Range-Extended Electric Vehicle
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While electric passenger vehicles get the lion's share of public attention, commercial trucks are often as good or better for electric drive. With a huge global fleet and a constant drive to reduce emissions and fuel costs while improving efficiency and delivery speed, FedEx has long tested alternative powertrains. DON'T MISS: FedEx Follows French Lead, Tests Hydrogen Fuel-Cell Range Extenders Now, it's testing electric medium-duty trucks that use a turbine generator running on diesel fuel as a range extender. As described in a comprehensive recent article in Wired, the trucks use an electric...
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BMW i3 Electric-Car Incentives: Highest On The Battery-Only Model
In just five months, more than 3,100 BMW i3 electric cars have been delivered to U.S. buyers. That's a fast pace out of the box, and it indicates that BMW is serious about plug-in electric cars in a way that many other major automakers aren't. But to keep that pace going may require what car...
John Voelcker -
Plug-In Electric Car Sales In Sept: Leaf Up Again, Volt Down: FINAL UPDATE
With U.S. sales of plug-in electric cars now averaging more than 10,000 vehicles each month, September sales achieved that mark but fell short of the sizzling pace of the last two months. Sales of the Nissan Leaf totaled 2,881 last month, bringing year-to-date deliveries to 21,882. That's almost a...
John Voelcker -
Should Plug-Ins And Hybrids Offer A Range Of Battery Sizes?
You can choose from two or more engine and transmission options in most gasoline cars, so why not offer a choice of battery-pack sizes in hybrids and plug-in electric cars? That was the question posed by the launch of the Tesla Model S, which was originally offered with three different battery...
John Voelcker -
Hiding The 2016 Chevrolet Volt: GM Discusses Camouflage, Teases Updated Electric Car
General Motors teases the 2016 Chevrolet Volt electric car.
Stephen Edelstein -
Updated 2016 Cadillac ELR Electric Coupe For LA Auto Show
While much of the electric-car world is anticipating the next Chevy Volt, which will launch in January, GM's other range-extended electric car will be getting some changes before then. According to Edmunds, an updated 2016 Cadillac ELR will debut in November at the 2014 Los Angeles Auto Show. DON'T...
John Voelcker -
It's a pretty standard part of the car-launch cycle: The earliest buyers pay sticker price or more, and then the discounting starts to set in. Accordingly, with the BMW i3 electric car on the market for five months now, we're starting to see more aggressive marketing on the part of dealers. One more generous lease deal that popped up recently came from Stevens Creek BMW, in Silicon Valley's Santa Clara, California. DON'T MISS: BMW i3 NEWS: Breaking News, Photos & Videos The high-volume dealer, which sells lots of BMWs of all types to Silicon Valley workers and their families, has more...
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Fisker Karma Will Be Relaunched With 2012 Design, Updates
The future of the Fisker Karma range-extended luxury electric sedan has been in the hands of new owner Wanxiang America for many months, with little known about its relaunch plans or timing. Now, however, a Reuters article says that the company plans to relaunch the existing vehicle--last sold as...
John Voelcker -
Life With Chevy Volt: 3 Years & 35,000 Miles Later, It's Over
It was a sad day. After three years, 34,752 miles, roughly 7,500 kilowatt-hours of electricity, and 327 gallons of gas, I said good-bye to my 2011 Chevy Volt last week. Its lease was up, and there was no one left in the family to drive it. I've been at the wheel of a Tesla Model S for the last 18...
David Noland -
Plug-in Electric Car Sales in Canada, Aug 2014: Vive Le Volt
In August, the Chevy Volt won the Canadian plug-in sales derby yet again – a category dominance that brings to mind the Ford F-150's 48-year-reign(!) atop truck sales, in the land of the Maple Leaf. Funnily enough, it's actually the French fleur-de-lis which is responsible for these...
Matthew Klippenstein -
FINAL UPDATE: Plug-In Electric Car Sales In Aug: All-Time Leaf High, Volt Best In 12 Months
The best-selling electric car in the world, the Nissan Leaf, logged its best-ever U.S. sales in August, selling a record 3,186 units. This marks its 18th consecutive month of year-over-year sales increases, and brings the eight-month total to 18,941 and the total sold in almost four years to more...
John Voelcker -
2014 BMW i3 REx 38-HP Range Extender Vs. 14,000-Foot Mountain: Who Wins?
Steep climbs are the enemy of electric car drivers. While modern electric vehicles are more than capable of powering up a hill, with ample torque, the effect on a car with limited range can be significant. It's less of a problem with a range-extended electric vehicle like the 2014 BMW i3 REx, but a...
Antony Ingram -
Owners of the 2012 Fisker Karma range-extended electric luxury car got some good news last week: The company that now owns the carmaker has promised that supplies of spare parts will soon become available. Fisker stopped producing its striking sedan in July 2012 after it had built roughly 3,000 of the cars. While the handful of remaining new Fiskers have continued to sell slowly since then, all owners faced the prospect that their cars could become orphans. DON'T MISS: Who's Still Buying Brand-New Fisker Karmas, And Why? Now a note to the Fisker Owners Club from Linyun Frank Qi may quell some...
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2014 BMW i3 REx Vs Chevy Volt: Range-Extended Electric Cars Compared
Until recently, the Chevy Volt was the only range-extended electric car available in the U.S. I've driven a Volt for almost three years now, and it's been a splendid car--quiet, smooth, peppy, and amazingly economical. New REx on the block But now the Volt has a formidable new competitor: the new...
David Noland -
Could Less-Pricey 2016 Chevy Volt Undercut Plug-In Hybrids?
The average new vehicle transaction price in the U.S. today is around $32,000. Now it appears that the upcoming 2016 Chevrolet Volt may possibly have two model variants, one of them targeting a base price of $30,000. That price could potentially equal--or undercut--every plug-in hybrid offered...
John Voelcker -
Cadillac ELR Not A Tesla Competitor, GM Exec Acknowledges
Mark Reuss, the head of global product development for General Motors, has acknowledged that GM may not have a vehicle that competes directly with the Tesla Model S electric luxury sedan. Speaking yesterday at a business breakfast associated with the weekend's Dream Cruise event in Detroit, Reuss...
John Voelcker -
Chevrolet Volts In Fleet Use: Might As Well Not Have A Plug
Chevy Volt owners, and even Chevrolet itself, are usually quite proud of the amount of miles the range-extended electric car covers on grid electricity. The company said last week that 63 percent of all Volt miles driven have been covered on grid power, totaling more than half a billion miles...
John Voelcker -
Chevy Volt Electric Car: Only Current GM Model NOT Recalled This Year
The current 2015 Chevrolet Volt, now in its fifth year, will be the last of its generation before a revised and updated 2016 Volt is unveiled next January and goes on sale later in the year. But GM's first range-extended electric car turns out to have logged another minor distinction in its list of...
John Voelcker -
The Chevy Volt has been on sale for three and a half years now, and it's never quite lived up to the big expectations that GM and the world had for it. But this week, the company confirmed that a new 2016 Volt will debut in January, at the 2015 North American International Auto Show in Detroit. This is Green Car Reports' video news for the week of August 4, 2014. When the first 2011 Volt was delivered in December 2010, just days after the first Nissan Leaf, it seemed as if a new era was at hand for electric cars. But muddled marketing, political opposition, and even a Volt battery that caught...
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Marketing For 2016 Chevy Volt To Be Rethought, Use Owners As Evangelists
It's no secret among owners of the Chevy Volt range-extended electric car that the innovative car's advertising and marketing has been muddled at best. Now, with a new 2016 Volt to be unveiled next January, Chevrolet's recently-arrived global chief marketing officer promises that a thorough...
John Voelcker -
2016 Chevrolet Volt To Debut At Detroit Show, First Teaser Photo Released
General Motors confirmed this morning that the revised 2016 Chevrolet Volt range-extended electric car will be released at next January's Detroit Auto Show. And the company released the first teaser image of the car, showing a more rounded rear to the liftgate of what will likely continue as a...
John Voelcker -
FINAL UPDATE: Plug-In Electric Car Sales In July: Leaf, Volt Both Do Well
Sales of plug-in electric cars in the U.S. continued their rise in July, as Nissan delivered more than 3,000 Leaf battery electric cars and Chevy more than 2,000 Volt range-extended electrics. It's was only the second time that the two cars together have sold more than 5,000 units in a single...
John Voelcker -
Plug-in Electric Car Sales In Canada, Jul 2014: Volt Victorious, Leaf Looms
The Chevrolet Volt range-extended electric car remains Canada's plug-in sales champion, but the Nissan Leaf battery-electric--the best-selling electric car in history--is coming up fast in its rear-view mirror As consistently as the Toyota Camry tops the U.S. car sales charts, the Chevy Volt leads...
Matthew Klippenstein -
Fisker Karma Finnish Production To Resume Following Fixes, New Model Later
The new owners of the Fisker luxury car brand will resume production of the Karma range-extended electric sedan initially at a contractor's factory in Finland--but not until the company has fixed "about 250 bugs" in the vehicle. The news came as executives of Wanxiang, China's largest auto parts...
John Voelcker