Battery Electric Vehicle (BEV)
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As it gears up for volume production of battery-electric cars starting in 2019, Volkswagen Group spends a lot of time talking to the press about its future plans for the vehicles. We already know its first electric car that year will be the compact hatchback Volkswagen ID, and the first to be sold in the U.S. will be the VW ID Crozz utility vehicle, in 2020. More than a year ago. Green Car Reports suggested the next generation of the VW Beetle might even go electric. DON'T MISS: Could future VW Beetle return to rear (electric) powertrain? (Oct 2016) That report was confirmed more than a year...
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New approach to electric-car battery cooling: immerse cells in coolant
Regardless of how your vehicle is powered—whether it be an internal-combustion engine or a battery pack powering an electric motor—most powertrains have a common enemy: heat. For Taipei-based XING Mobility, heat is a major concern for its high-performance Miss R model as its battery...
Mark Stevenson -
European electric and plug-in hybrid sales for Jan-Oct 2017
The more things change, the more they stay the same. Europe's October electric vehicle sales saw significant growth versus a year ago as 56 percent more battery-electric and plug-in hybrid hybrid vehicles found new homes and the Volkswagen e-Golf shot up the standings. But, atop that growing...
Mark Stevenson -
Volkswagen ID electric car production date now set: November 2019
Since the Dieselgate scandal broke more than two years ago, Volkswagen has spent a great deal of time talking about its plans for electric cars. It has rolled out three concept vehicles within the new Volkswagen ID family, and discussed its dedicated electric-car architecture that will underpin all...
John Voelcker -
Plug-in electric car sales in Canada, Nov 2017: the vaulting Chevy Volt
A record 582 Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrids were sold in Canada last month, two months after Chevy delivered a then-record 483 Volts in September. The achievement is even more impressive considering Canadian car sales dropped by 15 percent between the two months, as the industry enters its slow...
Matthew Klippenstein -
Judge sides with Tesla, slams dealer association in Missouri
Since Tesla began selling electric cars directly to customers throughout the U.S., the electric-vehicle maker has had to play franchise-law whack-a-mole in multiple state courts. On Tuesday, Tesla scored a decisive victory when the Missouri Court of Appeals reversed a lower court's ruling that...
Mark Stevenson -
Jaguar’s upcoming first entry into electric vehicles is undergoing final validation in Los Angeles, a year after the British brand revealed the I-Pace Concept at the 2016 Los Angeles Auto Show. Jaguar wrapped the new I-Pace in a pseudo-mule livery and plastered a hashtag on its side as engineers performed final range and durability testing. The car shown in the photos issued by the factory is one of 200 units built so far that have covered some 1.5 million testing miles. DON'T MISS: Jaguar I-Pace electric SUV has already accumulated 25,000 orders: CEO Jaguar has targeted “a zero...
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Not just Porsche: Honda wants 15-minute fast charges for electric cars too
With Porsche promising ultra-fast charging for its Mission E electric car, Honda isn’t going to let the German automaker keeps its 15 minutes of charging fame. Honda aims to develop cars that can grab enough juice from the grid for 240 kilometers (150 miles) of range in 15 minutes flat...
Mark Stevenson -
How many Model 3s will Tesla deliver by Dec 31? Twitter poll results, again
What a difference a few months makes. In June, one month before the delivery of the first 30 Tesla Model 3, we polled our Twitter followers on how many of the lower-priced electric cars Tesla would deliver by the end of this year. The view then was pretty rosy, with more than half the respondents...
John Voelcker -
Tesla Semi, Roadster battery claims prove puzzling: beyond current knowledge?
Since Tesla’s reveal of its new Semi and Roadster models, many technical analysts have been left scratching their collective heads. How can Tesla promise performance metrics far exceeding what’s currently physically and economically possible? According to one analyst, it may not be a...
Mark Stevenson -
Plug-in electric car sales for Nov: Volt vs Prime neck-and-neck, Bolt EV just misses 3K (updated)
Chevy didn't quite pull it off in November, but it could well happen this month in a burst of end-of-year sales. In this case, "it" would be selling 3,000 Chevrolet Bolt EV electric cars in a single month: the delivery total reported last month was 2,987. That brings year-to-date Bolt EV sales to...
John Voelcker -
BMW 'i' electric-car sub-brand to expand into SUVs: iX3 crossover, other 'iX' models
Before the 2013 launch of its 'i' sub-brand, BMW had secured the names of potential i-branded vehicles by applying for i1 through i9 monikers in 2010. Now the brand has secured another batch of names for electrified crossovers—iX1 through iX9—and it plans to use at least one of them by...
Mark Stevenson -
The 2018 Nissan Leaf electric car will start to appear at Nissan dealers in January, the company said Monday. That availability came in an announcement that the second-generation electric car officially went into production the same day at Nissan's sprawling assembly plant in Smyrna, Tennessee. It's one of three locations globally that will build the latest Leaf; the other two are the original Oppama plant in Yokosuka, Japan, and a Nissan factory in Sunderland, England. DON'T MISS: 2018 Nissan Leaf preview The first-generation Leaf was built in Smyrna as well, starting with the 2013 model...
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Configuring a Tesla Model 3: buyer walks through the process with us
Very few of the 455,000 people who put down $1,000 to reserve a place in line for the Tesla Model 3 electric car have received the opportunity yet to configure their cars online and place a firm order. The volume of Model 3s is still apparently at low numbers—a few hundred last month...
John Voelcker -
What's a self-driving Chevy Bolt EV electric car like to ride in? Jerky, says one report
While such autonomous players as Uber, Tesla, and Waymo have already opened their car doors to the public, GM's autonomous subsidiary Cruise Automation has held its cards close to its vest. This past week, the Detroit-based automaker and Silicon Valley-based subsidiary allowed select members of the...
Mark Stevenson -
BMW i3 electric car sales stopped, future recall announced for specific safety concern (updated)
An obscure safety issue has led to a halt in sales of the BMW i3 electric car until further notice. The German maker announced a recall for every single i3 sold in the United States, covering 30,542 cars from the 2014 to 2018 model year. The safety issue that led to the recall and stop-sale follows...
Sean Szymkowski -
Commercial tests of self-driving Chevy Bolt EV to launch in many cities in 2019
General Motors officials made a bold announcement on a Thursday conference call with investors: the automaker plans to launch commercial autonomous fleet operations beginning in 2019. The Detroit-based automaker's vision for commercial, autonomous ride sharing will begin with self-driving Bolt EV...
Mark Stevenson -
Life with Tesla Model S: musings on new Tesla Roadster
Like almost everyone else, I was blown away by Tesla’s surprise introduction of a second-generation Roadster at the recent semi-truck reveal event. Zero to sixty in 1.9 seconds, a 620-mile range, gorgeous sleek lines, and a price of $200,000. Mind-blowing indeed. But a few of the new...
David Noland -
The Vespa scooter is undeniably an icon on European streets. For 70 years, Vespas have buzzed about roadways, but the buzz will soon give way to an all-but-silent hum in the company's latest scooter. Earlier this month at the Milan Motorcycle Show, Vespa announced its first all-electric scooter, dubbed the Elettrica. DON'T MISS: Volkswagen E-Scooter: Electric Bike To Rival Smart And MINI The Elettrica trades a petrol and tank small combustion engine for a lithium-ion battery pack and electric motor rated at 2 kilowatts of continuous power and peak power of 4 kilowatts. The electric Vespa...
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Half of all Porsches will plug in by 2025, showing importance of electric cars
Its customers and employees know, but the rest of the world may not quite have realized that Porsche will soon sell six separate plug-in hybrid models. They span three different vehicles—the Porsche Panamera large sedan, the Panamera Sport Turismo shooting brake, and the Cayenne sport utility...
John Voelcker -
2018 Nissan Leaf preview
The 2018 Nissan Leaf electric car represents the second generation and a thorough redesign and update of the highest-selling electric car in the world. Although we still await the last details of pricing, features, and options, we know largely what to expect from Nissan's new electric car when it...
Sean Szymkowski -
Even supercar maker Lamborghini may go electric, and it's a very cool concept
Lamborghini, the Italian purveyor of V10- and V12-powered supercars, has teased a fully electric performance machine for the first time in its 54-year history. Unveiled at Lamborghini's home base in Sant’Agata Bolognese, Italy, the Lamborghini Terzo Millennio Concept is the product of a...
Mark Stevenson -
Tesla Model 3 Long Range electric car tested by Motor Trend
Within the last week, we wrote that not one major automotive media outlet had independently tested the less-expensive and higher-volume Tesla Model 3. That changed on Monday, when Motor Trend published the first instrumented test of Tesla's affordable electric car. This gives us the first...
Sean Szymkowski -
Volkswagen ID Crozz electric SUV to launch in US in 2020
A production vehicle based on the Volkswagen ID Crozz all-electric compact crossover will be launched in the U.S. market during 2020, VW said. The announcement came at a media event Tuesday night before the first of two media days at the Los Angeles auto show, where the electric SUV makes its North...
John Voelcker