efficiency

Automakers are being pinched to increase safety and improve fuel efficiency, but those two goals often work against each other. That could change thanks to a material that is 99.99-percent air. Ward's Automotive reports that the California Institute of Technology, HRL Laboratories and the ...

Every once in a while you'll find an accidental lie on the Internet... A group of German organizations created a label applied to every new car sold in that country that grades it based on CO2 usage. The energy-efficiency categories run from A+ to G, with the greenest cars at the top and the ...

Volkswagen piled on some big-time profits for the 2010 model year, as the German automaker finished the year in the black with a staggering $10 billion. VW sales were up, too, with 7.1 million units moved for the year. And compared to VW's long-term production plans, 7.1 million is a relative ...

At the Mercedes press conference during last week's Paris Auto Show, the company rolled out its CLS – the car everyone was really there to see – for dessert. We couldn't have our pudding without eating our meat, ...

Audi is experimenting with networking cars and traffic systems in order to cut the amount of time drivers spend idling at stoplights. The German automaker claims that its efforts could result in saving 184,920 gallons of fuel per year and slim CO2 emissions by as much as two million tons. The ...

The next step in cruise control comes courtesy of Freightliner semis and GPS data company NAVTEQ. Freightliner broadened communication between the cruise control and map data: the GPS transmits information on the road ahead up to a mile, and then the cruise control computes the best speed at which ...

For ALPINA, simply substituting a larger engine for added performance is considered alien. Instead, the German automaker prefers to "maximize the sporting potential of existing units." With that in mind, ALPINA has tweaked the twin-turbo diesel powerplant from the BMW 123d and dropped it under the ...

In an effort to expose the underreported truth behind the government's corporate average fuel economy ratings (CAFE) and to define more accurate fuel economy estimates, the team over at Cars.com has created their own True Mileage Index. The consumer website points out the flaw behind CAFE is that ...

Like every other automaker that intends to do business in the U.S., Hyundai is planning for the future and the proposed fuel economy standards that are expected to hit in 2015. Currently, Hyundai's passenger cars average 32.4 mpg, while its trucks average 25.5 mpg. When the new regulations are in ...

When the C-Class predecessor launched, it was known as the 190 and carried a four-cylinder powerplant underhood. Mercedes is now considering a return to four-pots in the U.S. market as the price of fuel continues to soar. MBZ is reportedly already testing a 1.4-liter carrying a supercharger, which ...