Green cars

Thanks to TARP loans that saved GM, the Treasury ended up with a major stake in the world's largest automaker, and it still holds 500 million shares -- 32% of the company. Here's the reason it won't be selling them any time soon.

Is the Nissan Leaf or any of the other battery cars now hitting the market "zero emission"? No, actually not, though it may seem like a no-brainer-if a car doesn't have a tailpipe, it doesn't have any emissions, right? In reality, electric cars produce emissions because they plug into a grid...

With this move, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has a chance to silence the critics of his company and his stewardship, blunting contentions that Tesla would have died without Uncle Sam's recent largesse. The main complaint: Tesla wasn't a real car company. This deal changes that -- and a lot more.

Kelley Blue Book, the people who specialize in publishing car prices, just ranked what their editors view as the top-10 green vehicles "worthy of buyer consideration," as Kelley puts it. The list doesn't rank vehicles based on fuel efficiency. The decision was more touchy-feely than that. While...

When a General Motors plant in Wilmington, Del. shut down this July, it left 550 people out of work. But the city isn't mourning the loss of Big Auto so much anymore because Very Little Electric Auto is taking its place. Fisker, maker of small plug-in hybrid cars, announced Tuesday it was buying...

Last week Tesla Motors, the red-hot electric car startup, announced it would use some of its $465 million in stimulus funds to start a drive-train manufacturing plant in Palo Alto, the heart of Silicon Valley. Tesla is bucking a trend in bringing manufacturing jobs to the Golden State. But with...

In Henry Ford's day, inventors began to wonder if gasoline was really the best fuel to power an automobile engine. Almost a century later, we're still fueling up with gas. But there are signs that we won't be forever. The Toyota (TM) Prius is now synonymous with environmentally friendly cars, but...

General Motors Corp. (GMGAQ) and Chrysler LLC, the two bankrupt automakers, have been shut out of a new $25 billion government program designed to encourage the development of fuel-efficient cars that is expected to be announced today, according to The New York Times. "General Motors had said that...

In the midst of the worst automotive industry crisis in a generation, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal is announcing today that a new car company will build an almost one million square-foot plant in Monroe, in the northern part of the state. The company, identity to be revealed, is rumored to be...