Battery Electric Vehicle (BEV)
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The 2018 Chevrolet Bolt EV electric car is now arriving at Chevy dealers with no major changes—though drivers may find the heated steering wheel now turns itself on and off. Otherwise, the deletion of the map pocket on the back of the passenger seat from the 2LT trim level is the sole other change from the 2017 model year. The Bolt EV still returns an EPA-estimated 238-mile range from its 60-kilowatt-hour lithium-ion battery pack, which powers a 150-kilowatt (200-horsepower) electric motor. DON'T MISS: 2018 Chevrolet Bolt EV - full review EPA ratings estimate the electric Chevy's energy...
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Renault Samsung SM3 ZE electric sedan: battery upgrade gives 130-mile range in Korean tests
Frequently, cars withdrawn from one market live on in another, sometimes for years. Those vehicles may even be upgraded with newer technology in the older body. Consider that the first-generation Volkswagen Golf launched in 1974, for example, lived on in South Africa until 2009 as the VW CitiGolf...
John Voelcker -
How many Model 3s will Tesla deliver by Dec 31? Take our Twitter poll, again
More than five months ago, before the 2017 Tesla Model 3 officially launched, we published the results of a poll asking how many of the lower-priced electric cars would be delivered by the end of this year. Survey respondents on Twitter were optimistic, with more than half suggesting Tesla would...
John Voelcker -
Chinese electric-car startup SF Motors bought Tesla founder's battery-tech firm
Although Elon Musk is the name now associated with Tesla, the current CEO was not a founding figure in the electric-car startup. That honor goes to two men, Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning. Eberhard subsequently sparred with Musk in and outside of court. Following his time at Tesla, Eberhard...
Sean Szymkowski -
Tesla Model 3 video review compares lower-priced electric car to Model S
There have been no full reviews of the 2017 Tesla Model 3 to date by automotive media outlets, meaning professional test drivers spend a few days with the car putting it through a standard battery of tests. A few early video reviews, apparently by owners, have also vanished from the Internet...
John Voelcker -
Where will EVs have the highest market share in 2025? Take our Twitter poll
China's announcement in early September that it planned to set a date to end sales of new vehicles with combustion engines should have rocked the global auto industry. The world's largest car market, at roughly 30 million vehicles a year, will at some point permit only zero-emission vehicles to be...
John Voelcker -
Carlos Ghosn has been an advocate of electric cars for years, but after initial disappointment, he's ready to take on the segment with even greater focus. The CEO of the Renault Nissan Alliance that now includes Mitsubishi predicted the rise of electric cars nearly a decade ago, and oversaw the first-generation Nissan Leaf and Renault Zoe battery-electric vehicles. Those two cars have given the alliance a better and more detailed understanding of electric cars and their buyers, and Ghosn believes the company has an advantage over others. DON'T MISS: With Mitsubishi, Renault-Nissan is world's...
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Toyota to sell electric cars in China, use Suzuki EVs in India, from 2020: report
Toyota made its future battery-electric car project public this past April after an "agonizing" decision to depart from its sole focus on a future powered by hydrogen fuel cells as its sole zero-emission vehicle technology. Mostly, that shift is due to China and India—two major auto markets...
Sean Szymkowski -
Is China making U.S. irrelevant to the future of automobiles?
The first automobile was invented in Germany in 1885 by Karl Benz, but it was the U.S. that led the building of the global 20th-century automobile industry. Through the turn of the current century, the U.S. new-vehicle market was the world's largest, and General Motors was for decades the world's...
John Voelcker -
Tesla Semi, new Roadster distract from Model 3 production problems
Never let it be said that Tesla CEO Elon Musk and his event producers are not masters of showmanship. Last night's launch of the Tesla Semi heavy-duty commercial truck tractor came with a surprise: a new Tesla Roadster emerged from the back of the trailer. The wow factor was ... high. DON'T MISS...
John Voelcker -
Electric cars 'right around the corner' in 1966: what took so long?
Looking at yesterday's visions of tomorrow is always entertaining, from flying cars to cities of the future. In the case of the electric car, there have been two futures: one from 1890 to about 1910, and then another starting 100 years later in 2011. The intervening century saw many, many...
John Voelcker -
Chinese electric-car startup Nio gets $1 billion in funding: report
Nio, the electric-car maker formerly known as NextEV, has raised a substantial amount of money in its latest round of fundraising. The Chinese startup reportedly received a stunning $1 billion in funding, with Chinese investment powerhouse Tencent leading the charge. Notably, Tencent also holds a...
Sean Szymkowski -
The long-awaited Tesla Semi electric truck was unveiled Thursday night and it promises to shake up the shipping industry by significantly reducing the cost of transporting goods from point-to-point. Tesla CEO Elon Musk unveiled the Semi at a private event in California, where he touted a 500-mile range when loaded to 80,000-pound maximum weight allowed under federal highway regulations for Class 8 trucks. DON'T MISS: Tesla Roadster returns with ferocious power Musk said that the Semi's battery can be topped off to a 400-mile range in 30 minutes. That 500 mile figure is about half the range of...
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Tesla Roadster is back: 0-60 in 1.9 seconds, 620-mile range
What's old is new again. The Tesla Roadster is back, company CEO Elon Musk revealed Thursday night at a special event in California. Forget about the old, Lotus-derived Roadster. This latest 2020 Tesla Roadster is shapely, sprints from 0-60 mph in just 1.9 seconds, 0-100 mph in 4.2 seconds, and...
Andrew Ganz -
Driving a Chanje electric electric cargo van: very big, far better than diesel
A Class 5 cargo van is a remarkably large vehicle, especially when navigating it through the mixed industrial and 19th-century residential streets of the Prospect Heights neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York. The Chanje V8070 electric cargo van, in fact, is the largest vehicle—electric or...
John Voelcker -
2017 Volkswagen e-Golf: weekend drive report and range test
The thought came like a flash while on the highway heading into New York's Catskill Mountains: This is what all cars will be like soon. The 2017 Volkswagen e-Golf is absolutely the most normal, invisible, unremarkable electric car you can buy today. No one knew it was electric, or paid it any...
John Voelcker -
Life with Renault Twizy: electric bopping around Bermuda
I well remember the first time I saw a Renault Twizy. Wandering along the Champs Elysees in Paris in the spring of 2012, I happened upon a Renault showroom hosting an electric car extravaganza. Amid flashing lights, blasting techno music, and vamping supermodels sat a couple of Renault Zoes, the...
David Noland -
Cargo space in popular electric cars: this video explains it all
Ensuring electric cars fit the needs of their owners is a requirement for boosting electric-vehicle sales. Adequate cargo space for an owner is necessary no matter what kind of car is being considered. Now, in one handy video, YouTuber Bjorn Nyquist has shown just how much cargo space is provided...
Sean Szymkowski -
Of our eight Green Car Reports Best Car To Buy award winners since 2011, five have been compact five-door hatchbacks. It's a good, sensible format, by far the most popular segment in Europe and stronger even in Canada than in the U.S. Sadly, U.S. car buyers are not only ignoring small hatchbacks but passenger sedans as well—and moving wholesale to SUVs and crossover utility vehicles of all sizes. DON'T MISS: All-electric Buick small SUV to be based on Bolt EV: report And that's a big problem for electric cars, since over the last seven years, the vast majority of them haven't fit into...
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BMW to debut electric-car concept at LA show; electric Mini makes U.S. debut
BMW will use media days at the Los Angeles auto show, which begin on November 29, to unveil a new electric car that's never before been seen. The electric model that will debut in California wasn't otherwise specified in the German maker's announcement, which called it simply "a world premiere...
John Voelcker -
Finalist for Green Car Reports Best Car To Buy 2018: Hyundai Ioniq
Hyundai is known in the auto industry as an aggressive and very capable competitor, and the world's largest makers watch it closely and take it very seriously. The company didn't introduce its first hybrid car in the U.S. until 2011 and, frankly, that year's hybrid Sonata sedan wasn't very good...
John Voelcker -
BMW battery-sourcing ethics highlight cobalt-mining issue for electric cars
Electric cars provide a zero-emission driving experience, but one of the most important raw materials for their batteries—cobalt—has a supply chain that needs some work. About half of the world's cobalt supply comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), a country with high rates...
Sean Szymkowski -
Plug-in electric car sales in Canada, Oct 2017: Chevy’s dominant duo
The dominant duo of the Chevy Volt and Bolt EV continued their winning ways in the Canadian market for new plug-in electric cars during October. Chevrolet sold 424 Volts to start the fourth quarter, down slightly from 483 in September. The vehicle’s 3,431 sales through October all but tied...
Matthew Klippenstein -
Finalist for Green Car Reports Best Car To Buy 2018: Nissan Leaf
If any electric car aside from the Tesla Model 3 can be called "long-awaited," it would be the redesigned 2018 Nissan Leaf. First thought to arrive as a 2016 model, it was widely assumed to be a 2017 to go head-to-head with the 238-mile Chevrolet Bolt EV launched last December. In the event, the...
John Voelcker