Battery Electric Vehicle (BEV)

While unveiling its fuel-cell vehicle last month–priced to undercut the Tesla Model S ever so slightly–Toyota's Global R&D Chief Mitsuhisa Kato offered some dismissive thoughts on battery-electric vehicles. As quoted in Automotive News, the 39-year veteran of the Toyota Motor...

Last month, electric-car owners finally learned the price of a replacement battery pack for the Nissan Leaf: a surprisingly low $5,500 after the old pack is traded in. Many advocates and Leaf owners promptly seized on the price to "prove" that Nissan could now build batteries for less than $250 per...

The 2014 BMW i3 electric car has a unique feature offered by no other vehicle in the world: Buyers can choose to have it as a battery-electric vehicle, or add an optional range-extending engine that roughly doubles its rated electric range of 81 miles. With the i3 on sale now for two months, a mix...

The 2014 Mercedes-Benz B-Class electric car hasn't quite reached dealerships yet--several are telling customers it could be next week--and its EPA ratings for range and efficiency have been something of a mystery too. Now, courtesy of an alert electric-car fan, we know the ratings for the first...

Several reports in general news media recently have touted the new 2014 BMW i3 electric car as a serious challenger to the Tesla Model S. One writer even went so far as to label the i3 a "Tesla killer." Dream on. There's no way a frumpy-looking little 2+2 city car is going to challenge the mighty...

What kind of taxis do you ride in? Battered old Crown Vics? High-mileage Toyota Priuses or Ford Escape Hybrids? Our bet is that unless you've recently spent some time in Norway, you haven't ridden in a Tesla taxi. DON'T MISS: Envy The Man Who Owns Seven Tesla Electric Cars (In Norway) Given that...

Early this year, we wrote about efforts in the Georgia state legislature to kill the state's $5,000 income-tax credit for purchasing a battery-electric vehicle. Among the most generous state incentives in the nation, Georgia's credit has put the metropolitan Atlanta area among the top areas where...

Electric cars can be confusing enough to neophytes--a car that you plug in at night just like a phone ?!?!?--but when you add in social status signifiers, it can all get quite complicated indeed. Which is how we end up with a Hollywood Reporter piece that asking whether celebrities may abandon...

The Nissan Leaf is by far the world's best-selling electric car, but one of the ways Nissan has kept its cost down is by eliminating an active-cooling system for its lithium-ion battery pack. Now, however, its second mass-produced electric vehicle--the Nissan e-NV200 small commercial van--turns out...

The 2014 BMW i3 is proving to be very effective at luring new buyers to BMW--buyers who haven't before owned one of its cars. Such buyers, known as conquests, are highly valued by carmakers, who have a much better chance of retaining a customer if they're already driving one of its vehicles. The...

Well, chalk up another first for Nissan: It sold 3,117 Leaf electric cars in the U.S. last month. That's not only its best-ever one-month sales performance, but it's the first time any carmaker has sold more than 3,000 battery plug-in electric cars in a month in this country--ever. (August 2013...

The guerilla warfare between auto dealers and Tesla Motors continues, with the latest skirmish happening tomorrow in New Jersey. Perhaps war analogies are overstating the case, but certainly Tesla has had to fight in numerous states for the right to sell its cars directly to buyers through the...

Driving the world's highest-volume battery-electric car in New York's Hudson Valley.

Regular readers of Tesla forums will recognize the name of Nick J. Howe, whose hundreds of astute comments recently earned him accolades for "best forum postings over time," according to a reader poll. A Florida chemical engineer and owner of a Tesla Model S P85, Howe has technical savvy, dogged...

OK, clearly he shouldn't have said, "I hope you don't buy it." But last week's little media explosion over Fiat Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne's negative comments on the 2014 Fiat 500e electric car his company sells--in limited numbers, in California only--shouldn't be a surprise. To summarize his...

Every time I visit a conventional car dealership to test-drive an electric car, I'm struck by the salesman's lack of savvy about plug-in cars. The first time I drove a Chevy Volt three years ago, the salesman barely knew how to turn the car on, and had no clue about electric cars in general. The...

The 2014 BMW i3 electric car is now in U.S. dealership, and early examples are eagerly being taken home by drivers--but, so far, only the battery-electric version is on sale. Despite hundreds of cars parked at multiple U.S. ports, the so-called i3 REx model, which includes an optional two-cylinder...

The Chevrolet Spark EV has been on the market for only a year, but already it's being updated. And in this case, the update is major: The 2015 Chevy Spark EV will have an entirely new battery pack. General Motors announced yesterday that it will bring assembly of the electric Spark's battery...

The Tesla Model S electric luxury sedan can be described many ways, and its owners generally use glowing superlatives in doing so. But we've never seen it called an "intergalactic spaceboat of light and wonder" before. Nor an "Electric CruiseBeast," for that matter. ALSO SEE: Next-Generation Tesla...

As the owner of a Tesla Model S in New York's Hudson Valley, I've long lamented the puzzling dearth of Superchargers in the Northeastern U.S. But in the last few weeks, the official opening of two of Tesla's superfast (120-kilowatt) free DC charging stations in New Jersey and upstate New York--both...