battery pack

Our reader Jonathan P asks: I have a 1997 Saturn that, remarkably, is still running. It probably has the book value of a large watermelon, so if anything major goes wrong with it, that's the end of that. If that Saturn were a hybrid, I'm guessing the battery pack would have died about four years...

It's always good to hear the arguments against electric cars. Some are valid, some are idiotic, and some simply betray a lack of knowledge about how the auto industry really works. Into that last category may go some comments by one William M. Colton, ExxonMobil’s vice president for corporate...

Anyone who's stored a car in a rural area has heard stories of the chaos wreaked by nesting squirrels. Engine compartments stuffed with leaves, twigs, nuts, and even entire furry families can cause overheating and sometimes fires. But now a new peril has come to light against which electric-car...

A few months ago we asked the question, what exactly do you have to service on a 2011 Nissan LEAF? After all, the LEAF doesn't even contain many of the items that require regular attention on a regular car, such as oil changes, spark plugs, filters, transmission fluid and muffler parts. Brakes...

Sometimes you just never know where you'll dredge up technical details on vehicles that carmakers haven't yet launched. Technology conferences can be a good source. Take, for instance, the Advanced Automotive Battery Conference (AABC) held last week in Pasadena, California. A battery systems...

Riding high on a bout of good press of its Chevy Volt, GM is putting $7 million into its next big bet on electric cars: cheaper, higher-energy batteries. In his state of the union address yesterday, President Obama called for the U.S. to be the first country to put one million electric cars on the...

While working energetically on its C30 DRIVe Electric battery-electric vehicle, Swedish carmaker Volvo has also been developing green powertrains for its larger vehicles for several years. Now, it's ready to unveil the first of these, a plug-in hybrid version of its V60 station wagon, a model not...

Initial deliveries of the 2011 Nissan Leaf battery electric car have been fitful, compared to hundreds of Chevy Volts sold each week. But Nissan's first modern mass-produced battery electric car continues to rack up accomplishments (and the company says it will be at full production by March)...

Another in our irregular series of answering questions from readers, this one from John Q of Eugene, Oregon: Question: I was wondering how an electric car provides heat and defrosting. Using batteries to generate the heat will drain them pretty fast. Maybe with the 2011 Chevrolet Volt, the internal...

The converted Audi A2 electric car which hit the headlines back in October last year by apparently driving 375 miles on a single charge has been destroyed in a warehouse fire in Berlin. While the German police investigate the cause of the fire, no official statements have been made about the fire...

Later today at the Detroit Auto Show, Chinese carmaker BYD will take the wraps off a new incarnation of the e6 crossover it's shown twice before. This time, however, it comes with an upgraded interior, a more powerful drive motor, and a price: $35,000 before incentives. The company hopes to offer...

While Toyota dominates global hybrid production, Ford was the first company to launch a hybrid SUV: the Ford Escape Hybrid, in 2004. Now, Ford is pioneering another hybrid model: the small minivan, or as Europeans call it, the people carrier. Hybrid mini-minivan Between 10 and 10:30 am today at the...

As you may have seen by now, the 2012 Ford Focus Electric was officially launched today at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas by Ford CEO Alan Mulally. At the very same time, another notable executive--Bill Ford--unveiled it in New York City. He covered the same production details that were...

General Motors announced today that it has licensed lithium-ion battery technology developed at Argonne National Laboratories, the research institution that's funded largely by the U.S. Department of Energy. The agreement allows GM to use the technology throughout its supply chain, and covers a...

Recently, we wrote about the move in the private sector to use electric and hybrid delivery trucks. Companies like FedEx and Frito Lay are tapping into benefits of greener cars — even ahead of the broader consumer market because they’re a hedge against volatile diesel prices and can pay...

Following years of claims they weren't interested in developing a battery-electric vehicle, Honda backtracked earlier this year and decided that they would produce one, with the 2012 Honda Fit EV concept finally revealed at the 2010 Los Angeles Auto Show last month. Now, Honda has announced that...

It's been a while since we checked in on the car that will likely make or break Silicon Valley electric-car startup Tesla Motors: the Model S, a five-door midsize sports luxury sedan it hopes to launch somewhere toward the end of 2012. Tesla hasn't said much about the Model S lately, but a number...

There has undoubtably been a lot of work put into battery technology in the last few years as more and more electric vehicles hit the scene. One of the current trends is to use varying numbers of lithium-ion (Li-ion) cells, similar to those you'll find in a laptop computer. They offer numerous...

It doesn't really matter whether GM sells the first Chevrolet Volt electric cars at a loss or not. The company announced yesterday that it plans to hire 1,000 new engineers over the next two years to focus exclusively on developing and expanding its work in electric-drive vehicles, everything from...

This afternoon, Honda unveiled its plans for an all-electric version of the Honda Fit subcompact hatchback to be launched globally in 2012. The announcement came at the 2010 Los Angeles Auto Show. The announcement represented a full circle of sorts, since Los Angeles was the home of many of the 300...