The challenges of building fueling infrastructure for passenger cars powered by hydrogen fuel cells are well known by now. Toyota, Honda, and Hyundai now lease low volumes of fuel-cell vehicles in selected areas of California where a few dozen hydrogen fueling stations are now up and running. The challenges for fueling may be less daunting for... Toyota ‘Project Portal’ hydrogen fuel-cell heavy-duty semi tractor as proof of concept
The challenges of building fueling infrastructure for passenger cars powered by hydrogen fuel cells are well known by now. Toyota, Honda, and Hyundai now lease low volumes of fuel-cell vehicles in selected areas of California where a few dozen hydrogen fueling stations are now up and running. The challenges for fueling may be less daunting for...
It's one of the more frequent questions on consumer car sites: why aren't there any hybrid crossover utility vehicles? The Ford Escape Hybrid reigned alone in the first segment from 2004 through 2012, and then Ford simply walked away from the segment. It took until last year for the 2016 Toyota RAV4 Hybrid to arrive, quickly racking thousands of...
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...
If you're itching to climb into a brand new, 2015 Volkswagen TDI, the german automaker wants to sweeten the deal for you. Volkswagen has begun selling its fixed, 2015 model year TDI diesel vehicles and the marque has given dealers a bit of firepower to help move cars from dealerships to driveways. The vehicles include the Beetle Coupe and...
Tesla has released updated pricing and features for its 2017 Tesla Model X all-electric crossover utility vehicle, including lower prices for both the 75D and 90D models. Like the changes released at the same time to the Model S sedan, the new lineup increases the distance between the two lower-end models and the top-of-the-range 100D and P100D...
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...
The top 2018 Porsche Panamera that money can buy now comes with a plug. That’s according to Porsche Cars North America’s Chief Operating Officer Joe Lawrence, who said as much to Green Car Reports last week during the 2017 New York auto show. “I think what we have with the (2018 Porsche Panamera Turbo S E-Hybrid) is a...
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...
Seattle-based startup Zunum Aero has received funding from Boeing HorizonX and JetBlue Technology Ventures toward making its dream of electrified air travel a reality. Sometimes billed as the Tesla of the airplane industry, Zunum is developing a relatively small regional aircraft with about 700 miles of range. A 1,000-mile range will be attainable...
Cities across the U.S. are working to limit their emissions of climate-change gases turning to solar power, among other tactics. In 2016, programs focused on bringing the benefits of photovoltaic solar power to business and residents helped to expand that capacity with record-breaking growth. Advances in solar technology, improved costs, and...
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...