The battery packs of most modern electric cars are far different than those in your mobile phone or other portable devices. In most cases, they include hundreds or thousands of cells, arranged into modules, and usually surrounded by channels containing liquid coolant to keep the battery in its desired temperature range. Now a new video shows...
Using electric cars as police vehicles has some distinct advantages. Among them are near-silent operation, maximum acceleration from 0 rpm, and a novelty factor that can lead to friendly, beneficial interactions between officers and citizens. Now, the small Maryland city of Hyattsville, a suburb of Washington, D.C., has a 2017 Chevrolet Bolt EV...
It is now abundantly clear that the Trump administration in the U.S. is staffed with climate-science denialists and committed promoters for the greater extraction, sale, and combustion of fossil fuels. That includes coal, the dirtiest major fossil fuel of them all, with the highest emissions of carbon dioxide per kilowatt-hour when used to...
Today, we ended up with a slew of diesel stories, from fake science at a university to a court decision letting German cities ban the oldest and dirtiest diesel vehicles. Also, hybrid and plug-in hybrid Ford F-Series pickup trucks and a Twitter poll on electric-car charging. All this and more on Green Car Reports. If you have an electric car, we’d…
![Exhaust emissions from tailpipe [photo: Simone Ramella, 2005, used under Creative Commons 2.0]](https://images.hgmsites.net/tmb/exhaust-emissions-from-tailpipe-photo-simone-ramella-2005-used-under-creative-commons-2-0_100644014_t.gif)
That huge intake of breath you may have heard from across the Atlantic Ocean was the sound of German carmakers gasping at a court decision handed down on Tuesday. After a week's delay in issuing its ruling, a German court decided that individual cities in the country may ban vehicles with diesel engines to reduce air pollution. The decision could...
Last November, the Environmental Protection Agency said it would rescind a rule that banned companies from fitting outdated, older, and dirtier diesel engines into brand-new "glider" chassis-cab trucks. Among the many regulations to limit emissions and other forms of pollution that EPA administrator Scott Pruitt has axed, this one was particularly...
The idea of a Ford F-Series hybrid pickup truck has now been around since August 2011, but its maker now expects to launch such a truck sometime during 2020. Meanwhile, on Tuesday, Boston-based XL Hybrids unveiled both a Ford F-250 Super Duty pickup fitted with its XLH hybrid system and an F-150 light-duty pickup with its XLP plug-in hybrid...
![Photovoltaic solar panel installation on house, Fremont, California [image: Shiva Singh]](https://images.hgmsites.net/tmb/photovoltaic-solar-panel-installation-on-house-fremont-california-image-shiva-singh_100615724_t.gif)
Drivers who buy an electric car that plugs into the power grid to recharge the battery often start to consider the source of their energy. A 2012 analysis from California, in the earliest days of modern electric cars, indicated as many as four in 10 electric-car drivers were already using or considering the addition of home solar panels to...
Today, we've got a road-trip drive report on the new 2018 Nissan Leaf, Tesla's statement on the impending end of tax credits for its buyers, a Toyota Prius lawsuit, and cheaper Lexus hybrids. 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 stories. A lawsuit by a...
The first generation of mass-priced electric cars with ranges of 60 to 90 miles simply didn't have enough range to be used outside predictable daily commute duties and local errands around town. Sure, four-fifths of vehicles in the U.S. cover less than 40 miles a day—but that other fifth matters a lot when paying $30,000-plus for a new...
Fiat Chrysler will abandon the use of diesel engines in all its passenger vehicles by 2022, according to a report Sunday. The company has seen demand for diesel versions of its passenger cars in Europe collapse and faces high costs to get diesel engines to comply with emission limits in real-world use, it said. FCA is expected to announce the move...
Gas is cheap in the U.S. and has been for years. Hybrids are no longer a cutting-edge or cool technology; they're just another powertrain. The result is that hybrids have been quietly ebbing as a proportion of total vehicle sales. DON'T MISS: 2018 Lexus RX 450hL hybrid three-row SUV priced from $51,600 At their peak about five years ago, hybrids...
It's been a topic of discussion for years: What will happen when a carmaker reaches the cap on U.S. sales of electric cars that qualify for the full federal tax credit of $7,500? That number is 200,000; after the rest of that calendar quarter and the one following, the credit is halved for a further two quarters. Rough calculations indicate that...
Early in 2014, Toyota filed a voluntary recall notice with the NHTSA to fix a defect in roughly 800,000 third-generation Prius Liftback hybrids sold in the U.S. from 2010 through 2014. The company said it would make unspecified changes to software that controlled the vehicle's inverter, which varies the voltage in the vehicle's hybrid system...
In February 2014, Toyota filed a voluntary recall notice with the NHTSA to fix a defect in roughly 800,000 third-generation Prius Liftback hybrids sold in the U.S. from 2010 through 2014. The company said it would make unspecified changes to software that controls the vehicle's inverter, which varies the voltage in the vehicle's hybrid system...
Which German luxury make has killed off its diesel vehicles far ahead of schedule? What two electric-car makers have each now built and sold more than 300,000 vehicles? This is our look back at the Week In Reverse—right here at Green Car Reports—for the week ending on Friday, February 23, 2018. Friday, we noted that a German newspaper...
The investment by Li Shufu, the chairman of the Geely automotive group, represents 9.69 percent of the German carmaker.
Today, Tesla expands its destination charging to workplaces, some grim climate studies appear, the Outlander PHEV gets a more sophisticated powertrain next year, and Mercedes may have cheated on its diesels too. All this and more on Green Car Reports. Some Tesla drivers will be able to charge at work, if their employers are "qualified." A leaked...
Investigators probing U.S. models of Mercedes-Benz sold with diesel engines have found software, possibly illegal under EPA rules, that helped them pass emission tests. Such software may be similar to that notoriously used in 580,000 vehicles sold by VW, Audi, and Porsche from 2009 through 2015 in what became the Volkswagen diesel emission...
The Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV has been a huge success in Europe, selling more than 100,000 copies there over several years. As the first and least expensive plug-in hybrid SUV, it received many incentives in different European countries and provided the first taste of plug-in electric driving for numerous families. Now, the plug-in hybrid...
