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Your weekly Green Overdrive episode is here, and we’ve brought you the ins and outs of the concept Honda Fit electric vehicle, an EV version of Honda’s cute and boxy Fit line. It’s the company’s first pure EV since the late 90′s. Read More »

Much about Honda’s plans for an electric version of its compact Fit car remain shrouded in secrecy. But one thing is set: Honda will work with Google, among other partners, to evolve that concept into a vehicle that’s ready for production. Read More »

 
 

Back in the 90′s Honda developed an electric car called the EV-Plus that never made it into wide scale production. At LA Auto Show, Honda returned to that history and unveiled the world debut of an electric version of its Fit car called the Fit EV. Read More »

10 Green Cars To Watch For At the LA Auto Show

The city that’s so defined by its car culture, traffic and massive freeways, is hosting a major auto show this week: the LA Auto Show. Here’s 10 green cars to watch for outta the show this week. Read More »

The production version of Fisker's plug-in hybrid sports car will debut in Paris.

More than 100 world premieres are planned for the Paris Auto Show, which kicks of next weekend, including a strong contingent of hybrid and electric vehicles. Here’s 10 to watch. Read More »

Updating Green Car Software Is a Balancing Act

When Microsoft or Adobe find a bug in their software, they can issue a new version that can be downloaded in a matter of minutes. But as our cars get loaded up with more and more smarts, what will it take to iron out the kinks? Read More »

Honda Plug-ins in the Pipeline for 2012

Honda Motor Co. plans to start selling a pair of plug-in vehicles in 2012, including a “mid-size to larger” plug-in hybrid and an all-electric model, the automaker’s president Tkanobu Ito said on Tuesday. Read More »

Tesla’s latest filing with financial regulators fills in some of the gaps about its deal with Toyota and plans for the NUMMI facility. Tesla expects to pay about $42 million for the plant. The partnership with Toyota is a very limited one. Read More »

Roadmap to Car 2.0: How to Build Better EV Apps

A flood of apps that make use of the iPhone’s built-in GPS and accelerometer to serve car drivers on the go has already started to gush forth: Honda’s Compare Your Drive to Insight (which monitors speed, braking, acceleration and fuel economy) to iGasUp and Read More »

PHOTOS: 10 Cars in Japan's Hybrid Electric Blitz

From hybrid heavyweights Toyota and Honda, to Nissan, with its visions of electric world domination, to smaller brands like Suzuki, Subaru and Mitsubishi, Japan’s automakers are gearing up for a global hybrid and electric blitz. Some of the front runners in that move … Read More »

CHEAT SHEET: How Green Are City Car-Sharing Networks?

Car-sharing networks like Zipcar — the largest in the U.S. — often earn environmental points for helping to reduce the number of vehicles on the road. And as we’ve written on GigaOM Pro (subscription only) and on Earth2Tech, these services — hooked up to communications … Read More »

In some industries, bankruptcies, shutdowns and pullouts have become so commonplace that we’ve had to start deathwatch lists just to keep track (see: coal, ethanol). Not so in the electric scooter sector, which has only begun to rev up at the starting line. But this … Read More »

More Must Reads

Andy Grove on Industry Transformation: Andy Grove, the former CEO of Intel, says the auto industry “today is as vertical as the computer industry was before the PC,” and warns that government efforts to protect the viability of General Motors may be as detrimental to innovation … Read More »

Meet the New GM, a company that’s supposed to be more nimble, innovative, and a heck of a lot more profitable than the old General Motors. The new company launched this morning as much of the automaker’s assets transferred over to a company now controlled by … Read More »

Less than three years: that’s the wait time left for a plug-in hybrid from Toyota at commercial scale, according to reports this weekend from Japan’s Nikkei (h/t Reuters). The news that Toyota plans to start churning out at least 20,000 to 30,000 plug-in hybrids in … Read More »

Until the launch of Honda’s low-cost hybrid Insight earlier this year, Toyota was pretty much the unchallenged king of the hybrid market. It took an early lead with the launch of its Prius, and has hung onto it, acquiring patents along the way — or, … Read More »

The federal tax credit for plug-in hybrid and all-electric vehicles in the U.S. — $7,500 — is just enough to let Tesla Motors tout a sub-$50,000 base price for its planned Model S electric sedan. But is the credit, and other incentives now coming into … Read More »

Mitsubishi and Subaru, two automakers racing to launch some of the earliest plug-in vehicles for consumers, have just announced plans to roll out their first all-electric models next month in Japan. But the two have very different ambitions and roles to play on the road to … Read More »

It’s been a long time coming: Toyota began working more than three years ago on lithium-ion batteries as an alternative to the NiMH batteries in the Prius, which can be more expensive, but store more energy with less weight. Today the company detailed plans … Read More »

The new Honda Insight has gone where no hybrid has gone before: It topped the charts for vehicle sales in Japan last month, vaulting from the 21st spot in March and beating out not only the Toyota Prius, but also all the country’s usual top … Read More »

Chinese automakers have a strategic reason to move quickly toward electric cars: the legacy car companies in North America, Europe and Japan haven’t yet mastered the technology. According to a new forecast from research and consulting firm Frost & Sullivan, that’s part of why China-based … Read More »

Updated: FuelMaker, the beleaguered firm that made natural gas vehicle fueling stations for home users dubbed “Phill,” has finally found a buyer — well, its assets have. American Honda, the U.S. division of Honda, which partly owned the decade-old Toronto-based company, has been trying to … Read More »

Bill Gates Gets Into Hybrid Car Tech: Microsoft founder Bill Gates appears as a principal applicant on a new patent for a smart engine that could theoretically switch between electricity and gas power “in response to actual or predicted operating conditions.” — Fast Company Uh-Oh Nano: … Read More »

If T. Boone Pickens had it his way, not only would commercial trucks and enterprise fleets be run on natural gas, but potentially our consumer cars would, too — he’s been pushing natural gas powered vehicles as a solution to kicking the U.S.’s oil addiction … Read More »

Just hours after his auto task force announced that it had rejected General Motors and Chrysler’s turnaround plans, President Barack Obama stepped up to the White House podium to explain the task force decision, reassure the communities hardest hit by auto industry layoffs, and set … Read More »

Back in January, when we reported on the slew of electric cars rolling out at the Detroit Auto Show, we questioned whether the EV renaissance had really arrived. While electric cars had seized center stage, hybrid vehicles were much closer to having a significant impact … Read More »

Bigger in Texas: The state senate in Texas is considering so many proposals to boost state incentives for solar power this week that the entire legislative session has been dubbed the “solar session.” The state aims to ramp up solar production and dominate the sector. –Read More »

Biofuels and electric vehicles are offering new forms of transportation, but let’s face it: cellulosic ethanol remains years away from commercial-scale production and electric vehicles are years from being manufactured for the mass market. In the mean time, while we’re waiting for those green goodies … Read More »

Behold the Salt: Startup SolarReserve uses the sun’s heat to boil water, spin a turbine and heat a salt, which melts into a liquid that can maintain vast amounts of heat. — NYT’s Green Inc. Mitsubishi Pairs With Peugeot: Mitsubishi Motors Corp said today it will … Read More »

Every day, millions of car owners drive home, fire up their video game of choice, and devote more time and energy trying to win gold coins, magic swords, and other virtual rewards than they do behind the wheel. So what if their cars also came … Read More »

Honda Motor Co. has been toiling away at ethanol research since before hybrids moved in from the fringe of autoshows and well before deriving the stuff from corn ignited a heated debate over food vs. fuel. Today the company said it will build a … Read More »

A controversial “Buy American” clause under consideration for the economic stimulus bill could trigger a trade war, President Barack Obama said earlier this week. Yesterday, steel-state lawmakers threatened to pull support for the package unless the clause — which would require  public works projects receiving stimulus … Read More »

When the Big Three auto executives drove away from Capitol Hill last month, they left a trail of buzz about the electrification of the auto industry. GM’s plug-in hybrid Volt, which the company says will enter production in less than a year, and Chrysler’s … Read More »

The North American International Auto Show will go light on the glitz and gas guzzlers this year, as exhibitors (two of them fresh from a bailout) seek to demonstrate efficiency, innovation and frugality. Even SUVs — most notably the 30-mpg-highway 2010 Chevy Equinox — … Read More »

Clean Energy Fuels, the natural-gas vehicle distribution company of which former oil barron T. Boone Pickens is a director and largest shareholder, said last month it planned to buy FuelMaker from Honda and the FuelMaker Trust for $17 million. Well, late yesterday … Read More »

Honda has released photos and more tidbits about its highly anticipated Insight hybrid, the so-called Prius-killer. Some have criticized the vehicles design, and most have rightfully pointed out that the new Insight bares more than a passing resemblance to Toyota’s industry leading Prius. OK, … Read More »

In case you were wondering how T. Boone Pickens was going to break the home distribution bottleneck in his plan to get the U.S. to power its vehicles with natural gas, here’s one possible answer: Natural gas vehicle distribution company Clean Energy Fuels … Read More »

Fuel cell vehicles made by Honda are now rolling off a production line in Japan and will be heading to eager customers in California come July, the auto maker said today. The car, the FCX Clarity, represents the latest move from a major car maker … Read More »

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