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Most Hybrid Owners Choosing Not to Rebuy Hybrids - Many consumers are looking to fuel-efficient cars in order to find relief from today’s high gasoline prices. And automakers have been paying attention – there are now more fuel-efficient hybrid vehicles available than ever before. But when people who currently own a hybrid vehicle buy another car, they’re not buying another hybrid.

VIDEO at link (CNSNews.com) - Former Vice Chairman of General Motors Bob Lutz said he would raise taxes on gasoline to compel American consumers to buy more electric cars. “If I were emperor of the United States, I would raise the fuel tax in the United States by 25 cents a gallon per year,” said Lutz during a panel discussion on energy independence co-sponsored by the Hudson Institute. “So that people making a purchase decision, ‘Wow it’s 4 dollars this year, $4.25 next year, $4.50 the year after that, you know what? We better buy a compact this time.’” Lutz...

The report by the NY Times that it would take up to 27 years for Chevy Volt buyers to save enough money in gas costs to make up for the high price of the car must be very confusing for apologists of the vehicle. The normal defense for any criticism is to accuse sources of having a right wing hate of the car. But the NY Times? The very vocal Volt defenders, who are quick to attack anyone who doesn't agree that the car is a technological marvel worthy of billions of dollars of taxpayer largess, will have to...

T. Boone Pickens and other energy industry executives have been promoting the increased use of natural gas in the U.S. as a means of developing a market for the abundant U.S. shale gas supply now available, as well as bolstering the U.S. economy and weaning the nation of its dependence on foreign oil. While initial efforts have been focused on the heavy-duty vehicle market, increasing the number of light-duty passenger cars that run on compressed natural gas (CNG) is viewed as the next step towards achieving these goals. In early March, Chesapeake Energy and GE unveiled plans to jointly develop...

Consumer Reports has painted an ugly picture of the Nissan Leaf, as did an early enthusiast based in Los Angeles, who described his frustrations with the heavily subsidized, all-electric car in a recent column. Now comes what must be the definitive example of the Leaf’s impracticality – this time from a (still) hard-core advocate, whose 180-mile Tennessee trek to visit family over the holidays required four lengthy stops to keep the vehicle moving. Stephen Smith, executive director of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, set out from Knoxville on Monday with his wife and son, headed for the Nashville...

Charging stations not getting much use NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - Charging stations in Tennessee outnumber electric cars and many aren't used for hours or even days at a time, according to a newspaper investigation. State data analyzed by The Tennessean show that about 270 all-electric cars were registered in Tennessee in 2011 while there are about 500 charging stations set up in public areas to serve them (http://tnne.ws/s2Mldg). The Tennessean said it visited more than 12 charging units over a 2-day period this month and found multiple cars refueling at only one site - Nissan's automobile plant in Smyrna. Nissan...

Here's another surprise for Chevy Volt owners. Autoblog reports that General Motors is holding an online chat with Volt owners about winter driving. Part of the chat reveals that, despite the fact that GM claimed the Volt is purely electric for a range of about 35 miles, the vehicle will use gas in cold conditions. GM states, "Please be aware: when starting your Volt in these colder months, in some instances, your gas engine may engage regardless of the state of charge of the battery. This was designed into (the) Volt to generate heat for the battery when temperatures...

Last week NLPC reported about aConsumer Reports reviewer’s unpleasant experience driving the all-electric Nissan Leaf. Despite Liza Barth’s frequent range anxiety and endurance of freezing temperatures so as to avoid using the Leaf’s heater to preserve its power, she declined to give it a “thumbs down.” Instead, she seemed to chalk up the inconveniences (like “numb fingers and toes”) to her own inability to adapt to new technology, rather than calling the electric vehicle what it really is: a failure that is massively subsidized by taxpayers. Last month another Leaf customer wrote about his experience, and as opposed to...

General Motors is again poised to sell an all-electric car in the United States. The Chevrolet Spark is described as a “mini-car.” It will initially be available at California dealers in 2013. A gasoline-powered version of the Spark is due in the U.S. next year. It has already proven successful in other countries, including India. Although it will be smaller, the Spark is designed to directly compete with the Nissan Leaf, which is also pure electric. It will complement the Chevy Volt plug-in hybrid, which has a gasoline engine that kicks in once the electric charge is used up.

The city is promoting two new plug-in hybrid electric cars available for use by members of the Hourcar vehicle-sharing organization in St. Paul and Minneapolis. This fall and next spring, St. Paul will install 20 public stations where drivers can charge the vehicles. The two new hybrid cars were bought with a $30,000 contribution from Xcel Energy. Hourcar is run by the Neighborhood Energy Connection, a St. Paul nonprofit. The vehicles are in the Lawson and Lowertown parking ramps in downtown St. Paul. There are 13 Hourcars at nine locations throughout the city. Charging station locations, rates and details can...

Electric carmaker Tesla got gearheads buzzing this weekend with its announcement of a tweak to its Model S luxury sedan to give it super speed. The souped up version will go 0-60 mph in 4.5 seconds and get about 320 miles per charge. Green Car Reports has more on the specs: The sportier version features the same 85 kilowatt-hour, 300 miles-per-charge battery pack found in the 2012 Model S Signature series. “That’s quicker than a [Porsche] 911 [Carrera],” joked [Tesla CEO Elon] Musk. “Not bad for an electric luxury sedan.” In fact, it’s better than some of the gas-powered cars...

It seems the promise of job creation for taxpayer funded green initiatives, such as the Chevy Volt development, is partially being kept. The only problem is that many of those jobs are going to China. General Motors confirmed last week that it would develop an electric vehicle platform in China. USA Today reports that GM Vice Chairman, Steve Girsky, stated that GM and Chinese auto company, SAIC, will develop a new electric vehicle that would draw upon the Chevy Volt's technology. Girsky also hinted that future Chevy Volts will be built in China in order to qualify for Chinese...

NWI communities get keys to electric cars By Carrie Napoleon Post-Tribune correspondent Last Modified: Sep 22, 2011 02:01AM Kathy Kazmierczak is looking forward to retiring the city-issued older model Ford Crown Victoria she drives when performing her duties as Hammond’s recycling director. “It gets 11 miles per gallon,” she said. The THINK City all-electric vehicle Hammond and eight other Northwest Indiana municipalities took possession of Wednesday, facilitated through South Shore Clean Cities, will mean an end to the recycling director’s gas-guzzling ways and a chance to enlighten residents about alternative fuel vehicles as she tools around the city in the...

Rental car company Hertz Global Holdings yesterday announced plans to partner with General Electric in offering electric vehicles in China and expanding the charging networks needed to run them. The government has included building up the electric vehicle industry in its five-year economic blueprint, but despite its ambitious plans, such vehicles are still a negligible part of China’s auto sales due to their high cost and inconvenience compared with regular vehicles. Incentives that are likely to be rolled out include easier access to license plates — a key concern in cities like Shanghai, where the price of plates obtained in...

Back in the 1990s, when it seemed like electric vehicles were gaining traction with consumers, Costco did something unusual: the big-box retailer installed charging stations at many of its California locations. Now, however, those stations are being removed, and electric car fans aren't happy. According to Plug In America, Costco has offered no official explanation for removing the charging stations other than the Xeroxed signs taped to each that read, "Please be advised that this electric charger will be removed on August 15th, 2011. Sorry for the inconvenience." Costco's move seems curious for a couple of reasons. For starters, the...

DETROIT (Reuters) - General Motors Co confirmed on Wednesday it will build a luxury electric car based on the technology used in its Volt plug-in hybrid for Cadillac as the automaker also studies plans for an all-electric small car for its mainstream Chevrolet brand. GM did not disclose the timing for production of the battery-powered Cadillac dubbed the ELR, but people familiar with the plans said the plug-in hybrid will be built in 2013 as a 2014 model. The sources asked not to be identified because details of the rollout of GM's first luxury electric car have not been announced....

Via Jonathan Last at the Standard. Remember a few months ago when people were snickering because GM had sold only 281 Volts that month? Yeah. The Nissan Leaf once again outsold General MotorsÂ’ Chevy Volt in July after GM slowed production of its electric car last month, giving Nissan a nearly 2,000-car edge in total sales.Nissan sold 931 all-electric battery-powered Leafs in July, bringing the total number of electric cars the company has sold to 4,806. General Motors only sold 125 Volts after shutting down its Detroit-based plant to retool it, bringing its total vehicles shipped to 2,870. General Motors...

Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert took on the Friendly Fracosaurus, which is now slated for extinction. Now, he has set his eyes on Nissan’s ploy to create a friendly hand gesture for Leaf drivers to acknowledge each other by. However, a Nissan Leaf driver from Houston said it’s tough to acknowledge someone…if nobody drivers a Leaf in the city. (Although it was a Houston-area family that got the first Leaf in Texas).

Ford Motor Co. recently thought of a creative, ahem, vehicle for soliciting input from consumers about its 2012 Focus electric car. The Dearborn, Mich. automaker asked fans on Facebook to rate their top pick among four proposed sound the car will make when traveling at low speeds. Those who click on the site — and there have been hundreds so far – can visit four YouTube links, each with a unique noise, and then register their favorites. The project stems from new federal regulation that will soon hybrids and electric vehicles to be equipped with noisemakers that function when the...

It's going to cost more to buy electric cars in California. The state has run out of the $5,000 rebates it was giving people who purchased all-electric vehicles such as the Nissan Leaf. "The government is saying that if you are an early adopter, be prepared to pay for it," said Jesse Toprak, an analyst at auto information website TrueCar. He said there's enough demand for electric vehicles to absorb some price increases and shrinking rebates, at least for the next year or so. Nissan has sold 4,134 of the battery-powered electric cars this year. General Motors Co.'s Chevrolet, by...

Just when you think the People's State of California couldn't possibly inflict more damage on its own economy, out comes a regulatory proposal so astonishing you have to wonder whether the destruction of an entire industry is its actual intent. So-called zero emissions vehicles, which could more accurately be labeled coal burning cars given the source of most of our nation's electricity, are part of a troika of green fetishes that have captured the fevered imaginations of central planners. Not content with the incentives provided by a $7,500 federal tax rebate attached to cars like Government Motors' Chevy Volt, California...

Electric cars make sense at amusement parks and golf courses -- and on the road, if the road is mostly flat, it's nice and warm out (but not too warm) you've got money to waste, don't have to go very far (especially in winter) and don't mind waiting a couple hours before you can go someplace else. Otherwise, they're marvelous. The Chevy Volt at least addresses that problem by carting around its own portable (and gas-fueled) generator, so that when your "up to 40 miles" range on electric power alone fizzles out, you're not stuck. The car's gas engine kicks...

A recent USA Today-Gallup poll shows that 57 percent of American drivers won't buy an electric vehicle (EV) – no matter how much a gallon of gas costs. That compares to 12 percent of respondents who will consider owning an EV if gas tops $5 per gallon; ten percent if gas prices reached the $6 to $8 range; and nine percent who might be willing to buy a battery-powered vehicle if gas prices soar to $8 to $10 per gallon.

Among 116 electric cars that the Obama administration intends to buy with taxpayer money, 101 will be Chevy Volts. The program will also include installing charging stations in San Francisco, Detroit, Los Angeles, San Diego and Washington, D.C. According to USA Today, "The moves are mostly symbolic to show the government is doing its part in trying to reduce America's dependence on oil." The electric cars are projected to save taxpayers a total of $116,000 in fuel costs-presumably annually. USA Today did not specify. With Volts currently priced at $41,000, what net "savings" will taxpayers realize? The General Services Administration...

PLAINVILLE, Conn. -- Gov. Dannel Malloy joined General Electric officials and employees Thursday in the unveiling of GE's electric vehicle solar carport in Plainville. The 216-by-40-foot, carport includes four hook-ups for plugging in electric cars, and all the power will come from the solar panels. Company officials said it's one of the largest solar carport projects in North America. They said it can provide clean energy alternatives to oil and biofuels and will last at least 25 years. "Living in an area where you drive less than 100 miles a day, which is really what most people do here, the...

Unico Properties has opened four new electric vehicle charging stations in the parking garage at Rainier Square. ~snip~ The charging stations do not accept credit card payments. Users will need to set up an RFID (Radio Frequency Identification Device) tag account online — the same technology that’s being used for the SR-520 bridge tolls — to use the stations. For more information,

I went to breakfast this morning at Eat 'N Park in PIttsburgh. When I pulled into the parking lot, the spaces next to the handicapped spots were open so I thought, "Sweet! I"m gonna get a rock star parking spot" but as I pulled in, I noticed a sign posted in this spot that said "Reserved for Those Driving Hybrid Vehicles". I was PISSED! Has anyone else noticed this? Is it a new trend? Am I that out of the loop?

PARIS (AFP) – Charging electric cars at night eases a smog problem caused by fossil-fuel plants which provide the power for these vehicles, researchers reported on Tuesday. Plug-in cars are viewed as a key tool in the fight for a cleaner planet as they do not emit tailpipe pollution when they run on electricity. But they contribute indirectly to pollution, as well as global warming, if their electricity comes from a power station that runs on coal, oil or gas. In a study published in a British journal, scientists in the United States simulated the local impact from "plug-in hybrid...

The quality and safety concerns continue to surface at General Motors as officials investigate the likelihood that a Chevy Volt started a fire in a Connecticut home that devastated the garage where the vehicle was being charged. This story was reported by a local Eyewitness News team on Thursday and has not received widespread media coverage. This follows a GM recall of the Chevy Cruze that was necessitated after a steering wheel broke off of one of the vehicles traveling at highway speeds and endangered the family traveling in the car. Regarding the Chevy Volt incident, I have yet...

Electric vehicles have been with us for almost 180 years. The first, an electric carriage created by an inventor named Robert Anderson, made its appearance in Scotland in 1832. By 1907 the American company Cutler-Hammer was advertising electric vehicles and the first electric charging station. Since that time Americans have seen tremendous innovations is everything from air travel to microwaves, yet there has been little progress converting consumers from gasoline-powered cars to vehicles powered by rechargeable batteries. One hundred years after the Cutler-Hammer electric car, today's plug-in electric vehicles receive failing grades from consumers and consumer advocates. Consumer Reports doesn't...

Kia Motors Corp unveiled the "Naimo (KND-6)" electric concept car at Seoul Motor Show 2011, which opens for the public from April 1 to 10, 2011, in Seoul, South Korea. The electric vehicle (EV) has a lithium-polymer (Li-polymer) rechargeable battery with a capacity of 27kWh under its trunk. Its drive range is about 200km per charge. Its battery cells seem to be manufactured by LG Chem Ltd. The release date of the EV has not been determined yet. The Naimo has a permanent magnet synchronous motor in the front side of the vehicle. The maximum output and maximum torque of...

Wash. Senate approves $100 fee for electric cars...The state Senate approved several bills Tuesday, including a measure to impose a $100 annual fee on electric cars to make up for lost gas tax revenue, and a bill that eases the transition to a new statewide high school math assessment. The Washington State Department of Transportation estimates that drivers with gasoline-powered vehicles pay about $200 a year in gas tax. The state gas tax is 37.5 cents per gallon. The bill now moves to the House for approval. The Senate also passed a bill that would ease the transition into new...

Who is going to buy all these cars? The Chevrolet Volt is beginning to look like it was manufactured by Atlas Shrugged Motors, where the government mandates everything politically correct, rewards its cronies and produces junk steel. This is the car that subsidies built. General Motors lobbied for a $7,500 tax refund for all buyers, under the shaky (if not false) promise that it was producing the first all-electric mass-production vehicle. At least that's what we were once told. Sitting in a Volt that would not start at the 2010 Detroit Auto Show, a GM engineer swore to me that...

Recently, President Obama selected General Electric ( GE - news - people ) CEO Jeffrey Immelt to chair his Economic Advisory Board. GE is awash in windmills waiting to be subsidized so they can provide unreliable, expensive power. Consequently, and soon after his appointment, Immelt announced that GE will buy 50,000 Volts in the next two years, or half the total produced. Assuming the corporation qualifies for the same tax credit, we (you and me) just shelled out $375,000,000 to a company to buy cars that no one else wants so that GM will not tank and produce even more...

Part 4: GM by the Numbers Last week, the Volt, GM's signature hybrid vehicle, turned in a lackluster performance in its first series of road tests by Consumer Reports. CR told Reuters on Monday that "when you look at the finances, [the Volt] doesn't make any sense." The publication went on to note that the Volt was "not particularly efficient as an electric vehicle and not particularly good as a gas vehicle... This is going to be a tough sell to the average consumer." GM and the Feds are betting the farm - and their credibility - on the...

As German manufacturer Opel is getting ready to launch the Ampera plug-in hybrid, mother company GM decided to bury all the hopes Opel had of making big bucks on the Ampera. For reasons that elude us, GM has decided to sell the Volt in Europe, Germany, to be more precise, in a move that will surely be the definition of cannibalism. Starting sometime soon, the model will be available in Europe's most potent economy for EUR41,950, VAT included. The same eight-year/160,000 km warranty as in the US will apply on the Voltec power train. For those who don't know, the...

The potential popularity of electric vehicles has always been tempered in cold climates like here in Canada because of the concerns that freezing temperatures will reduce the range of an EV’s batteries. And now a long-tem test report of the Chevrolet Volt, in the U.S. magazine Motor Trend, has confirmed that fear and also suggests you may have to keep your winter clothes on while driving the plug-in electric hybrid during colder days. The magazine found that the Volt uses up a “considerable” amount of battery range to heat up its cabin on colder days, reducing its range to well...

HOENIG The president is insisting on getting people to drive electric cars literally no matter how many tax payer dollars it takes in the process. $2.5 billion in grants for electric cars, $2 billion in grants for batteries, $250,000 to rectify the plug in stations, the $7,500 rebate you talked about, $10 million for towns to promote electric use of those vehicles, and for what? GM sold like 321 volts last month. This is ethanol 2.0. It's a waste of tax payer dollars and it just shows how incredibly depraved the green movement is in this country. BYRNES 0.1 percent...

Peruse Chevrolet's February sales release, and you'll notice one number that's blatantly missing: the number of Chevy Volts sold. The number – a very modest 281 – is available in the company's detailed data (PDF), but it certainly isn't something that GM wants to highlight, apparently. Keeping the number quiet is a bit understandable, since it's lower than the 321 that Chevy sold in January. Nissan doesn't have anything to brag about here, either (and it didn't avoiding any mention of the Leaf sales in its press release). Why? Well, back in January, the company sold 87 Leafs. In February?...

Despite having already sunk millions of dollars into the “environmentally friendly” car market, Washington is pedaling the gas for more. In his 2011 State of the Union Address, President Obama vowed to “break our dependence on oil” and said that the U.S. would “become the first country to have one million electric vehicles on the road by 2015.” Though this may just be an arbitrary ploy for environmental romanticism, the president believes that market sovereignty is only achieved through government assistance. Obama’s recent budget proposal includes a request to Congress to turn the current $7,500 tax credit into an on-demand...

Austin City Council members this week will consider charging Austin electric car drivers $50 a year to boot up their batteries from any Austin Energy plug-in. The proposed rate would apply to Austin Energy's "Plug-in Everywhere" program — a network of public charging stations for electric vehicles. The city would offer a $25 six-month subscription for unlimited service, including sales tax. Without the subscription, it would cost about $2 per hour of charging. Austin Energy is installing more than 100 public charging stations throughout the city by the end of this summer. The Coulomb Technologies Inc. stations are being paid...

Pentagon Is Poised to Cancel Marine Landing Craft By CHRISTOPHER DREW It was supposed to be a tank that swims, a new way for the Marines to storm hostile beaches. The vehicle was conceived to carry Marines ashore and move inland without pausing on the beach. It has faced problems in combining its land and sea technology. But as military budgets come under pressure, the 38-ton landing craft that turns into an assault vehicle seems destined to be the next bit of high-tech wizardry to bite the dust. Pentagon and industry officials say the defense secretary, Robert M. Gates, is...

Car-rental giant Hertz Corp. said it planned to offer the Smart fortwo electric vehicle as part of a car-sharing program in three metropolitan areas starting later this month. Hertz will make the tiny vehicle -– a two-seater smaller than a Mini or even the new Fiat 500 that’s about to hit the U.S. auto market -– as part of the Connect by Hertz car-sharing program in New York later this month. It is part of an effort by Hertz to offer a variety of electric and plug-in hybrids worldwide.

New Nanoengineered Batteries Developed at Rensselaer Exhibit Remarkable Power Density, Charging More Than 40 Times Faster Than Today’s Lithium-ion BatteriesAn entirely new type of nanomaterial developed at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute could enable the next generation of high-power rechargeable lithium (Li)-ion batteries for electric automobiles, as well as batteries for laptop computers, mobile phones, and other portable devices. The new material, dubbed a “nanoscoop” because its shape resembles a cone with a scoop of ice cream on top, can withstand extremely high rates of charge and discharge that would cause conventional electrodes used in today’s Li-ion batteries to rapidly deteriorate and...

First Nissan Leaf delivery happening today, but are there major delays nationwide? The first Nissan Leaf destined for a customer's driveway will be delivered today in California. If you can't be there, you can participate digitally by tuning in to the Nissan Leaf page on Facebook at 1:30 p.m. PST (4:30 EST) today and watch the press conference live from San Francisco. Twitter fans can also get updates from @NissanLEAF and the hashtag #firstLEAF. By the looks of things, the owner has arrived and has checked out the car already. This doesn't mean that everything is going according to plan...

Even if they aren't always terribly accurate, EPA fuel economy estimates have at least made it easy to compare the gas mileage of one car to another. But now that plug-in cars are entering the market, things are about to get much more complicated. How do you compare the fuel efficiency of a car that runs on gasoline to one that plugs into an outlet? ... Q: So what's the fuel economy for the Chevrolet Volt? The question is, which fuel economy are you talking about? The Volt gets 93 MPGe when running on plug-in electric power. The EPA estimates...

Travelers will soon be able to get more than country cooking and a fire-side game of checkers at Cracker Barrel. The Lebanon-based restaurant chain announced Tuesday plans to install electric vehicle charging stations at 24 locations in Tennessee. Cracker Barrel will be part of a pilot project funded primarily by the Department of Energy. Company officials say the locations of their restaurants near interstates make them ideal for charging stations. CEO Michael Woodhouse points out that the original Cracker Barrel locations sold gasoline. Fueling pumps were removed during the early 70s because of the oil embargo. Twelve of Cracker Barrel’s...

Imagine: It’s Friday evening, and the sun is down. You are rolling home in your environmentally responsible EV after an honest day’s work, emitting exactly zero greenhouse gases. You give a wave to your likewise electrified neighbor who’s bringing home the bacon to wife and family. You put the car in the garage and hook it up to the charger that nice electrician had installed. You shout “daddy’s home!” Suddenly, all hell breaks loose. A huge fireball shoots into the sky as the transformer on the pole out on the street explodes. Down at the corner, another explosion. A block...

<p>Getting your home ready to charge an electric car will either require little time or money ---- or a couple of months and thousands of dollars. It depends on what kind of electric car you buy, the wiring in your home and how quickly you want to juice your ride.</p>

Hugh Pickens writes "Jonathan Fahey writes for AP that as the first mass-market electric cars go on sale next month, the power industry faces a huge growth opportunity, with SoCal Edison expecting to be charging 100,000 cars by 2015 and California setting a goal of 1 million electric vehicles by 2020. But utility executives are worried that the difficulty of keeping the lights on for the first crop of buyers — and their neighbors — could slow the growth of this industry because it's inevitable that electric utilities will suffer some difficulties early on. 'We are all going to be...