Which 2017 car set a new record for energy efficiency among passenger vehicles on sale this year?
What is Tesla doing on a tiny island way out in the Pacific Ocean?
This is our look back at the Week In Reverse—right here at Green Car Reports—for the week ending on Friday, November 25, 2016.
First, our apologies for not reviewing our top stories of the prior week last Saturday. A combination of staff travel and illness meant that it just didn't get done.
This week, on Friday we listed all 2017 electric cars with a range of more than 100 miles and a price under $40,000—a capability that would have cost you $70,000 or more as recently as the 2015 model year.
2017 Chevrolet Bolt EV, road test, California coastline, Sep 2016
Of course, the 2017 Chevrolet Bolt EV leads the list, with its rating of 238 miles. Did we mention the Bolt EV was our Green Car Reports 2017 Best Car To Buy award winner?
But there are five more (that aren't Teslas) as well, not to mention at least five more that didn't make the cut. All in all, choice is good.
Thursday was the Thanksgiving holiday in the U.S., so our sole article looked at how Tesla and SolarCity are bringing renewable energy to T'au.
That's a tiny island in the Pacific that formerly relied on burning diesel fuel, imported in tankers, to generate electricity. Now it has clean energy and storage batteries.
On Wednesday, we published our video test of the Toyota Prius Prime versus the Chevrolet Volt.
Both are five-door plug-in hybrid hatchbacks that drive entirely on electricity while they have charge remaining in their battery packs.
2017 Toyota Prius Prime and 2017 Chevrolet Volt with Green Car Reports editor John Voelcker
The new-for-2017 Prius Prime is rated at 25 miles of range and 54 mpg combined; the Chevy Volt (which was our 2016 Best Car To Buy winner) at 53 miles of range and 42 mpg combined.
Tuesday, we covered an electric vehicle that really, truly stinks.
It's a prototype for an all-electric garbage truck built jointly by Chinese battery and electric-car maker BYD and U.S. firm Wayne Engineering, a specialist in garbage-truck bodies.
Just image: no more diesel roar at 5 am as the country's hard-working garbage collectors take your garbage away to ... well, that's a different story.
We kicked off the week on Monday with a new landmark in energy efficiency for a passenger vehicle, toppling a previous winner who had held the laurel wreath for only a few weeks.
The 2017 Hyundai Ioniq Electric will be this year's most energy-efficient car sold in the U.S., with an EPA rating of 136 MPGe.
2017 Hyundai Ioniq Electric
(Miles Per Gallon Equivalent, or MPGe, is the distance a car can travel electrically on the amount of energy that's contained in 1 gallon of gasoline.)
That means the electric Hyundai beat the 133 MPGe of the Prius Prime when that car operates in electric mode, as well as the 124 MPGe of the most efficient version of the BMW i3.
Over the weekend, we noted that the 2017 Honda Clarity Fuel Cell will lease for $369 a month in the California markets where it's offered. That's a three-year lease with $2,500 down.
Those were our main stories this week; we'll see you again next week. Until then, this has been the Green Car Reports Week in Reverse update.
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