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Electric car lease deals are better than ever

This may be the beginning of a golden age of affordable electric cars: There are now or will soon be three electric cars available in California leasing at $199 a month, one for $249 and one for $259 a month. They are all perfectly wonderful subcompact four and five-seaters, any one of which could fit nicely into your urban or suburban lifestyle. Where else are you going to find a car for $199 a month?

Driving the Chevy Volt isn't special, and that's good

We've had our first taste of the drive system under development for General Motors' pioneering Chevrolet Volt, piloting a test mule based on the Chevrolet Cruze at the company's Warren (Mich.) Technical Center, and it left us hungering for more. Yes, it's an electric car, but mostly, it's a car--one you could imagine driving every day without feeling as if you were engaged in a lab experiment. Frank Weber, vehicle line executive for the Volt, gets his nose out of joint if you call the drive system a hybrid.

Spied: The 2012 Volkswagen New Beetle looks a bit squished

Volkswagen's upcoming onslaught of new products includes a redesign for the New Beetle. The new New Beetle is expected to arrive in 2011 as a 2012 model, with a convertible version set to arrive a year after the coupe. Recent spy photographs of a prototype being tested on public roads in Europe show that the 2012 New Beetle has a roofline that has less arch than the current model.