Germany

Honda once told Americans to "respect the van" in its effort to sell its Odyssey minivans. Now, BMW CEO Norbert Reithofer is telling his fellow Germans to "embrace the plug." Reithofer cited "German angst" to explain a potential sales roadblock for the German automaker's new "i" sub-brand, ...

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 ...

The most recent companywide sustainability report from Volkswagen comes in at a tidy 168 pages. Here's hoping not too many folks took out trees by printing the whole thing out. Europe's biggest automaker said it has reduced the amount of both energy and water required to make each vehicle by 10 ...

BMW, which last year struck up an agreement with a Colorado company to facilitate solar-powered charging for its upcoming plug-in vehicles, has done the same with a company from its homeland. Dresden, Germany-based Solarwatt is working with Bimmer on a partnership for providing solar-panel ...

The head of Europe's biggest carmaker says the prospects for hydrogen vehicles are vanishing into thin air. Yes, when recently asked about fuel-cell technology, Volkswagen CEO Martin Winterkorn said it's nearly impossible to build those vehicles at a "reasonable cost." As Automotive News ...

German automakers are caught in a quandary – how can they pay more for a clean energy surcharge tax when automotive sales are down. The problem stems from German Chancellor Angela Merkel's move to take the country further away from nuclear and toward using more renewables to power the ...

The Visio.M urban electric vehicle, launched last year by BMW and Mercedes-Benz parent Daimler, is on the road. Well, test site roads anyway, where a prototype of the lightweight EV is being evaluated near Munich. The car uses carbon fiber and other composite materials to provide what Visio.M's ...

Germany may only have a quarter the population of the US, but that won't stop the country from being on America's heels when it comes to electric-drive vehicle adoption. The country's Germany Trade & Invest publication, citing a Horvath & Partners study, estimates that there will be ...

Audi is constructing a huge synthetic natural gas plant in Germany that demonstrates its commitment to renewable energy just as it provides some valuable R&D to help prove e-gas is economically and environmentally possible. The 44,000-square-foot plant is in Werlite, a small town in ...

Since too much information isn't exactly possible in some situations, BMW is continuing its electric vehicle user study in Leipzig, Germany. The automaker is working with TU Chemnitz (University of Technology) and Stadwerke Leipzig municipal utility to conduct an electromobility study with ...