What do seats and charging stations have in common? Very little, except that automotive seat supply giant, Lear, has been chosen by GM to supply the home charging stations and some key parts for the Chevrolet Volt.

Although Lear is best known as a car seat supplier, the Southfield, Michigan, based company says they’ve realized how important it is to get in on the electric car supply chain early on in the process. And, instead of GM going with an electronics supply company for the chargers and parts, GM chose to go with a company that may not have the electronics history, but does have a great deal of experience in the automotive realm.

To GM it seems that knowledge and experience in the auto world holds more water than a lengthy experience in electronics when it comes to the new world of plug-in vehicles.

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15 years; a lot can happen in that time. Think back to 1995. What’s changed in your life since then? 9/11. Afghanistan. Iraq. $4 per gallon gas. Economy. Hell, I was just entering college. 15 years can allow for some pretty momentous change.

So it’s easy to see why a company would set lofty goals for itself over the course of 15 years, especially if that company saw the writing on the wall and realized that to compete in the future, something drastic needs to happen. Which is exactly why Hyundai’s president and CEO of North American operations, John Krafcik, said yesterday that his company has set a target of an average of 50 mpg for their entire fleet of cars by 2025.

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Ever since the surprise debut of the Porsche 918 Spyder at the Geneva Auto Show this year, many of us have been salivating at the prospects of its eventual production… and for good reason. With a 0-60 time of around 3 seconds, a lithium-ion battery that can take the car 16 miles on battery power alone, a maximum fuel efficiency of about 78 mpg, and a combined 718 horsepower, this plug-in hybrid supercar seems to have it all.

Porsche has said in the past that all they needed was 1,000 firm orders to before they’d start production, and as of this week they have more than 2,000 non-binding submissions of interest. Yesterday Porsche’s Supervisory Board reportedly approved the vehicle for production as a way to show Porsche’s commitment to next generation vehicles and support the German economy.

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As part of a new campaign launched by Toyota of Sweden, the company is asking all drivers, regardless of their allegiance to the Toyota brand, to imagine that they have a cup of water on their dashboard when driving. In so doing, Toyota says you can lower your fuel consumption by 10%.

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Given the major shift in consumer attitude towards fuel economy over the last few years, and the fact that auto makers’ fleets will now have to average 35.5 mpg by 2016 due to new regulations, it isn’t surprising that a car company would want to introduce more and more competitive, high mileage vehicles. But there’s a difference between simply adding more of those vehicles to your fleet, and adding them in a way that makes it almost lunacy to not buy them—which is exactly what Ford has gone and done with their 2011 Lincoln MKZ Hybrid.

Built to compete with the likes of other high end luxury brands such as Lexus, not only does the base model MKZ Hybrid come in at about $350 less than the Lexus HS 250h—which is a smaller,  less well-appointed, and, arguably, uglier car—as Ford announced today, the base MKZ Hybrid will also compete directly with its non-hybrid cousin because, at $35,180, it will cost exactly the same as the base V6 MKZ.

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