plug-in cars

  • Chevrolet Cruise AV self-driving car

    How comfortable would you be in a taxi or car-service vehicle that had no steering wheel, accelerator or brake pedals? That's the question prompted by a photo that has already produced some subconscious anxiety among at least auto writers. How the public will react remains to be seen, but they'll get their chance next year if GM's Cruise AV goes into production as planned. DON'T MISS: Commercial tests of self-driving Chevy Bolt EV to launch in many cities in 2019 The company released a photo on Friday showing the interior of a Chevrolet Bolt EV electric car without any of the controls used by...

  • Audi e-tron Quattro concept, 2015 Frankfurt Auto Show
    2019 Audi e-tron electric SUV deliveries start in Europe this fall

    The first member of Audi's forthcoming wave of electric cars is expected to start landing in European driveways this fall, possibly neck and neck with the Jaguar I-Pace. The all-electric Audi e-tron SUV will have dimensions similar to the Audi Q5 SUV and should offer enough charge from its...

  • 2017 Tesla Model 3, 2017 Los Angeles Auto Show
    Tesla Model 3: what parts breakdown says about high-volume electric car

    Tesla CEO Elon Musk has aspirations of vertically integrating his companies as much as possible, trying to avoid traditional suppliers wherever he can. While Tesla has been successful in developing things like their electric motors in-house, the company still relies on others for many of the...

  • Genovation GXE
    Genovation all-electric Chevy Corvette sports car debuts at CES

    The idea of an all-electric Corvette is either either a wonderful marriage of American history and electric performance or complete sacrilege. Love it or hate it, it's now a reality. A company called Genovation rolled out the creation, the Genovation Extreme Electric (GXE), at the 2018 Consumer...

  • 2018 Smart Fortwo 10th Anniversary Edition
    Special-edition 2018 Smart Fortwo electric minicar marks 10 years of two-seater in US

    Birthed from the uncommon alliance between watch company Swatch and Mercedes-Benz, Smart's goal was to bring a stylish city car to the masses with a level of personalization not seen in other models. The first Fortwo rolled off the line at Smartville (in Hambach, France) almost 20 years ago, but it...

  • Porsche Mission E concept, 2015 Frankfurt Auto Show
    Porsche Mission E electric sedan to offer 300 miles of range, 400 hp, at minimum

    Though generally mum on details, Porsche has been trickling out tidbits on its forthcoming MIssion E electric sedan since it first unveiled the concept at the 2015 Frankfurt Motor Show. Porsche let slip another detail in late December. It had already revealed a claimed 200-mile recharge within 15...

  • 2017 Chevrolet Bolt EV

    Is one of your New Year's resolutions to go green? We're here to help with this month's deals on electric, plug-in hybrid, hybrid, and other efficient vehicles. Against last month, the cars offering the best incentives haven't changed—but the incentives themselves have. Click ahead to find out where you can save the most as you kick off 2018. Hybrids The Kia Optima is again the best hybrid deal on the market in January, with a record $5,000 in factory cash in western states ($4,000 elsewhere), says CarsDirect. If you'd rather have a low-interest financing deal instead, Kia is currently...

  • First 2018 Nissan Leaf produced at assembly plant in Smyrna, Tennessee, Dec 2017
    300,000th Nissan Leaf electric car delivered as new version kicks off

    Nissan, the first automaker in the world to launch a mass-priced electric car, has a reason to celebrate this week. The automaker said on Monday it delivered the 300,000th example of its electric hatchback, the Nissan Leaf—though it did not detail whether it was one of the new...

  • 2017 Mazda CX-5 First Drive
    Mazda rotary engine may find new life in self-driving Toyota e-Palette project

    Mazda's famed rotary engine may spin once again. The automaker confirmed the development of a range-extending rotary engine with Toyota for use in a shared future project. Toyota revealed the e-Palette concept on Monday at the 2018 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The vehicle, a...

  • 2017 Kia Soul EV
    2018 Kia Soul EV gets bigger battery, range boost from 93 to 111 miles

    Updates to conventional cars come in a predictable pattern. Once a new model is launched, it gets only minor tweaks to features, prices, and paint colors for two or three years. Then in the third or fourth year, it gets what the industry calls a "mid-cycle refresh": some updated sheetmetal, perhaps...

  • 2019 Land Rover Range Rover P400e
    2019 Land Rover Range Rover P400e plug-in hybrid SUV: first drive review

    No doubt the hoi polloi are prepared for emissions-free vehicle zones, what with their bicycles and their little electric cars. But what is the aristocracy to do when its high-end luxury SUVs are banned from city streets in central London? Enter the 2019 Land Rover Range Rover P400e plug-in hybrid...

  • Opel Ampera-e
    German magazine compares real-world electric-car ranges, efficiencies in cold weather

    It's 41 degrees F outside. Your electric car, rated for 100 miles, has been charging all night in the cold. Ahead of you lies a 80-mile drive. How confident are you that you'll make it to your destination? What if you want to set your climate control to a comfortable 70 degrees F? Germany's...

  • Handing over car keys

    Seven years after the first mass-priced modern electric car was sold in the U.S., more car buyers than ever are at least dimly aware that such vehicles exist. Sales of cars that plug in have risen every year, with one slight dip in 2015, but they were still just 1 percent of the U.S. market of 17.5 million light vehicles last year. One reason for that is that most owners only replace a vehicle every five years or so. DON'T MISS: When will major buyer demand for electric cars arrive? Poll results The average car on U.S. roads is still more than a decade old, but most car buyers are naturally...

  • Kia Niro EV concept shown at 2018 Consumer Electronics Show, Las Vegas
    Kia Niro EV concept at CES: 238 miles of range from 64-kwh battery

    It's well known that a battery-electric version of the Kia Niro will join the lineup soon, completing a range that now comprises the Niro Hybrid and the recently launched plug-in hybrid. Most observers had assumed the Niro EV would use the same underpinnings as its corporate sibling the Hyundai...

  • 2018 Honda Clarity Plug-In Hybrid drive, Napa Valley, Caifornia, Dec 2017
    Plug-in electric car sales in Canada for 2017: two Dec debuts before ZEV rules

    Plug-in electric vehicles topped 1 percent of Canadian new-car sales in the second half of 2017, but will fall just short of that milestone for the full year. They’ll probably end around 0.95 percent when final registration data arrives, easily surpassing their 0.57-percent market share of...

  • BYD Qin EV300
    China extended tax breaks on hybrids and plug-in electric vehicles through 2020

    As China stares down climate change and smog alerts in numerous cities, the central government has extended its tax rebates for hybrid and electric vehicles for another three years. Announced on December 27, the move is one of many recently that will eventually see traditional internal-combustion...

  • 2018 Chevrolet Bolt EV
    Plug-in electric car sales in Dec: 2017 set new record, Bolt EV ends strong (final update)

    It was clear late last year that the number of plug-in electric cars sold in the U.S. during 2017 would set a new record. December is always a strong sales month for all vehicles, and dealerships across the country have rushed to deliver new cars, crossovers, and trucks to hit their year-end...

  • 2017 Tesla Model 3, in photo tweeted by Elon Musk on July 9, 2017
    Tesla Model 3 Long Range rating of 310 miles: Is it understated?

    Amidst all the coverage on Wednesday of the Tesla Model 3 production numbers, we realized we'd forgotten one piece of the Model 3 saga. That would be the official EPA range and efficiency ratings for the 2017 Tesla Model 3 Long Range version. Those were issued at the end of November, and they...

  • Chevrolet Bolt EV being charged outside Go Forth electric-car showroom, Portland   [photo: Forth]

    As with any innovation, coverage of plug-in electric cars by mainstream media has been, shall we say, variable. Seven years after the first Nissan Leaf and Chevrolet Volt were delivered to their buyers in December 2010, misconceptions and misinformation abound. Technology is often not a strong suit for business reporters, of course, and plug-in vehicles represent only 1 percent of the U.S. market after seven years. But, slowly, we think media coverage of electric cars is getting better—as we'd suggest a handful of recent articles show. DON'T MISS: Hey, media, get it straight...

  • Lithium-ion cell and battery pack assembly for Nissan Leaf electric car in Sunderland, U.K., plant
    Batteries in autonomous electric cars must be more durable: lithium-ion pioneer

    We tend to take batteries for granted. Day after day, we recharge batteries and expect them to work without giving a thought to how they work or to their state of health. But Akira Yoshino is different. He's one of the pioneers of lithium-ion battery technology. DON'T MISS: Lithium-ion battery...

  • 2017 Hyundai Ioniq Electric (European spec), 2016 Geneva Motor Show
    South Korea to standardize on CCS fast-charging standard used by US, German makers

    Buyers of electric vehicles in South Korea won't need to consider the pros and cons of charging standards in the near future. The South Korean Agency for Technology and Standards announced in mid-December it would revise the current charging standard in the country to recommend the use of "Combo...

  • Bus in Shenzhen, China, By GEei Ginhee wins (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0]
    Shenzhen now uses only electric buses: 16,500 of them

    Over the last few years, the Chinese government has begun to push electric vehicles with all its might. In addition to incentivizing the purchase of electric vehicles, the central government has recently banned the sale of some 553 fossil-fuel passenger cars in the country. But when it comes to...

  • Teaser for Kia Niro EV concept debuting at 2018 Consumer Electronics Show
    Concept for Kia Niro EV all-electric wagon to appear at CES

    We've long known that the Kia Niro wagon would get an all-electric version to accompany the 2017 Niro Hybrid and the just-launched 2018 Niro Plug-In Hybrid. The battery-electric Niro will fill out the suite of six cars sharing the same underpinnings, with the others being the same three versions of...

  • 2017 Tesla Model 3 and Model S in Tesla assembly plant parking lot, Fremont, CA, November 2017
    Tesla delivers 1,550 Model 3s in Q4; Models S, X over 100,000 in 2017

    Tesla reported its fourth-quarter global deliveries on Wednesday, saying it delivered 1,550 Model 3 electric cars between October 1 and December 31 last year, but built 2,425 over the same period. That compares to a total of 260 Model 3s delivered in the third quarter, after a splashy "handover...

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