Battery Electric Vehicle (BEV)
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“Electric cars are disasters. They are evil." Not something you'd hear every day, certainly not from a powerful executive in the auto industry. Yet those are the words of Ha Bu-young, head of the Hyundai motor union, both the largest and the most powerful union in South Korea. DON'T MISS: UAW wakes up to job threat posed by electric cars, as German unions have already (Oct 2017) Ha made the comment in an interview with the Reuters news service last week, published on Monday. His concern is jobs, specifically the well-paid auto industry jobs that have lifted auto workers in the country...
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UPS adds battery energy storage for 118 electric vans in UK
Electric vehicles are not only zero-emission and quieter and more pleasant to drive, they also clearly lower emissions of the carbon dioxide linked to climate change under most circumstances. For fleet operators who recharge large fleets of electric vehicles overnight, however, the load on electric...
John Voelcker -
Appreciating the i-MiEV: oldest modern electric car still in production after 10 years
Think back, if you can, to early 2008. In the real world, that's just 10 years ago, but in electric-car time, it's several millennia. The Tesla Roadster had been announced, but hadn't yet struggled into production. The Nissan Leaf and Chevy Volt were still deep in development, and the plan for a...
John Voelcker -
BMW: we won't mass-produce electric cars until 2020, with cheaper cells
BMW sold more than 100,000 cars with plugs last year, adding together its battery-electric and plug-in hybrid models. That's roughly on a par with Tesla, and ahead of both General Motors and Nissan, two other pioneers in modern electric cars. The company has put far more plug-in cars on the road to...
John Voelcker -
Five electric cars tested in cold Norwegian winter: how did they do?
Drivers in the parts of North America that get winter weather are deeply familiar with snow-clogged wheel wells, iced-in wipers, and weak batteries, to list just a few. Our counterparts in Norway have exactly the same challenges in winter—but they're far further along in adopting plug-in...
John Voelcker -
All-electric BMW i4 to be production version of i Vision Dynamics concept
Very few automakers these days build concept cars just for fun, and only occasionally are they pure styling concepts intended to showcase future design language. So when the BMW i Vision Dynamics Concept emerged onto the auto-show circuit last fall, it seemed obvious it previewed a future...
John Voelcker -
Costa Rica isn't what you'd call a bastion of automotive sales. Wedged between Nicaragua and Panama, the country is home to 4.8 million people who buy just 154,000 vehicles annually—less than 1 percent of U.S. vehicle sales each year. But that won't deter the Costa Rican government from taking a variety of measures to reduce the environmental impact of its fleet. CHECK OUT: 2018 Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV: first drive of plug-in hybrid SUV Its near-term goal is to see 37,000 plug-in electric vehicles on the country's roads by 2022. The latest step toward that goal came as part of an...
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Plug-in electric car sales in Feb better than Jan lows, winter doldrums not so bad (final update)
Sales of plug-in electric cars tend to be lower during the winter months, unlike the rest of the market, and February was little exception to that rule, though not as bad as it could have been. After a whiz-bang December that took 2017 sales to their highest-ever number—just under 200,000...
John Voelcker -
Nissan electric crossover utility with AWD will be breakthrough: exec
Could a specific vehicle give electric cars the breakthrough they need to reach the mass market? So far, neither the world's highest-selling battery-electric model—the Nissan Leaf—nor the Tesla Model S, starting at $75,000, has sold in mainstream U.S. volumes. You might ballpark that...
John Voelcker -
In what segments will electric cars do best by 2025? Twitter poll results
As U.S. car buyers increasingly opt for crossover utility vehicles of all sizes over passenger sedans and hatchbacks, that shift has come to pose a problem for electric cars. The bulk of battery-electric models on offer today are compact five-door hatchbacks without available all-wheel drive. Think...
John Voelcker -
Porsche execs on 2020 Mission E, more electric cars to follow
Auto journalists often relish interviews and roundtable sessions with German executives and engineers. They usually haven't been beaten into submission and forced to stick to scripted talking points, as have too many of their U.S. counterparts. Most German auto executives also speak excellent...
John Voelcker -
When do you expect to buy your first battery-electric car? Take our Twitter poll
Plug-in vehicles, both battery-electric and plug-in hybrid cars, now represent slightly more than 1 percent of U.S. new-vehicle sales. That number is expected to rise steadily in future years, but cars with plugs will remain a rarity in many areas of the country for some time to come. Readers and...
John Voelcker -
“The Tesla Model S was a moment. The Model 3 is a product.” That pair of sentences perfectly summarized the several hours we spent last month with the 2018 Tesla Model 3 kindly loaned to us by reader Jeff Southern of Atlanta. We’d covered more than 100 miles on a variety of highways, back roads, and suburban stop-and-go arterials, testing everything from full-on acceleration to cruise control, on routes from straight-ahead six-lane Interstates to twisty mountain back roads. The Tesla Model 3 turns out to be better, in some ways, than its advance press made us fear...
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Battery life of 2018 Nissan Leaf vs 2017 Chevy Bolt EV electric cars: what manuals suggest
It's one of the major questions for any electric-car buyer: How long will the battery pack last? And what would it cost to replace it if I do need a new one sometime down the road? Now a new video looks at that question, comparing the different thermal-management technologies in the batteries of...
John Voelcker -
Ford's future hybrid, electric-car lineup: 5 things to know
The "Ford Uncovered Future Product Forum" held Thursday for journalists was a break in recent tradition for Detroit's second-largest automaker. The abrupt firing of CEO Mark Fields last May was an indication that Ford's board of directors wasn't happy with progress in preparing the company for a...
John Voelcker -
Audi e-tron GT electric "super sedan" to challenge Tesla Model S
First came the Tesla Model S, followed by the Model X. Then Audi, Jaguar, and Mercedes-Benz rolled out their plans for single long-range electric luxury models to compete with Tesla. Now, the Germans are teasing their plans for further electric cars aimed at Tesla, with the Audi Sport e-tron GT the...
John Voelcker -
Ford's future 300-mile all-electric performance SUV: what we know
Lots of automakers wish they could get a bite of Tesla’s business. Ford first said more than a year ago that it would launch a long-range battery-electric vehicle, describing it as an SUV with 300 miles of range. But the company is late to the game. Longer-range compact hatchbacks from...
Green Car Reports -
Which electric car is your favorite? Twitter poll results
Many times our polls deal with weighty issues—climate change, renewable energy, the effects of denying science—or survey expectations for the future. But sometimes we just do a "Pick one!" kind of poll. That's what we did last week, when we asked Twitter followers to name their favorite...
John Voelcker -
Electric-car maker Tesla is known for troubled launches, at least for the four products it's offered since the first Roadster in 2008. But the launch of the Tesla Model 3, its lower-priced electric sedan, may be the most challenging yet—and it may be the Tesla with the highest expectations. The first 30 cars, now accepted to be largely hand-built, were delivered to their buyers at the end of July 2017. CHECK OUT: 2018 Tesla Model 3 - full review At that point, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said he expected to be building 5,000 electric cars a week by the end of December—a target now pushed...
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Electric car sales in Germany finally start to soar: Tesla leads
It's starting to look like China will lead the world in adoption of plug-in electric cars, but which carmaking nations will follow it? While electric cars were launched simultaneously in Japan and the United States, Europe lagged somewhat behind. Now, however, Germany—home to the largest...
John Voelcker -
VW Group has nailed down $25 billion of batteries for electric cars, it said today
For a company that has only two battery-electric models in production, both several years old, VW Group spends a great deal of time talking about electric cars. The company has plans to launch 30 new electric vehicles by 2025, and has released four Volkswagen ID concepts, the first of which will...
John Voelcker -
Underestimating electric cars was a mistake (in China), says FCA's Marchionne
Fiat Chrysler Automobiles has large challenges, even nine years after it was formed when the Italian company Fiat took over the bankrupt U.S. maker Chrysler. While its Jeep and Ram truck brands are doing well, it sells only three passenger cars in North America above the subcompact category, all of...
John Voelcker -
Mercedes-Benz EQ electric car Geneva debut was...a rebranded Smart car
Unveilings for several key new electric cars were expected during the media days for last week's Geneva auto show. The Jaguar I-Pace made its formal debut, and the Audi e-tron appeared in camouflage as a sort of full-size teaser display. But there had been word from Mercedes-Benz that it would...
John Voelcker -
More ways to get $10K off BMW i3 electric car: new utilities add discount
How badly do you want to buy a BMW i3 electric car? Initially, it looked like you'd have to move to areas of California where Southern California Edison would be your electric utility. But soon enough, those areas expanded to other parts of California, some areas of New Jersey where PSE&G...
John Voelcker