorium on issuing new leases for coal mining on federal lands. That order would have eliminated the requirement for an environmental impact study on the impacts of any form of coal extraction across a wide swath of... Green groups gird for battle with White House: is it ‘war’?
Last Wednesday, a broad coalition of environmental groups sued the Trump Administration over an executive order that lifted a moratorium on issuing new leases for coal mining on federal lands. That order would have eliminated the requirement for an environmental impact study on the impacts of any form of coal extraction across a wide swath of...
Today, we have an update on our monthly electric-car sales report, then some perspective on those numbers, surprising news from Buick, and a shock for Tesla fans. All this and more on Green Car Reports. Electric cars get generous national and state incentives in many places, but perhaps electric bikes deserve them too. While the Trump...
Volume sales of plug-in cars, both battery-electric and plug-in hybrid models, began more than six years ago. From a first-year total of about 17,000 in 2011, they rose tenfold over five years, to roughly 160,000 last year in the U.S. But it's important to understand that despite their growth rate, cars with plugs still represent only a tiny...
The new U.S. president, Donald Trump, is working to eradicate every Obama policy to limit the carbon emissions that contribute to climate change. Having variously called the science behind climate change a "Chinese plot" to hurt the U.S. and referred to it using an expletive for bovine excrement, this shouldn't come as a surprise. He pledged to do...
If plug-in electric cars and trucks receive purchase incentives from national and state governments, what about electric bicycles? That's just what a recent report from the European Cyclists Federation suggests. It recommends directing purchase incentives and infrastructure subsidies towards electrically assisted bicycles, known as e-bikes...
Today, we have a total of what the diesel scandal has cost VW, more details on Chevy Bolt EV fast-charging rates, an update on London's stiff charges for older, more polluting cars, and a moral question to ponder. All this and more on Green Car Reports. Hong Kong closed a tax loophole, one that benefited Tesla buyers more than anyone else. When...
Large global automakers customarily pursue research into multiple types of technologies and future powertrains at the same time. Sometimes they pan out, sometimes they don't. German automakers have only really come around to devoting their efforts to plug-in electric cars in the last five or six years. DON'T MISS: Mercedes-Benz electric cars to...
For a few years now, Tesla has shown what a nationwide network of DC fast-charging sites for long-range electric cars should look like. Its Supercharger network now covers virtually all of the lower 48 states, and until earlier this year, it was completely free to Tesla drivers. The Chevrolet Bolt EV, the first affordable battery-electric car with...
No vehicle on earth is entirely free of emissions; even electric cars charged on renewable energy have emissions associated with their manufacturing. Those emissions, however, are a tiny fraction of the carbon dioxide and other substances emitted by gasoline or diesel cars when scientifically assessed on a "wells to wheels" basis. This is well...
Government officials in Hong Kong have eliminated a popular tax exemption that made electric vehicles much cheaper to buy than comparable gasoline-powered models. Now Tesla worries it could take the brunt of the blowback. The loophole helped make Hong Kong one of the biggest overseas markets for the Silicon Valley carmaker's luxury electric cars...
The Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrid again took the crown among plug-in electric cars whose makers report monthly sales. Its stablemate, the Chevy Bolt EV electric car, however, logged only 978 sales, a disappointing number for the 238-mile electric car now in the process of a lengthy national rollout. The underwhelming nature of the Bolt EV sales is...
Today, we have Tesla quarterly deliveries, electric-car sales for March, a California road trip, and a fully autonomous Nissan Leaf. All this and more on Green Car Reports. As usual, on Saturday we ran down all of last week's stories, from a first drive of the Honda Clarity Fuel Cell to our experience fast-charging a Chevy Bolt EV. Sunday, we...
Some are almost unnoticeable, others make the car shudder each time they activate—but start-stop systems are here to stay. First rolled out in Europe and Asia, where crowded city driving requires cars to spend more time at a standstill, they switch off the engine when the car's not moving. When the driver starts to lift a foot off the brake...
It's been a vision of the future for decades now: self-driving cars that let you get in, specify your destination, and then curl up for a bit more sleep, waking when you arrive. That kind of anywhere-any-time autonomy remains some years in the future, most engineers suggest. Automakers are already adding individual active-safety systems that will...
The numbers are in, and Tesla says it delivered 25,000 electric cars globally in the first quarter of this year, from January through March. That's a new quarterly record for the Silicon Valley company, which delivered 76,230 cars last year. Analysts and Tesla fans had eagerly watched for this number, as they do all Tesla financial information...
The ability to travel long distances has long been a distinguishing feature of Tesla's luxury electric cars, whose Supercharger fast-charging network now offers access to essentially every part of the 48 continental states. But where hydrogen infrastructure exists, which can cover a long road trip faster: a hydrogen fuel-cell vehicle or a Tesla?...
Why are two of the very earliest Nissan Leaf owners not happy with their electric car? What can you do personally to cut emissions of climate-change gases that the Trump Administration will no longer regulate? This is our look back at the Week In Reverse—right here at Green Car Reports—for the week ending on Friday, March 31, 2017...
Today, we have a new company from Tesla CEO Elon Musk, posh electric delivery vans, and a new sense of urgency from Mercedes-Benz. All this and more on Green Car Reports. Mercedes-Benz has decided to launch electric cars up to three years faster than it had previously planned. We explained why. A Google Street View car was used to test out new...
Volkswagen Group of America continues to work through a long list of civil and criminal lawsuits over its diesel emission cheating scandal. Yesterday, the company said it had reached agreements with attorneys general in 10 states to resolve environmental claims against it. The pact also covers some claims by consumers that were not included in the...