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 modify exhaust emission limits for vehicles in model years 2022 through 2025. The EPA delivered its draft Final Determination document to the Office of... EPA to ease emission limits, reports say, setting up clash with California
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 modify exhaust emission limits for vehicles in model years 2022 through 2025. The EPA delivered its draft Final Determination document to the Office of...
Teased in January as a "concept" without an interior, the production version of the 2019 Honda Insight hybrid sedan has been revealed just before week's New York auto show. EPA ratings aren't yet final, but Honda says the new Insight is projected to achieve "up to 55 mpg" on the city cycle, and a combined fuel-economy number of "50 mpg or better."...
Electric 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 grids and consequent demand charges pose a...
Which 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 wrote about the Norwegian EV club that tested five...
Today, 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 electric cars in winter conditions, and found some...
Think 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 Tesla Model S hadn't been announced beyond a vague...
The Toyota Corolla is the world's highest-selling nameplate, having surpassed the Ford Model T and Volkswagen Beetle years ago. It exists in a variety of models and varieties all over the world, but the U.S. hasn't always been offered the hatchback version. In fact, the Corolla lineup only regained its five-door model when Toyota shut down its...
BMW 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 date than its German counterparts, both Daimler...
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 have exactly the same challenges in winter—but they’re far further along in adopting plug-in electric cars, to slash the carbon footprint of the…
Today, 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 eco-awareness, and now Mitsubishi is donating...
Very 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 production model. Especially since, as many observers...
Electric 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 plug-in electric trucks for known urban routes within...
As 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 Calstart, the national clean-transport industry...
Today, 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 this and more on Green Car Reports. The 2019 Ford Fusion Energi, the company's sole plug-in hybrid model this year, gets a battery-capacity boost and...
The 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 percent more energy capacity for the same price. Those...
Could 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 figure at, say, 100,000 units a year, since the most...
As 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 BMW i3, Ford Focus Electric, Hyundai Ioniq, Kia...
Ford 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 details of its slightly updated 2019 Ford Fusion...
Today, we've got a long and detailed summary of what we learned about Porsche's Mission E and future electric cars, some new lobbying partners to extend the plug-in purchase tax credit, and our latest Twitter poll. All this and more on Green Car Reports. This week's new Twitter poll asks when you expect to buy your first all-electric car (or, if...