electric

  • Peugeot EX1 EV concept

    Last fall, the Peugeot EX1 Concept lit imaginations on fire when it debuted at the Paris Motor Show. Is it a three-wheeled bike? A car? Something totally different? I suppose the last option is the closest to correct. It's got four wheels, but the rear track is narrower than the front track. And a motorcycle-style swing-arm suspends the rear wheels. So, yeah...it's that. It's also an electric car, powered by a total of 250 kilowatts (340 hp) worth of electric motors driving both axles. Thanks to its aerodynamic design, four-wheel-drive configuration and 2,200-pound curb weight, the EX1 boasts...

  • BYD e6 electric taxi in service in Shenzhen, China
    BYD Presents Happy Results From Chinese Electric-Taxi Test

    Automaker BYD is by far China's most aggressive when it comes to electric cars. It launched its F3DM sedan, the world's first production plug-in hybrid, back in December 2008--sales have been poor--and has been testing its all-electric e6 crossover with both taxi fleets in Shenzhen, China, and the...

  • Experimental Lucas hybrid-electric car, developed in the 1980s
    eBay Find: 1982 Lucas-Reliant Hybrid British Concept Car

    The history of the auto industry is littered with the carcasses of the cars and companies that didn't make it. Modern hybrid-electric vehicles were first commercialized by Toyota, with its 1997 Prius (sold in the U.S. starting in 2000). But many concepts, development vehicles, one-offs, and other...

  • 2011 Mitsubishi i-MiEV, E.U. spec
    Mitsubishi ‘i’, Chevrolet Volt or Nissan Leaf? We Compare the Basics

    As our sister site GreenCarReports covered last week, the online pre-ordering process is now live for the 2012 Mitsubishi ‘i’, with the car due to hit the roads of California in January 2012. The 2012 Mitsubishi ‘i’ is now the third all-electric car from a major automaker to...

  • Electric Cars: How They Work, What You Need To Know (Video)

    Driving the 2011 Chevrolet Volt leads all sorts of people to ask you questions: passers-by, the guy at the parking garage...and sometimes, even museums. A few weeks ago, we had a Chevy Volt for review. At the time, we were asked by the Forward Thinking Museum in Manhattan not only to show its staff...

  • 'Revenge of the Electric Car' premiere: Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk on red carpet
    Elon Musk, Bob Lutz On Red Carpet At 'Revenge of Electric Car' Premiere

    Every movie has to have a premiere, and every premiere has to have a red carpet. When the red carpet is on a Manhattan sidewalk, with plenty of passers-by stopping to gawk, and many of the celebs are arriving in electric cars, things get a little more complicated. Still, last night's premiere of...

  • 'Revenge of the Electric Car' movie: Elon Musk and Bob Lutz

    From Michael Moore's Roger And Me in 1989 to Chris Paine's 2006 Who Killed The Electric Car?, there's no shortage of documentaries that portray auto-industry executives as incompetent, bumbling, short-sighted, arrogant fools. So it may be a surprise that merely five years later, two global automakers and one upstart new car company are the heroes of Paine's new documentary, Revenge Of The Electric Car, in the person of one executive at each. Most startling of all, General Motors--the malevolent villain that heartlessly took back and crushed the EV1 electric cars it had leased to...

  • 2011 Chevrolet Volt
    Why Californians Need A Parking Permit To Charge Electric Cars

    No one knows the ins and outs of electric-car usage like the early adopters, especially those who've already taken delivery of a 2011 Nissan Leaf or a 2011 Chevrolet Volt. (Or both.) So when a thread on required parking permits to recharge electric cars erupted in our recent article on the opening...

  • GM EV1 Anti-Crush Protests,  Screenshot, Who Killed The Electric Car?
    'Who Killed The Electric Car?' Sequel Premieres Tonight (Video)

    It's taken as gospel by many of the people who have seen it since its 2006 release, and there's no denying its influence. "Who Killed the Electric?" seemingly stung General Motors enough that the company unveiled the Chevrolet Volt concept in 2007 and then, startled by its popularity, decided to...

  • John Duncan takes delivery of one of the first 2011 Nissan LEAF EVs, near Portland OR, 12/15/2010
    2011 Nissan Leaf Wins World Car of The Year

    Over the past year we’ve seen the 2011 Nissan Leaf win plenty of awards, including the accolade of European Car of The Year and even GreenCarReports’ Best Car to Buy 2011. But while its main competitor, the 2011 Chevrolet Volt, may have more awards to its name than Nissan’s first...

  • 2012 Mitsubishi "i" electric car, powered by MiEV, launch event at 2010 Los Angeles Auto Show
    Mitsubishi Prices 2012 'i' Electric Car At $27,990 Before Tax Breaks

    Driving electric just got cheaper, as Mitsubishi announced that its 2012 'i' electric car would be priced at just $27,990 before incentives when deliveries begin in California next January. That makes the 2012 Mitsubishi 'i' the least expensive plug-in car on sale in the U.S. market. It qualifies...

  • 2012 Nissan Leaf Nismo RC Concept, New York Auto Show, April 2011
    Nissan Leaf Nismo RC Concept: New York Auto Show Live Photos

    Blue light bathed the concept car in the corner before Nissan launched its 2012 Versa sedan at the 2011 New York Auto Show today. The images were so striking we thought we'd bring you a photo gallery of Nissan's electric race-car concept, just so you can see it from all angles, looking like nothing...

  • Volkswagen E Scooter

    The motoring world is gripped with Beetlemania at the moment, and it's got nothing to do with four plucky young musicians from England. Instead, Volkswagen's latest incarnation of the popular Beetle has been wowing the crowds at New York, Berlin and Shanghai, and virtually anyone with access to a computer. It's not the only important new Volkswagen on show though, and certainly not the one AllCarsElectric are excited about. That honor falls to the E-Scooter, a lightweight electric two-wheeler quietly displayed by Volkswagen at the Shanghai Motor Show. Electric scooters are the new fashion...

  • BMW ActiveE electric car, at BMW Manhattan media event, April 2011
    BMW ActiveE Lease Price: $499 A Month For Electric 4-Seater

    The choices among electric cars just keep getting better, as BMW has now announced the lease details for the first stage of its evolution into BMW-branded electric cars. The ActiveE, an all-electric version of the 1-series, will be available for lease requests later this summer. It will be offered...

  • BMW ActiveE
    BMW ActiveE Electric Car Priced At $499 Per Month, $2,250 Down

    Electric cars, at the moment, cost more to buy than gasoline cars of similar size and with similar features, powertrain excepted. Leases on electric cars from mass-market brands like Nissan and Chevrolet are often a little more competitive. The 2011 Nissan Leaf is $349 a month, the 2011 Chevy Volt...

  • Electric-Car Charging Stations Pop Up All Over, Hotels Included

    While AllCarsElectric posts are regularly written from at least three countries, occasionally we get to cover electric-car events in our own back yard--specifically, Palo Alto, California. On Friday, we attended a ceremony to inaugurate the first electric-car charger installed at any hotel in very...

  • 25 Most Electric-Vehicle-Ready Cities
    Is Your City Ready For Electric Vehicles?

    Ford has identified the 25 most electric vehicle (EV) ready cities in the U.S., based on the company’s latest research. The 25 cities are dotted all over the country from Hartford to Honolulu. A previous Pike research report highlighted 6 cities expected to be early EV adopters: New York, Los...

  • Golden Gate Bridge, connecting San Francisco and Marin County, California
    Why Silicon Valley Won't Be Detroit For Green Carmakers

    We don’t hear “death of Detroit” stories as often now as we did a year ago. When GM and Chrysler plunged into bankruptcy and the entire U.S. industry laid off tens of thousands of workers in one year, the effects on an already battered Detroit region were dire. And they led to a...

  • 2011 Nissan Leaf plugged into an EVgo quick-charging station, Texas

    NRG Energy has opened its first eVgo direct-current electric vehicle charging station in Dallas, Texas, as part of a privately funded 70-station network in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, the company announced. The chargers are designed to be “fast-chargers,” which use a 480-volt direct electrical current to charge an electric vehicle enough to drive 30 miles in less than 10 minutes. NRG Energy also plans to open stations that feature a 240-volt Level 2 charger that gives an electric vehicle enough charge to go 25 miles in an hour. Electric vehicles have been criticized for their lack...

  • 2011 Nissan Leaf and 2011 Chevy Volt, with charging station visible; photo by George Parrott
    Consumer Reports: Usually Thoughtful, Not Always Accurate

    Last week, the Associated Press distributed a video report called "Are Electric Cars Worth the Price?" (It's embedded at the bottom of this article.) The video featured this author as an example of someone who owns both the 2011 Nissan Leaf and the 2011 Chevrolet Volt, and it included commentary...

  • Gas pump
    Forget Hydrogen: Here They Are, The Two Fuels of The Future

    Forget hydrogen. You can mostly ignore natural gas. Even diesel may not grow much. The two fuels that will largely power us for the next 20, maybe 30, years are already here. They are gasoline (with some ethanol in it), and electricity. That's it. That's all she wrote. First, gasoline Those...

  • 2011 Chevrolet Volt
    BMW Hires Lead Electric-Car Engineer From Chevy Volt Team

    Not so long ago, the notion of luxury German brand BMW hiring an engineer from General Motors might have been a stretch. The company prefers to promote engineers from within its Munich engineering headquarters. But reports that Frank Weber, the lead engineer of the 2011 Chevrolet Volt team, has...

  • Lithium-ion battery pack of 2011 Nissan Leaf, showing cells assembled into modules
    Battery Advance To Give Electric-Car Charging In Gas Fill-Up Time?

    An advance in battery technology could help push past one of the persistent criticisms of electric vehicles: the extended time needed to charge the battery. Researchers at the University of Illinois published a paper in Nature Nanotechnology on a change to the cathode of a battery that allows for...

  • Fernando Alonso tests the 2010 Ferrari F1 car at Fiorano
    EV-GP? Electric Racing Series Could Lead To EV Formula 1

    The fans might take some convincing on this one... President of the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA) and former Scuderia Ferrari Formula 1 team principal Jean Todt has revealed plans to introduce new electric car, go-kart and single-seater racing categories across...

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