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What do you mean by "plug-in hybrid car"?
What plugs into what?

It is about how to move the pollution to somewhere else, stupid.

I was impressed with some of the cars' progress towards running clean and lean. While I would have liked to see more, this is a big improvement on past years where most of the emphasis would have been on gadgetry.

I wonder how much more we would see with real tough legislation on emissions and fuel consumption.

The US industry way: if threatened with legislation tightening efficiency, hire lobbyists to derail the legislation. The European and Japanese way: hire engineers to meet the challenge. Guess whose cars are better ...

Nathan Sokal: "plug-in" means you plug the car into a power point somewhere (i.e., it does not solely rely on the internal combustion motor to charge the battery). This is potentially a good idea if you can get electricity from a cleaner source than your car's fossil-fueled engine. I am not sure for example that if you plug it in at home and the power source is a coal-fired power station whether you are actually gaining because there are significant losses in converting coal to electricity.

At first I thought someone had played an April fools joke by substituting a "Motor Trend" or "Car and Driver" article for "Top 10 Tech Cars" but somehow, I don't think so. There are so many technical aspects that could have been covered but to mention "cast-iron cylinder liners are pressed into it [aluminum block RJW]" just set the tone for the rest of the article.

I subscribe to IEEE Spectrum to learn about new technologies or better models or improved integration of old technologies. But this article had exterior photos, eye-candy, of pretty shells and text that could have been a list of techno-terms without engineering content.

Today, I recorded another tank for my five year old Prius, 53.3 MPG. Bought used, it has delivered 52.3 MPG for the past 50,000 miles, both highway and city and quietly says at the pump we can do better. Perhaps this article was just an April fool joke.

And what about the Tesla? It is surprisingly absent from your top 10 tech cars. The Tesla is the car that has grabbed the attention of most journalists, magazines, politicians and celebrities. It is an electric car with highly sophisticated control systems. It is very likely that the Tesla innovations will find their way into mass produced vehicles. The Tesla should be on top of this technology leaders list!