Battery Electric Vehicle (BEV)
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The Clarity sedan will encompass three models: a battery electric with 114-mile range, a 42-mile plug-in hybrid, and a fuel-cell vehicle
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Tesla founder, Chinese company launch SF Motors electric cars
SF Motors revealed its first two electric cars, to be produced next year at the Hummer factory in South Bend Indiana
Eric C. Evarts -
Nikola suggests it's no Tesla, refunds deposits on fuel-cell, electric semi trucks
Tesla's most direct competitor announced it would refund all deposits it has taken.
Eric C. Evarts -
Driving a converted electric car from Holland to Australia, relying on gifts
What do you do when the year you planned for your round-the-world trip in an electric car turns into two—and you still haven't reached your destination? If you're taking such an ambitious trip, it helps to have a name as whimsical as Wiebe Wakker. He's the Dutchman undertaking this adventure...
Eric C. Evarts -
2018 Nissan Leaf electric car: Is there a fast-charging problem?
Nissan Leaf owners have found that the car's electronic controls dial back charging speeds with each successive fast charge on any given trip.
Eric C. Evarts -
2018 Hyundai Ioniq Electric "Unlimited" subscription more limited this year
While global demand for the Hyundai Ioniq Electric appears to be strong, supplies have remained limited. The battery-electric compact hatchback, rated at 124 miles of range by the EPA, forgoes the "weird styling" of contenders like the previous Nissan Leaf. In the U.S., however, the all-electric...
John Voelcker -
In January 2007, Jaguar dropped a bombshell, in the form of the C-XF concept sedan it unveiled at that year's Detroit auto show. The sleek, fastback shape, simple rectangular grille with recessed mesh, and swept-back cat's-eye headlights yanked Jaguar design out of its fusty retro-traditional straitjacket and catapulted it into the 21st century. The concept was a thinly disguised 2008 Jaguar XF, and its highly praised lines set the style for every Jaguar that followed over the following 10 years. WATCH THIS: Jaguar I-Pace electric concept at LA Auto Show: video walkaround (Nov 2016) The small...
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Why I traded my Chevy Bolt EV for a Tesla: one reader's story
As a nation, the U.S. takes lots of road trips, because most of the country has no viable mass transit between city pairs. If electric cars are ever to enter the mass market in North America, they have to be usable on those road trips. Last year, our reader Jay Lucas of Alexandria, Virginia, wrote...
John Voelcker -
5 things about the 2019 Hyundai Kona Electric we learned at the NY auto show
After a Detroit auto show that was about little except pickup trucks and a new Jeep, followed by a tepid Chicago show, New York proved to be relatively rich in interesting new green cars. The standout was clearly the 2019 Hyundai Kona Electric, the 250-mile battery-electric small hatchback that...
John Voelcker -
Plug-in electric car sales for March: Prius Prime romps, monthly data an endangered species? (update)
The monthly report on sales of plug-in electric cars may well have come to a close this month. General Motors, makers of the Chevrolet Bolt EV and Volt, said it will only release sales figures quarterly starting after its Tuesday release of deliveries for the month of March. Interestingly, the...
John Voelcker -
Tesla Model 3 production crossed 2,000 last week; is it sustainable?
Tesla reported Tuesday that it built 34,494 electric cars in the first quarter of 2018, by far its largest quarterly production total ever. But all eyes were on one number: the production of Model 3 sedans, which was 9,766 vehicles out of that total. Of the rest, 11,730 were Model S hatchback...
John Voelcker -
Nissan Leaf refurbished batteries offered for older electric cars, in Japan
With more than 300,000 Nissan Leaf electric cars on the road, some more than six years old, battery degradation is becoming more and more of an issue. The different rates of capacity loss are a topic of much discussion among Leaf owners, but it now seems likely that Nissan's choice of passive air...
John Voelcker -
Sales of plug-in electric vehicles in China were almost four times those in the U.S. last year, and the gap is expected to widen this year. The world's largest car market is engineering a massive shift over the next two decades away from cars with combustion engines toward battery-powered cars. It is a way for China to address hazardous air pollution in its major cities, reduce the carbon-dioxide emission that cause climate change, and push its battery and auto industries ahead of global competitors. CHECK OUT: China plug-in electric vehicle sales in 2017: almost 4 times those in the U.S. But...
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Classic Mini converted to electric previews 2019 Mini E to come
With a new, all-electric Mini E set to arrive in dealerships in a year or less, BMW wants to highlight the idea of a Mini Cooper powered by batteries. That's what led it to display an "old Mini" converted to electric power at a reception before last week's New York auto show. Sadly, the car wasn't...
John Voelcker -
2019 Jaguar I-Pace: brief first drive of all-electric luxury crossover
A parking lot in suburban New Jersey isn’t the first place I’d look for a revolution. According to Jaguar, it’s where ours will start. After just over four minutes behind the wheel of the 2019 Jaguar I-Pace, the electric Jaguar feels like the beginning of something. DON'T MISS...
Aaron Cole -
Nissan Leaf 30-kwh battery decline 3 times that of earlier electric cars: study
The Nissan Leaf, at least for the moment, remains the highest-volume electric car produced in history, with more than 300,000 sold. One of the measures that kept its cost down was the use of passive air cooling for its battery pack, rather than the pricier liquid cooling used by other makers to...
John Voelcker -
Tesla recalls 123,000 Model S electric cars over steering-bolt corrosion
Tesla will recall roughly 123,000 of the Model S electric cars it built from 2012 through April 2016 to replace bolts in the power-steering units of the electric cars. The company said the bolts could corrode in cars used on roads where calcium or magnesium salts are used to melt ice. The Model S...
John Voelcker -
Beverly Hills bans plug-in hybrids from public charging stations
Well, that's ... interesting. The city of Beverly Hills, California, has issued new regulations for parking and electric-car charging. As of Monday, April 2, only battery-electric cars will be allowed to park and plug in at any of the city's 35 public charging stations—plug-in hybrids will...
John Voelcker -
It's called walking the talk. Also, putting your money where your mouth is. Either way, when we polled our Twitter followers to ask when they intended to buy their first battery-electric car, we didn't expect the distribution of responses we got. DON'T MISS: Plug-in electric car sales in Feb better than Jan lows Cars with plugs represented just a tiny fraction of last year's U.S. new-vehicle market: 195,000 or so out of 17.5 million light-duty vehicles sold. That's just slightly more than 1 percent. Conventional hybrids made up no more than another 2 percent. Among respondents to our Twitter...
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2019 Hyundai Kona Electric US debut: 250 miles of range from small electric hatchback
The biggest question around the 2019 Hyundai Kona Electric has now been answered: it will have a rated range estimated at 250 miles on the U.S. test cycle. Hyundai debuted the U.S. version of the small all-electric hatchback on Wednesday at the New York auto show media days. While the company...
John Voelcker -
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 -
Tesla sales: how much do rebates matter to buyers in Canada?
The government of Ontario amended its plug-in electric vehicle incentive program in March, eliminating incentives for vehicles with a recommended price of $75,000 or more. What effect will this have on demand for Tesla’s Model S and X? Two years ago, this site analyzed the impacts on...
Matthew Klippenstein -
VW committed to sell 2 new electric cars in California by Dec 2019: what are they?
The Volkswagen diesel emission scandal has now largely vanished from U.S. media coverage, much to VW's relief. Tens of thousands of bought-back TDI diesel vehicles still sit in fields awaiting modification and resale, or some other disposition. But among the thousands of pages of legal documents to...
John Voelcker -
Nissan, Sumitomo open electric-car battery recycling plant in Japan
The town of Namie, in eastern Japan, was devastated by the earthquake and tsunami of 2011, and has struggled to recover from the devastation of that day. Almost seven years later, the first new plant in town is set to open, one contributing to clean energy and zero-emission vehicles to boot...
John Voelcker