The Department of Energy hired an outside restructuring adviser last year to keep tabs on Fisker Automotive’s financing efforts, according to a Bloomberg report from last week. Houlihan Lokey, an advisory-focused investment bank, was retained last October at a cost of $1.35 million to provide “highly-specialized financial advisory services” for the agency. The DOE told
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Audi has confirmed that the long-awaited Q5 Hybrid will finally be coming to the United States for 2013, according to a report on Cars.com’s Kicking Tires blog. The compact crossover will be Audi’s first hybrid available for purchase in North America. Audi’s experiments with hybrids date back to at least 1989, when it showed off
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Less than five years after President George W. Bush signed the Energy Independence and Security Act into law―increasing the federal Corporate Average Fuel Economy standard for the first time in nearly two decades―new data from University of Michigan’s Transportation Research Institute (UMTRI) indicates that the average new vehicle purchased in the United States has become
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Japan has been one of the world’s leading hybrid vehicle markets for as long as there have been hybrids on the road. So far this year, hybrids have made up more than one fifth of all vehicles sold in the country, and the Toyota Prius has long ranked among the best-selling vehicles there. So with
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In recent years there have been few better indicators that Americans are feeling pain at the pump than the resale values of used hybrids. Last spring, used Prius sales rose 51.5 percent in less than three months, in response to a 25-cent increase in gas prices. Now, with the average price of a gallon gas
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In testimony before a Congress earlier this year, General Motors CEO Dan Akerson called the Chevy Volt “a political punching bag”―a characterization that few who have followed the vehicle since its release could argue with. Whether the sedan is being tied to the controversial auto bailouts, targeted by Darrell Issa investigations, or called “a car
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Contents More Electric Car Choices Prius Times Four Diesel Maxes Out CNG Goes National VW Finally Enters Hybrid Market Hybrid As Engine Choice A year ago, we predicted the hybrid market would resume growth in 2011—after three years of sliding sales. That didn’t pan out. Compared to 2010, last year’s sales of gas-electric vehicles fell
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Total employment at Nissan’s Smyrna, Tennessee facility will soon push 6,000 workers—nearly double its current workforce—by early next 2013 as the Japanese automaker adds capacity to build two utility vehicles there, and gears up for production of battery packs and eventually the Nissan Leaf electric hatchback. Nissan will add 1,000 jobs in Smyrna over the
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General Motors has announced that it will cease production on the Chevy Volt for five weeks, beginning in mid-March and lasting until late-April. “We’re taking a temporary shutdown,” said GM spokesman Chris Lee to the Associated Press. “We’re doing it to maintain our proper inventory levels as we align production with demand.” This is the
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Can a hybrid car also be a sporty car? The answer: It depends on what your expectations are when it comes to hybrid fuel efficiency, and how you define sporty as applied to cars. Enter Honda’s two-seat 2012 CR-Z which carries over unchanged since being introduced last year. Styled with cues including those of Honda’s
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