gm

Chevy Volt

After a difficult first year in 2011, sales of the Chevy Volt shot up to a respectable 23,461 car sales for 2012 — driven largely by consumer demand reacting to high gas prices.[read more]

General Motors, seeming more confident in the face of rising Volt plug-in hybrid sales, looks to be expanding its vehicle electrification efforts. Primarily through its brand Chevrolet, the Detroit automaker hopes to significantly bump up the number of green cars it produces by 2017. It begins this process next week with the domestic...[read more]

That's what Bob Lutz, former senior executive for General Motors, says he believes.  Lutz is said to have been the driving force that spurred GM to create the Volt.  Bill Maher set up a panel featuring Lutz on his latest show and kicked off the discussion by asking Lutz to comment on the fact he made this statement about global...[read more]

A lot has changed in the two years since I made my first visit to the Washington Auto Show. Back then, gas prices averaged $2.68 per gallon and the Nissan LEAF looked like a “car of the future” compared to the other vehicles on the showroom floor. Now, prices at the pump are 25 percent higher, averaging $3.50 per gallon in 2011, and fuel...[read more]

Image via Wikipedia A rather poor diagram of inductive charging. Qualcomm, long a leader in the wireless and mobile space, is expanding into in the electric vehicle (EV) charging market with its acquisition last week of HaloIPT. The acquisition, reportedly $70 million, has some in the EV charging space scratching their heads. Not...[read more]

Earlier this month, General Motors announced it will help millions of GM vehicle owners to rent out their cars. The new peer-to-peer car sharing service—a partnership with a start-up company called RelayRides—is intended to “reduce traffic congestion in America’s largest cities and address urban mobility concerns,” according to...[read more]

I remember my first trip to Bentonville, Arkansas to visit the WalMart corporate headquarters. As I looked at the offices of all the vendors who sell to WalMart, I remember thinking “being the world’s biggest retailer has its advantages.” So it is with the development of the electric car (EV). We root for companies like Tesla but, to move the market in a substantive way, you need to be big.[read more]

I sat down with Stuart Varney & Company on FOX Business this morning to talk about the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards proposed by the Obama administration. My take: I think better fuel economy is a good thing. Here is the video: Watch the latest video at video.foxbusiness.com I'm a free-market guy and don't...[read more]

The following guest essay is by Paul Nash, a regular reader here at R-Squared. Paul is an Australian who now lives near Vancouver, Canada. He is an environmental engineer who specializes in doing municipal water and energy efficiency projects, and has had experience in managing small town water and energy utilities. He is also...[read more]

I have always liked the concept of electric cars. I could imagine a future in which fleets of electric cars are being charged by electricity from clean sources, and where the impact of peak oil won’t be especially burdensome. In a story I did last year covering a newly-released report on electric cars, the advantages of electric cars...[read more]

The Environmental Protection Agency has issued a pair of decisions that begin a changeover of the refrigerants that do the cooling in car air conditioners.  Over the next few years, it will be out with the old (HFC-134a) and in with the new (HFO-1234yf).  We’ll be able to cool our cars with less global warming.  Both...[read more]

For at least a couple of years now there’s been talk about what to do with battery packs after they’ve served their useful life, say, 10 years, in an electric car. The reason being that the batteries, while they may lose their punch after a decade of use in a car, still have useful storage capacity that collectively can be used for...[read more]

bloomberg.com : General Motors said it will close Hummer, the maker of military-inspired sport-utility vehicles, after Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery Co. couldn't win Chinese approval to buy the unit. Winding down the brand will take several months, a spokesman said. "The Hummer brand was very much a product of its time...[read more]

GM has made a huge leap into the 21st Century by pursuing the Volt. If ever this company needed a new car on which to hang its future, the time is now, and the Volt is it. This car and its future offspring should win back the attention of the motoring public — and we say that genuinely! 40 Vancouver electric vehicle enthusiasts test...[read more]

Yesterday provided one of those occasional treats that makes blogging about energy so enjoyable. In conjunction with the Washington Auto Show, I had the opportunity to drive a demonstration version of the eagerly-awaited Chevrolet Volt around an impromptu test track, accompanied by the Volt's Vehicle Line Director, Tony Posawatz, who...[read more]