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Tesla reversed its decision to go online only, and is keeping many stores open. Fiat Chrysler announced two new plug-in Jeeps for Europe. An annual EPA report shows rising fuel-economy standards are working—just as the EPA plans to gut them. And a new program aims to get Colorado ready for smart charging, ahead of a potential roll-out of a zero-emissions vehicle mandate. All this and more on Green Car Reports. Tesla said earlier this month that it would close all of its stores and move to online sales only. Now the company has reversed that decision and plans to keep most stores open...
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Jaguar I-Pace electric car to join Waymo's self-driving car fleet
British carmaker Jaguar Land Rover and Waymo said Tuesday the carmaker would sell Google's autonomous-car technology arm up to 20,000 of its new all-electric Jaguar I-Pace SUV to be used in self-driving service by 2020. While last week's news focused entirely on the fatal crash of a Volvo converted...
John Voelcker -
Apple self-driving car plans emerge: how will it play with automakers?
Last year, techies, auto journalists, and Apple fans spent a great deal of time debating the existence, technology, and potential prospects of an "Apple car" project that the company never officially acknowledged. The idea that Apple would move from fast-turn, high-volume, very profitable consumer...
John Voelcker -
Google Street View car used to spot, quantify methane leaks
Natural gas is growing as a part of the world's grid mix, because its carbon per kilowatt-hour is much lower. But methane leaks that emit large volumes of climate-change gas into the air may offset that advantage. Now, a Google Street View car has allowed researchers to pinpoint and quantify the...
Green Car Reports -
Maybe Apple and Google won't take over the car industry after all?
Apple and Google are both experiencing setbacks in their plans to build autonomous cars.
Stephen Edelstein -
Chevy Bolt EV electric car shows GM can do Silicon Valley, exec says
Over the last five years, much has been written about autonomous-car efforts from Apple and Google. Could these two massively successful Silicon Valley startups overturn the established order in the global auto industry? The answer remains to be seen, but this month brought news that both companies...
John Voelcker -
The fourth Tesla Model X electric crossover went to Google co-founder Sergey Brin, a new report says.
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Tesla Had A Deal To Sell Itself To Google Til Musk Walked Away
Like any startup company, Tesla Motors has had crises where the electric-car maker came very close to financial collapse. One was in 2008, when its Roadster model was late in delivery and its two-speed transmission proved unable to handle the car's power. But a second crisis developed in late 2012...
John Voelcker -
Will California Pioneer A World Beyond Cars This Century?
It's almost inconceivable, the idea of a world without personally-owned automobiles. But that's the startling vision proposed by noted researcher Tom Turrentine and colleagues, in a recent paper published online in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, entitled "California: Beyond cars?" (PDF)...
John Voelcker -
Crowdsourcing Electric-Car Innovation: Design Inverter, Win $1 Million From Google
Improving the modern electric drivetrain isn't easy, but it's certainly worthwhile. It's rewarding too, for any one entering the Google and IEEE 'Littlebox Challenge'--a competition to design a smaller, high power density inverter. The prize? One million dollars. ALSO SEE: When Will Electric Cars...
Antony Ingram -
Google's Electric, Autonomous Test Car Looks Happy, Has No Steering Wheel
This is probably not the car you'll be whisked around cities in, in the future. Which is either a good or bad thing, depending on how much you like cars that look like koala bears on a substance recently legalized in Colorado. But it is Google's latest, dedicated test vehicle for its autonomous car...
Antony Ingram -
Now Electric-Car Drivers Can Use Google Glass To Find Charging Stations
Charging-station operator SemaConnect created a Google Glass app to help drivers find its stations.
Stephen Edelstein -
GM will test a ride-sharing program on the Google campus using Chevrolet Spark EV electric cars.
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Electric-Car Maker Tesla Is The Highest-Trending Car Brand On Google
For any new company, creating recognition of its product and its branding is one of the most difficult things to achieve. If internet search terms are to be believed--and as a mark of how much people are trying to find out about something, they're pretty important--Tesla Motors has certainly...
Antony Ingram -
Could Google Buy Tesla? Should It?
Speculating on what will happen to Tesla Motors [NSDQ:TSLA] can be endlessly entertaining, and the discussions have taken up terabytes of server space already. But last week, a Forbes contributor suggested an intriguing notion: Should search giant Google buy Tesla? The conventional wisdom has been...
John Voelcker -
What Happens If You Add Google Glass To A Tesla Electric Car?
Wearable computers and electric cars. Two things you might not think have much in common--but one app developer is exploring ways of linking the two cutting-edge technologies. Glasstesla is the brainchild of software engineer Sahas Katta, and pairs certain car functions with the abilities of...
Antony Ingram -
Self-Driving Tesla Electric Cars Coming, Courtesy Of Google?
Love or hate Tesla Motors (NSDQ:TSLA) and its CEO Elon Musk, it's hard to deny that he's ahead of the curve when it comes to developing new cars. So when Musk says self-driving or autonomous technology is the next logical step in the evolution of the car, you take notice. According to Bloomberg...
Antony Ingram -
Google Adds Clout To Electric-Car Charging At Work Effort
If you drive an electric car on a daily basis, the chances are your car has more than enough range to tackle the daily commute on a single charge, so charging at work isn't a concern. Unless that is, you’re one of the few to drive well beyond the range of a round trip, and already have a...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
Steve Mahan got into a Toyota Prius hybrid, drove to the dry cleaner's, picked up some clothes he'd left to be cleaned, and drove home. The trip was about a mile and a half. Steve Mahan is legally blind. He's lost 95 percent of his vision. He did it, though, with a little help from Google. The car he happened to be driving was one of several Google Self-Driving Priuses, outfitting with an array of cameras, sensors, and processing algorithms to ensure it can sense, interpret, and react to its environment in real time--driving as safely as any other driver. And perhaps a lot more safely than...
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Five Reasons Why Google Gets Plug-In Cars Before You Do
Just before the holidays at the end of last year, Google welcomed the first 2012 Ford Focus Electric to roll off the production lines into its ever-expanding G Fleet of plug-in and hybrid cars. Google’s G Fleet now includes the 2012 Nissan Leaf, 2012 Chevrolet Volt, and various Toyota Prius...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
Quick Snap: Google Goes All-Electric In Mitsubishi 'i'
If you mention internet giant Google and "electric car" in the same sentence, it wouldn't be unreasonable to assume that the company was working on a car of its own. After all, the company is well-known for its work on autonomous vehicles, with a technology-heavy Prius that's now driven thousands...
Antony Ingram -
How Google's Self-Driving Car Works
Once a secret project, Google's autonomous vehicles are now out in the open, quite literally, with the company test-driving them on public roads and, on one occasion, even inviting people to ride inside one of the robot cars as it raced around a closed course. Google's fleet of robotic Toyota...
IEEE Spectrum -
TomTom Integrates Coulomb's Charging Map: We Have Concerns
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...
Richard Read -
More Sites Install Solar Carports For Electric-Car Charging
It's the green ideal: Charging an electric car or plug-in hybrid using electricity generated purely from the sun. But it's not fiction; a handful of large, multi-space solar carports are popping up in areas as diverse as Silicon Valley, New York City, Detroit, and Tennessee. The latest one...
Kevin Lee