Apparently, Chevrolet Volt battery covers make suitable homes for bats. As part of an Eagle Scout project, Matthew Netherland created 30 bat houses out of scrapped Volt battery covers donated by Chevy. 22 of the bat houses will be set up near hydroelectric dams in Michigan. Each bat house will accommodate 100 bats, and divert the scrapped materials from the landfill. The batt
It's been a rough time for the official fuel economy figures for the Ford C-Max Hybrid. When the car was released in 2012, Ford made a huge deal about how it would beat the Toyota Prius V, which was rated at 42 combined miles per gallon, 44 city and 40 highway. The Ford? 47 mpg across the board.
The next time the hypermiler in front of you stops you from catching that next green light, take heart. One day, it won't be the driver's fault. There will be algorithms involved. But you migh still be aggravated for not making that light.
April Fools! That dip in new-car fuel economy during the fourth month of this year was in fact an aberration. The University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute (UMTRI) calculated the weighted average of new-car fuel economy and determined that new car month-over-month fuel economy in May rose for the fourth time in five months. Better yet, May represented a monthly record high.
Chevrolet has announced that it will include stop-start technology as standard in the entry level 2015 Impala. The result is a nearly five-percent improvement in city fuel economy, also known as one mile per gallon, up to 25 mpg, combined.
Keeping up its from-all-angles approach to efficiency, Toyota has found yet another way to eke out up to ten percent more precious MPGs in its hybrid vehicles, this time electronically. The automaker has announced the development of new silicon carbide (SiC) power semiconductors for use in power control units, which it will begin testing on Japanese roads within the next year.
With US gas prices approaching levels likely to give Americans the summertime blues, both automakers and prospective consumers appear to be trying to minimize the damage by driving fleetwide fuel economy up to unprecedented levels. This year will be the first model year ever in which more than half of the new US vehicles sold will get more than 23 miles per gallon, the Consumer Federation of America (CFA)
Remember, the target is 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025. Today, the CAFE level is a little over 30. How we get from here to there is something the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is monitoring closely. Thus, the EPA just released an annual flash report on how the auto industry is progressing towards meeting the nation's fuel economy goals.
If you think the fact that Elio Motors has taken 15,000 reservations for its high-MPG three-wheeler is something to scoff at, well, consider the fact that Honda sold less than 21,000 of its hybrids, plug-in hybrids and electric vehicles combined last year. But, if you think that the company's claim that the trike is cleaner than a year's worth of farts from a cow? Well, go ahead and scoff.
We've often heard that hitting higher fuel economy targets (like, say, the 54.5 miles per gallon CAFE requirement for 2025 in the US) will need not a silver bullet but something more like silver buckshot. In other words, the industry is going to try lots of different ways to make cars burn less fuel as they drive down the road.
While Chrysler hasn't officially announced fuel economy figures for its new 200 sedan, the information for one model has just leaked out thanks to the US Department of Energy's FuelEconomy.gov website. It certified the 200 with the 295-horsepower and 262-pound-feet 3.6-liter Pentastar V6, nine-speed automatic and all-wheel
The AAA sent out a new press release today warning about the effects of extreme temperatures on electric vehicle range. The numbers are kind of astounding: "nearly 60 percent lower in extreme cold and 33 percent lower in extreme heat." Wow, right? Well, sort of.
Stop us if you've heard this one before: Hyundai is going to have to reduce the officially announced miles-per-gallon number for its 2014 Sonata. While there's a lot of similarity between this new situation and events that transpired in 2012, there are some important differences. For one, the new mileage mistake, which Hyundai says was once again caused by an error at its test centers, is only
There's a lesson to be learned from the Mitsubishi Motors' Extreme MPG Hypermiling Challenge: if you want to get your 2014 Mirage to get over 74 miles per gallon, apply duct Sebastian Blanco
Mazda's US sales are down a little bit but the company's fuel economy is almost assuredly up. That's because its fuel-saving Skyactiv drivetrain technology is essentially taking over US vehicles sales. To the tune of about five out of every six vehicles sold, at least.
As promised in the State of the Union address, President Obama has delivered more details on the higher fuel economy standards his administration is working on for big trucks. The proposed plan, which Obama called "ambitious" in his speech today, will be applied to medium and heavy-duty vehicles and comes with three main parts:
Go figure. That's what we're saying after fleetwide fuel economy of new cars purchased in January rose during a month when green-car sales fell yet again.
In his State Of The Union speech last week, President Obama made mention of higher fuel economy standards for big trucks. We all know (or should, at least), that picking up the low-mpg stragglers in our vehicle fleet is where we can
Johnson Controls executive Brian Kesseler isn't likely to get any holiday presents this year from Nissan chief Carlos Ghosn or Tesla Motors head Elon Musk, but lots of other folks might be happy with what he has to say about automakers' efforts to reach stricter fleetwide fuel-economy standards.
Zoom-Zoom, indeed. Toyota may be the world's biggest maker of hybrids and Nissan may be making big strides on the plug-in front with increased sales of its Nissan Leaf electric vehicle, but it's Japanese automaker Mazda that has once again topped the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) list of most fuel
