battery pack

CODA Automotive, builder of electric cars and batteries, is diversifying its manufacturing operations, which had previously been based mostly in China. The company says it will be opening a lithium-ion battery factory in Ohio that could add more than 1,000 jobs to the local area.The creation of so...

BMW's chief executive officer, Norbert Reithofer, has confirmed that the company's ActiveHybrid 5 sedan will go on sale as early as next year. Reithofer told shareholders yesterday at BMW's annual meeting that the car it showed at the Geneva Motor Show in March as the BMW Concept 5-Series...

A survey conducted by MBA students at the University of Michigan shows that contrary to popular belief, a large percentage of potential electric vehicle buyers would be willing to trade off vehicle range for price. The survey, released by Norwegian based electric car company Think, appears to have...

Toyota has come under some fire from electric-vehicle enthusiasts for what some perceive as a grudging, halfhearted approach to building vehicles that plug in. Its first U.S.-market plug-in vehicle--not including a thousand or so RAV4 electric crossovers a decade ago--will be the 2012 Toyota Prius...

We've been thinking a lot about the prototype 2012 Toyota Prius Plug-In Hybrid since our test drive of a prototype last month. And about the rest of the plug-in cars that will come to market over the next two years. To our surprise, we decided we don't think buyers will directly compare the Prius...

GM has been talking about the 2011 Chevrolet Volt for three and a half years now. After absorbing an enormous amount of Volt propaganda, we've learned that subtle shifts in message can be important. A conference call yesterday revealed what we suspect will become a main marketing message for the...

Former President Bill Clinton recently visited social network digg.com  for a special Earth Day interview that touched on electric-vehicle policy and legislation. He answered user questions about many ecological and environmental topics--including third-world development and global warming--as...

The 2011 Chevrolet Volt extended-range electric car will offer a capability that General Motors hasn't previously discussed: a "Mountain Mode" that the driver can select if he knows that he will be climbing a long hill. GM's executive director of powertrain engineering Larry Nitz revealed the new...

It's almost an article of faith in the auto industry that electric cars will require huge subsidies in their initial years. Certainly Toyota is widely assumed to have put tens of billions of dollars into its hybrid-electric vehicle program before it started to cover its costs. Never shy of taking a...

While Chinese car company BYD exhibited its E6 all-electric crossover at the Detroit Auto Show last January, they've otherwise been fairly quite of late. Now comes word that the company has chosen downtown Los Angeles as the location for its U.S. headquarters. Friday, California governor Arnold...

Sadly, we weren't able to cover the Beijing Motor Show, which opened last week. It's too bad, too, because China is on track to become the world's largest single car market, its fuel efficiency regulations are far tougher than those of the U.S., and its industrial policy for the auto sector focuses...

This past Monday, the electric-vehicle infrastructure provider Better Place held a press conference in Tokyo at the site of its first completed battery-swap station to be put into regular usage, in the Ropongi Hills area. Together with Nihon Kotsu, Tokyo's largest taxi company, the company will...

Yesterday, we published a piece called Five Myths About Electric Cars, Courtesy of Think, whose CEO Richard Canny sent them to us. Today we have five more, to finish off his list of 10 myths. Below is the second half of Canny's list (which is why it begins with # 6), along with our assessment of...

We write a lot about the 2011 Chevrolet Volt extended-range electric vehicle here. It's a radical new car, GM's first electric car since the late EV1, and it'll be in dealerships in just six months. But GM has another electric car coming next year as well. It's the 2012 Opel Ampera. Ummmm, what's...

Last Thursday was the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, and the CEO of one electric-car maker took the occasion to speak out on some of the popular myths around the manufacturing and use of electric vehicles. Richard Canny, who runs the recently refinanced Think, published a list of "top 10 EV myths...

The 2011 Fisker Karma will be the world's first plug-in hybrid luxury sports sedan. At a price of $87,400 before tax credits, it's not surprising that the company wants to get the car exactly right before exposing it to the glare of publicity. But Fisker is taking an unusual tack: They're touring...

While the Toyota Prius is the world's most popular hybrid vehicle--with well over 1.5 million sold globally since 1997--it's become almost an accepted part of the automotive landscape. And with plug-in vehicles seen as the next big thing, will the Prius fade away? Not if Toyota has anything to say...

It must be something taxi-ish in the air. Last week, London got its first all-electric black cab to test (with rear wheels that steer, to boot), and now today Volkswagen has unveiled its own concept for an electrically powered taxi. The Volkswagen Milano Taxi concept is a compact minivan with many...

One of the nice things about being part of a larger network is access to other sites' content. In this case, we're pleased to be able to point ACE readers toward a drive report of a prototype 2012 Toyota Prius Plug-In Hybrid from our sister site GreenCarReports.com. The 2012 Prius Plug-In will be...

It's been one of the most-asked questions about the 2011 Chevrolet Volt extended-range electric car: So what kind of gas mileage will it get? Despite confusion around Chevy's claim of 230 miles per gallon, what people wanted to know was simple: After the battery is depleted, when the car's...