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GM already raising prices on 2014 Silverado and Sierra pickups

General Motors must be pretty pleased with sales of its two newest pickups, the GMC Sierra and Chevrolet Silverado, as it's announced price hikes for both models, as part of a planned price tweak.
Prices will be bumped by as much as $1,500, although weirdly, they'll be offset by as much as $1,500 in cash-back offers through the end of October. Fox Business reports that GM spokesman Jim Cain said of the price hike, "With the sell down of the '13 models nearly complete, this price adjustment was planned and is a normal part of business."
The move, as Fox is quick to point out, is an interesting one, as sales of the twin pickups struggled last month relative to the Ford F-Series, while both of GM's crosstown competitors have been aggressively undercutting Silverado and Sierra prices. The F-150 starts at $24,070 and the Ram 1500 comes in at $23,600, not counting any cash on the hood. A base Silverado, meanwhile, retails at $25,575.

The Tesla Model S was the best-selling EV of 2015

According to numbers crunched over at Hybrid Cars, the Tesla Model S was the best selling pure electric vehicle last year with 50,366 deliveries. These numbers might not tell the whole story, since Tesla reports deliveries made in 2015 that might have been sold in a different calendar year, while other makers are tallying sales. However, it's inarguable that the Model S ended up in more worldwide driveways than the second-place Nissan Leaf, which did about 43,000 sales. In the US alone, Leaf sales were down 42.8 percent year-on-year, from 30,200 in 2014 to 17,269 last year, and that decline also increased throughout the year. That marks a great finish to a great start to 2015, when Tesla took the lead in EV sales in the US for the first quarter. On top of that, as of last year the Model S becomes the second-best selling EV ever, with 107,148 deliveries since the middle of 2012. It trails the Nissan Leaf, with well over 200,000 worldwide sales. The Chevrolet Volt/Opel Ampera combo takes a close third, with about 106,000 sales. The Nissan and Chevy rivals both launched at the end of 2010, a 16-month head start on the Tesla. Down the charts, the Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV which continues to be forbidden fruit for our market notched 39,000 sales. The BYD Qin PHEV sold 31,898 examples in China, and BYD would take the overall victory from Tesla with 58,728 deliveries if you counted all of its EV and PHEV production, such as its electric buses. The BMW i3 nabbed fourth place with 24,057 global sales. In 2011 the Munich automaker said it wanted to sell 30,000 i3s annually by 2014, but by the time the car launched the company considered 15,000 annual sales 'great for now,' so the 2015 number seems a fine place to wind up. Related Video: News Source: Hybrid Cars Green BMW Chevrolet Mitsubishi Nissan Tesla

Chevrolet donates 300 vehicles damaged by Sandy to help train first responders

Super Storm Sandy took out a lot of automobiles in its path of destruction through the Northeast last October. The number surpassed 250,000 at last count, and a few of those were owned by Chevrolet - cars either sitting on dealership lots or waiting at port to be shipped off. Rendered unsellable by the water damage inflicted by Sandy, these vehicles were facing the crusher. But Chevy didn't send them there.
Instead, Chevy had a better idea: It will be donating 300 of these vehicles damaged by Sandy to help train first responders at Guardian Centers in Perry, GA. Chevy is the official automotive partner of Guardian Centers, which is an 830-acre facility that trains first responders in disaster preparedness. Junked cars are practically a consumable commodity there, where a full-size cityscape simulator gives trainees an entire urban center in which to train for all sorts of rescue operations and disaster scenarios.
Chevy says its particular vehicles will be used "in conjunction with role players for wide area searches, traffic congestion in emergency situations, counter terrorism, public order and mass casualty exercises." While grim scenarios all, we're certainly glad there are people out there preparing for the unexpected. While a zombie apocalypse isn't officially on the list of potential disasters to prepare for, when the virus hits, we'll be hot-footing it to Perry, GA to hang with these guys and gals.