Department of Energy

The main task for Fisker Automotive right now is to sell enough 2012 Fisker Karmas to keep the company solvent. It must take in enough cash to market the car, expand into new markets, and simultaneously develop its next vehicle, the Fisker Atlantic unveiled at the New York Auto Show. Now we learn...

There's likely a huge market demand for higher-mileage minivans and wagons, but so far, the 2012 Toyota Prius V is the sole entry that gets more than 40 mpg in EPA testing. So the news that Chrysler delivered four plug-in hybrid versions of its Town & Country minivan to the city of Auburn...

We breathed a sigh of relief when Coda announced it had started production of its electric Sedan earlier this month. Then, we positively jumped for joy when little over a week later, the first customers started taking delivery of their new 2012 Coda Sedans. It had certainly been a long time coming...

In the toughest days of Tesla's early years, CEO Elon Musk said on film, he wired $3 million of his personal fortune to the company so it could make payroll. Now the always-quotable CEO is downplaying the effect the $465 million in U.S. Department of Energy low-interest loan guarantees it received...

Log one more startup car company the U.S. Department of Energy has declined to fund. The latest entry on the lengthening list that includes Virtual Vehicles Co. (renamed NextCar), Aptera Motors, and Bright Automotive is Carbon Motors of Connersville, Indiana. The five-year-old startup proposed to...

Unless you don’t drive a gasoline-powered car, the chances are you’ve noticed the spike in gasoline prices lately. But according to the U.S. Secretary of Energy Dr. Steven Chu, the U.S. Department of Energy isn’t about to intervene with a knee-jerk reaction designed to immediately...

Startup plug-in vehicle maker Bright Automotive announced today that it is closing down. While General Motors had invested $5 million in the company, Bright had relied on the hope that the U.S. Department of Energy would grant it low-interest loans under the advanced-technology vehicle...

The U.S. Department of Energy hasn't made any new loans under its Advanced Technology Vehicle Program in well over a year. At its current rate, it may never do so. The latest company to walk away from applications for low-interest loans from the $25 billion DoE program is Chrysler. This afternoon...

The bad news just keeps on coming from electric-car startup Fisker Automotive. The company said today that it has laid off employees and contractors at both its new Anaheim, California, headquarters and its assembly facility in Wilmington, Delaware. Layoffs by car companies are hardly new, but...

A year ago, we visited the Think electric-car plant in Elkhart, Indiana. At the time, several dozen workers were turning out a trickle of Think City electric vehicles assembled from kits shipped in from Finland--with big plans for ramping up production. That never happened. Instead, last June...

Ener1 Inc., the battery firm charged with supplying battery packs to the ill-fated Think electric car company and parent company of EnerDel -- a $118.5 million U.S. Department of Energy loan guarantee recipient -- was officially delisted from the Nasdaq stock exchange yesterday after it failed to...

Coverage of the low-interest loans granted by the Energy Department to Fisker Automotive has often been remarkably shoddy, so we provide some much-needed context and background.

Electric-car advocates spend a lot of time touting the advantages of driving on plug-in power rather than burning gasoline. Sometimes, it can be a lonely battle. But now the U.S. Department of Energy has weighed in on the side of electric cars, with a conclusion that may startle some: It's more...

Las Vegas is better known for its excess than its frugality, but city bosses are turning that image around by trialling a fleet of electric cars, the first of which is GM's range-extended electric vehicle, the 2011 Chevrolet Volt. The trial will make the city the only government agency in the state...

Consumers and automakers both know that range anxiety is a huge barrier standing between shoppers and electric vehicles. But soon, EV owners will have yet another tool in their anti-anxiety toolkit, and it comes from a partnership between GPS heavyweight TomTom and charging station manufacturer...

You probably drive a gasoline car. And surely you've heard of cars with diesel engines. But how about a car with an engine that burns both fuels, at the same time? That's what Chrysler is working on, it turns out, funded in part with research dollars from the U.S. Department of Energy. Author Mike...

Well, looks like Chrysler is getting closer to playing with the big kids at last. The back-from-bankruptcy third U.S. automaker, now effectively controlled by Italy's Fiat, is putting together a financial package that will allow it to pay off all the money invested in it by the Obama Administration...

The big unknown in global efforts to reduce carbon emissions is China. It is industrializing at a rapid pace, and a burgeoning middle class has savings galore to spend on its first automobiles--including luxury European brands. By some estimates, the world's current 800 million vehicles will grow...

According to the Department of Energy, the average U.S. household will pay $700 more for gasoline this year than it did in 2010. In a weekly review of the oil market, the department's Energy Information Administration noted that prices will rise at least 10 cents more over the current national...

In a renewed push for clean energy, President Obama called for one million electric cars to be on American roads by 2015 last month. But is that goal realistic? The government released a report this week saying that by its “conservative” estimates for 2015, the electric car supply in...