charging

  • 2011 Chevrolet Volt home charging

    The transition from gasoline to plug-in hybrid and fully electric cars will admittedly be a slow one, but sometimes we wonder if our colleagues in the mainstream media would rather the transition not happen at all. At least, that’s the message we got reading an article by the usually balanced CNBC on Tuesday when it published a Reuters-sourced article bearing the headline that “Most US Homes Aren’t Capable of Charging Electric Cars" It’s all in the detail The headline suggests that the survey has concluded that most homes in the U.S. are incapable of charging electric...

  • His Royal Highness Prince Charles, Prince of Wales
    By Royal Appointment? Electric Cars Welcome in Prince of Wales’ Eco-village

    While many in the United Kingdom doubt that he will accede his mother Queen Elizabeth II to the throne and become King, HRH the Prince of Wales has never been one to shy away from helping his subjects combine quintessential British values with new technology. His latest project does exactly that...

  • Portland CHAdeMO quick-charging station (publicly accessible)
    Fast Charging Electric Cars: How Much is it Worth?

    Ask any electric car owner to name the benefits of owning an electric car and the ability to leave your house every morning with a ‘full tank’ is likely to be at the top of their list, followed closely by the fact that most electric cars can provide enough range to last more than a...

  • Inductive battery charging illustration from Volvo
    Volvo Tests Inductive Charging (Just In Time For The C30 Electric)

    EV automakers face an uphill road. Not only do they have to make great looking cars that offer all the amenities of their gas-engined equivalents, but they've also got to assuage public concerns about the EV charging infrastructure -- an infrastructure that lies largely outside their control. Now...

  • 2011 Chevrolet Volt charging port
    Need To Recharge An Electric Car? Check The Charging Station First 

    One of the liberating benefits to owning an electric car is the ability to plug in and charge up wherever there happens to be a purpose-built charging station, or indeed a standard domestic power outlet. But while most of the electric cars on sale in the U.S. today comply with the J1772 standard of...

  • 2011 Nissan Leaf at quick-charging station
    U.S. Carmakers To Japan: Don't Need Your Stinkin' Fast-Charge

    So you bought a 2011 Nissan Leaf, and paid for the optional $700 quick-charge connector. Now you're able to get an 80-percent battery recharge in just 30 minutes, albeit from very few places right now. Promising, right? Not so fast, sonny. It appears that U.S. makers of electric cars are likely to...

  • Top Gear's Jeremy Clarkson

    Uh oh, here we go again. Or not? The crew of the British car show Top Gear have been spotted in the British town of Lincoln, traveling in a pair of electric cars, the 2011 Nissan Leaf and a Peugeot iOn (which will be sold in the States as the 2012 Mitsubishi 'i'). Hosts Jeremy Clarkson and James May are sufficiently big celebrities in their home country that the sighting merited a photo story in the local newspaper. The pair had visited Lincoln seeking recharging stations for the pair of electric cars, which they were attempting to drive across the U.K. As the newspaper noted, "unfortunately...

  • 2011 Chevrolet Volt using Level 2 240-Volt charging station in Vacaville, California
    San Francisco Will Juice Your Electric Car For Free

    The city of San Francisco, California, will install electric vehicle charging stations in publicly-owned garages and at San Francisco International Airport by the end of the year that drivers can use for free until 2013. The plan involves dropping around 90 charging stations across the city in the...

  • Sign on Vacaville, California, DC fast charger for electric cars, May 2011
    What Good Is Fast-Charging For Electric Cars If It's Closed?

    Vacaville, California, has the distinction of the very first public Level 3 or DC quick charging station for electric cars to be installed in the United States. It was first activated in late May 2010, and was used very soon after for a small fleet of Mitsubishi i-MIEV models to make a trip from...

  • 1958 Plymouth Fury used in filming the movie 'Christine', photo via Wikimedia Commons
    The Father Of 'Christine' Likes His Chevy Volt Electric Car

    Who knew? Stephen King, creator of perhaps the most malevolent car ever envisioned--Christine, the homicidal 1958 Plymouth Fury of both novel and movie fame--is an electric car fan. In particular, he loves the family's 2011 Chevrolet Volt, the range-extended electric vehicle that plugs in to...

  • Scenes from dedication of electric-car charging station at Creekside Inn, Palo Alto, CA
    Electric-Car Warning: Check Your Utility Bill Carefully!

    It is apparently quite possible that the local utility company that provides the power to charge your new electric vehicle may not have "all its ducks in a row" when it comes to charging you properly for that electricity. I recently bought both a 2011 Nissan Leaf and a 2011 Chevy Volt, and well...

  • 2011 Chevrolet Volt 240V charging station
    Los Angeles Cuts Red Tape, Offers Rebates on Electric Car Charging

    In just under a week, electric vehicle owners in Los Angeles will be find that owning an electric car will have got a lot easier. As part of a program recently announced by Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, residents of the city will be able to fast-track applications to install electric...

  • 2011 Chevrolet Volt

    No one knows the ins and outs of electric-car usage like the early adopters, especially those who've already taken delivery of a 2011 Nissan Leaf or a 2011 Chevrolet Volt. (Or both.) So when a thread on required parking permits to recharge electric cars erupted in our recent article on the opening of a new public charging station in Palo Alto, California, we turned to noted electric-car advocate Chelsea Sexton to help us sort it out. In January 2003, she explains, "California passed an ordinance to prevent gasoline cars from parking in spots with electric-car chargers." "To make electric cars...

  • 2011 Nissan Leaf does 520 Miles in 2 days
    2011 Nissan Leaf, 520 Miles, 2 Days: Here's How

    We all know electric cars like the 2011 Nissan Leaf were designed to satisfy the daily driving needs of 90% of the population. For most cars, that translates to a life in or near a large metropolis, where daily commutes are between 10 and 40 miles. But with rapid charging capable of fast-charging...

  • Coulomb Technologies ChargePoint
    Earth Day: Coulomb Offers Free Electric Car Charging Passes

    If you’re an electric car owner living within the many hundreds of publicly available electric vehicle charging stations installed by Coulomb Technologies then you may be interested in what the infrastructure company has planned to celebrate Earth Day 2011. As part of the celebrations...

  • Electric-Car Charging Stations Pop Up All Over, Hotels Included

    While AllCarsElectric posts are regularly written from at least three countries, occasionally we get to cover electric-car events in our own back yard--specifically, Palo Alto, California. On Friday, we attended a ceremony to inaugurate the first electric-car charger installed at any hotel in very...

  • 2011 Nissan Leaf plugged into an EVgo quick-charging station, Texas
    First Private Electric Vehicle Charging Stations Open In Texas

    NRG Energy has opened its first eVgo direct-current electric vehicle charging station in Dallas, Texas, as part of a privately funded 70-station network in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, the company announced. The chargers are designed to be “fast-chargers,” which use a 480-volt direct...

  • Delphi wireless charging system for EVs
    Siemens Inductive Charging Testing Begins In Berlin With BMW

    German electronics company Siemens is set to begin field trials of an inductive charging system, in partnership with BMW. Inductive charging is a popular concept for charging away from home - it allows for charging without trailing cables and plugs around, and without requiring charging posts...

  • 2012 Toyota RAV4 EV Prototype

    When the RAV4 EV reaches its Phase One stage next year, and a limited-production vehicle goes on sale, it will have one key difference versus the Phase Zero prototype we drove in the San Diego area this past week. While the RAV4 EV prototypes have a proprietary charge connector from Tesla Motors, the production version next year will have an industry standard, 220-volt SAE J1772 charge connector. But there definitely won't be any quick-charging capability. A quick charger would provide a lot of additional cost and mass, Toyota decided. According to Brown, adding a quick charger to the...

  • Lithium-ion battery pack of 2011 Nissan Leaf, showing cells assembled into modules
    Battery Advance To Give Electric-Car Charging In Gas Fill-Up Time?

    An advance in battery technology could help push past one of the persistent criticisms of electric vehicles: the extended time needed to charge the battery. Researchers at the University of Illinois published a paper in Nature Nanotechnology on a change to the cathode of a battery that allows for...

  • BMW ActiveE Concept charging port
    Nanostructure Research: Electric Car Charging In 5 Minutes?

    No sooner do I discuss University of Illinois researchers who have created 3D antennas for mobile phones using nanotechnology than another group of researchers at the University of Illinois (this time at Urbana-Champaign) have developed 3D material for batteries that combines the qualities of...

  • Fast Charging 2011 Nissan Leaf
    Five Things You Can Do While Fast Charging Your Electric Car

    Level 3 fast charging is blisteringly fast. In fact, we got to try it out in the real world this week, recharging a 2011 Nissan Leaf from 30% full to 98% full in a little under 25 minutes. But while your electric car gets a quick refresh, here’s our list of five top things to keep you...

  • parking ticket  -  flickr user alicegop
    FAIL: U.K. Meter Maid Tickets Electric Car While it Charged

    Police traffic and parking control officers have an important job: they help keep traffic flowing in major cities and also ensure that cars are parked legally and safely. But local authorities in the U.K. city of Coventry are under fire after one of its parking enforcement officers ticketed an...

  • Google Maps Offer Charging Stations Information
    Need a Place to Charge Your Electric Car? Just Google It

    In the connected world of modern electric vehicles your car probably already knows where the nearest charging point is. But what happens if you’re planning a long trip and want to acquaint yourself with the area around a charging point before you go? Enter Google and its online map tools...

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