Battery Electric Vehicle (BEV)

  • 2018 Tesla Model S

    Startup carmaker Tesla is just coming up on the 10th anniversary of its first delivery, the first of the 2,500 Roadster two-seat electric sports cars that launched it into world awareness. The company recently delivered its 300,000th car, putting it well ahead of all but one other startup carmaker in U.S. history. That would be Kaiser-Frazer, founded by famed industrialist Henry J. Kaiser, which sold 750,000 cars over its nine years of production, from 1947 through 1955. DON'T MISS: Why Tesla's Elon Musk Must Sell 6 Million Electric Cars To Make History Tesla could surpass that number within...

  • Rendering of Renault Electric Vehicle Experience Center, opened in Taby Centrum, Stockholm, Feb 2018
    Renault opens its first electric-vehicle-only showroom, in Sweden

    How to sell electric cars in these early years poses a quandry for all automakers. Tesla chose to avoid existing franchised dealerships and set up its own "stores," where shoppers can learn about plug-in electric vehicles, and their advantages, and have questions answered by Tesla representatives...

  • 2018 Tesla Model 3
    Tesla now makes almost 1,000 Model 3s a week, Bloomberg tracker estimates

    Production numbers for Tesla electric cars have always been slightly murky. The company announces deliveries only quarterly and refuses to break them down by country, meaning there are no sales figures that directly compare with those routinely issued by other makers. The Tesla Model 3 has endured...

  • Faraday Future plant in Hanford, California
    Faraday Future promised $1.5 billion, says FF 91 will arrive by end of this year

    Starting a car company is not only very, very hard—as Tesla, Fisker, and many others testify—but requires breathtaking sums of money. Now struggling Faraday Future, the electric-car startup firm whose entrepreneurial Chinese backer is facing legal action in his home country, appears to...

  • Tesla Enhanced Autopilot
    Self-driving Tesla to make LA to NYC trip this year, Musk says, without lidar

    In June 2013, Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced he would drive a Tesla Model S electric car across the U.S. to show off the company's new Supercharger fast-charging network. Indeed, two Tesla Model S sedans successfully completed the run from Los Angeles to New York City in February 2014. Last year...

  • 2017 Tesla Model S 100D on cross-country trip from New York to California  [photo: David Noland]
    Life with Tesla Model S: coast to coast in a new 100D (and how it differed from my old 85)

    One of the reasons I traded in my 2013 Tesla Model S 85 last summer for a new Model S 100D was to get extra range. The newer car’s 100-kilowatt-hour battery gives it an EPA-rated range of 335 miles—70 miles more than the old car’s rating of 265 miles. Over four-plus years and...

  • 2015 Hyundai Tucson Fuel Cell at hydrogen fueling station, Fountain Valley, CA

    Today, there are roughly 750,000 plug-in electric vehicles on U.S. roads and about 3,800 powered by hydrogen fuel cells. Proponents of each type of vehicle argue strenuously that their powertrain is a better way to produce vehicles with zero emissions from the tailpipe. Electric cars can be charged at home overnight, and electricity in many areas is far cheaper than gasoline on a per-mile basis, say the plug-in vehicle supporters. DON'T MISS: Why a Fiat 500e driver got a Honda Clarity Fuel Cell as his next green car: low cost Ah, but hydrogen vehicles have far longer ranges, need to be fueled...

  • 2018 Fiat 500e
    2018 Fiat 500e preview

    When the Fiat 500e electric minicar launched in 2013, its range was rated at 87 miles, but its most distinctive feature was its wickedly fun-to-drive character. Six years later, the fun driving remains the same—and the range has fallen slightly to 84 miles, based on changes to EPA test...

  • Doug Kerr, daughter Andie Kerr, fiancee Barbara Gleason; Fiat 500e, Ford Focus Electric, Fiat 500e
    How to buy or lease an electric car: advice from owner who's done it four times

    Most shoppers seem to view visiting a franchised auto dealer to negotiate the purchase or lease of a new car with a distinct lack of enthusiasm. In fact, as electric-car driver Douglas Kerr notes, the process is often compared to having a cavity filled. Kerr has now leased or bought four separate...

  • Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk at Tesla Store opening in Westfield Mall, London, Oct 2013
  • 2017 Tesla Model 3 "first production" car, in photo tweeted by Elon Musk on July 9, 2017
    Tesla Model 3 variants delayed; will some buyers lose $7,500 tax credit?

    "Overall, I think, while there were challenges associated with Model 3 ramp, we were in a deeper level of hell than we expected, so a few levels deeper than we'd like to be, but swiftly exiting, I think." Those chastened but seemingly optimistic words came from the CEO of Tesla, Elon Musk, during a...

  • 2018 Hyundai Elantra
    Best deals on hybrid, electric, fuel-efficient cars for February 2018

    With gasoline cheap and buyers continuing to shun passenger cars for crossovers and trucks, there are bargains to be had in fuel-efficient and electrified vehicles. This month's deals, courtesy of CarsDirect, includes cheap leases, low financing rates, and money off sticker prices. They cover a...

  • Traffic in China

    Just a handful of companies today make the bulk of battery cells used in plug-in electric cars worldwide. Now the largest single maker of electric-vehicle cells in China has expanded its focus, from the home market to global markets and specifically the U.S. The name, CATL, may not be familiar to North American electric-car advocates, but the company is a powerhouse at home—and wants to become a global player. DON'T MISS: Toyota, Panasonic agree to study prismatic battery cells for electric cars The Chinese government's plan to ban sales of new vehicles with internal-combustion engines...

  • 2018 Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV, Catalina Island, CA, Sep 2017
    Plug-in electric car sales in Canada for Jan: Outlander has landed (plus 2017 analysis)

    The Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV helped the Canadian plug-in electric vehicle market to its first 1,000-unit January last month. The company sold 174 of its plug-in hybrid SUV in its first full month on sale, representing about 30 percent of overall Outlander sales. If that ratio holds, the Outlander...

  • Teaser for Rimac supercar debuting at 2018 Geneva auto show
    Geneva auto show green car preview: concepts, electric cars, new models

    Media days at the huge and influential Geneva show are March 6 and March 7, and this year it looks like the show will offer a lot of news for plug-in electric car fans. Several significant new production cars powered entirely by batteries are expected to make their debuts. They'll be supplemented...

  • 2019 Mercedes-Benz Sprinter e-Sprinter electric version (European model)
    New Mercedes-Benz eSprinter electric van set for European debut

    The 2019 Mercedes-Benz Sprinter commercial van launched today, the later generation of the successful delivery vehicle, and an electric version will enter production in 2019. It will debut initially in European markets, and might possibly make its way to North America—maybe. The eSprinter...

  • Chevrolet Bolt EV being charged outside Go Forth electric-car showroom, Portland   [photo: Forth]
    What will get more people to consider electric cars? Take our Twitter poll

    A recent study from the University of California, Davis suggested that awareness of available plug-in electric cars among potential buyers was no higher in 2017 than it had been in 2014. Worse, only California car owners were surveyed—and that's the state in which roughly half of all the...

  • 2018 Nissan Leaf electric car, test-driven by Shiva of Fremont, California, Oct 2017
    Plug-in electric car sales fall in Jan after year-end surge (further update)

    While 2017 saw higher U.S. sales of plug-in electric cars than any previous year, expectations for 2018 sales are running even higher. The Chevrolet Bolt EV will be available in all 50 states for a full year, the new 2018 Nissan Leaf with a 151-mile range is now on sale, and of course the Tesla...

  • Tesla Supercharger site in Vacaville, California, before expansion    [photo: George Parrott]

    It's accepted wisdom among electric-car fans and advocates that within a few years, mass-market car buyers will start snapping up battery-electric cars. First, battery prices have to come down to the point that electric vehicles aren't much pricier than comparable models with gasoline engines. But what it that assumption simply isn't backed up by data on buyer attitudes and expectations? DON'T MISS: Car buyers have no idea electric-car charging stations even exist That idea may smack to some as anti-EV propaganda, but it comes from a respected source: the Institute of Transportation Studies...

  • Virginia State Capitol, Skip Plitt/C'ville Photography [CC BY-SA 3.0]
    Virginia state-tax rebate up to $3,500 for electric-car purchase dies in subcommittee

    Virginia is for lovers—and electric-car advocated had hoped that it would soon be for lovers of electric cars and plug-in hybrids, too. A bill proposed in mid-January by Virginia House Delegate David A. Reid [D-32nd] would have granted a state-tax rebate of up to $3,500 to buyers of plug-in...

  • Honda Clarity Fuel Cell on lift at dealership
    Dealers start to worry about ebbing repair income from electric cars

    The average vehicle on U.S. roads these days is more than 10 years old, despite three successive years of record new-vehicle sales. That's a result not only of the 2008-2010 recession but also vastly more durable and reliable vehicles compared to those of previous decades. All of those vehicles...

  • Tesla Model S P100D Electric Production Car Series race car
    Tesla Model S racing is now a real thing, approved by FIA sanctioning body

    It's formally called the Electric Production Car Series, but for the moment it may come to be known as "the Tesla Model S series" by electric-car fans and racing followers alike. After being unveiled almost two years ago, it's now officially a legitimate racing series: On Wednesday that the FIA...

  • Jaguar I-Pace prototype
    2019 Jaguar I-Pace to debut before Geneva; cold-weather testing video released

    Jaguar Land Rover was a relatively late arrival to the luxury electric-car game, revealing its plans in the form of a concept car only at the 2016 Los Angeles auto show. But it's now planning the launch of what will likely be the 2019 Jaguar I-Pace electric crossover just four weeks hence. What is...

  • 2018 Nissan Leaf
    Nissan and partners have now sold 540,000 plug-in electric vehicles

    Of the 90 million or so new vehicles sold globally last year, plug-in electric cars made up only a tiny proportion, roughly 1 percent. But the auto industry works on long product cycles and buyers tend to be conservative, only changing the types of cars they buy if life circumstances change or...

News First Drives Electric Cars Hybrids Guides Green Life