Europe/EU

Volvo has started production of four-cylinder gasoline and diesel engines for its new Volvo Engine Architecture (VEA) lineup. They're variants of Volvo's current models and are optimized to deliver higher performance than the current lineup of Volvo six-cylinder models, with less fuel ...

For Toyota and the new version of its Auris Hybrid that goes on sale starting next month, less is more. In this case, the Auris Hybrid will get an engine that cuts emissions by more than three percent from the current version. The Auris Hybrid that goes on sale next month will emit just 84 grams ...

Renault is ready to party at its Z.E. (zero emission) Center in Boulogne-Billancourt, France, near Paris. While it's being called a birthday celebration, the Z.E. Center actually opened up almost a year and a half ago, in January 2012. Renault says that it's the first electric vehicle test center ...

Volkswagen and former nemesis Greenpeace recently kumbaya'd to pledge to meet the European Union's strict 2020 emissions standards. Not everyone is feeling the love. BMW chairman Norbert Reithofer says the standards, which would require about a 30-percent improvement over current levels, are ...

Turns out, people want a highly efficient Volvo. The Swedish automaker originally was going to offer only 1,000 of its first production diesel plug-in hybrid (PHEV), the V60 PHEV, but now it is apparently having trouble keeping up with demand. Last September, Volvo said it had sold out of its ...

Institutional memory can be a funny thing. Sometimes short, sometimes selective, it always makes us wonder just how much effort was put in looking backwards before sending out press releases trumpeting a "first ever" product or event. Case in point, the FIM has just announced the "first ever ...

In Europe, car rental and car sharing are getting tapped into by automakers to "move the metal." Electric vehicles may come equipped with cutting-edge technology, but when buyers balk, automakers are quick to dump them on fleets. EVs only made up 0.23 percent of new car sales in Western ...

General Motors' Opel division is confident that its slate of diesel engines will allow it to meet stricter European emissions standards set for 2020. As for the even stricter ones expected in 2025? Not so much. Stop us if you've heard this before, but that's why Opel says it will consider adding ...

General Motors' Opel division is adding metaphorical fire to the real dispute over a new air-conditioning refrigerant's potential flammability. Opel recently ran crash tests with an SUV using a refrigerant, called HFO-1234yf, that is being pushed by the European Union as a way to cut greenhouse ...

As the ancient idiom says, "Waste not, want not." Researchers at Lund University in Sweden are making it happen by turning ash from burned garbage into hydrogen. "The ash can be used as a resource through recovery of hydrogen gas instead of being allowed to be released into the air as at ...