Electric

Remember Nissan’s latest 2011 Leaf commercial? Asking the viewer to imagine a world where everything from your cellphone to your microwave oven was powered by gasoline, the 60-second advert played essentially questioned why many people would choose electricity over gasoline to power their...

Earlier this year we took delivery of our very own 2011 Nissan Leaf. Just like the thousands of other customers worldwide, we took our place in the queue last year and had an agonizingly long wait before we were sitting behind the wheel. But just under 3 months and 5,000 miles after driving off the...

While Nissan killed the Altima Hybrid, its sole U.S. hybrid vehicle, for 2012, the company has made a number of important upgrades to its Leaf battery electric car. For 2012, the Nissan Leaf will include as standard heated front and rear seats, plus heated steering wheel and outside mirrors...

If you’re in the market for an Electric car you’ll know that besides the obvious financial burden of paying for the car itself you probably want to budget a few thousand dollars extra to account for the installation of a dedicated electric car charging station in your home. At the...

By far the most ambitious plan to build and assemble electric cars in the U.S. comes not from General Motors or Ford, but from Nissan. Now, it may happen a little later than expected, due to the March 11 earthquake and resulting tsunami that severely damaged large portions of Japan's industrial...

The Tesla Roadster hasn't been front-page news for electric cars in a while, now that several mass-market family electric cars have launched. So as Tesla moves its focus to the upcoming Model S electric sedan, production of its first electric model is beginning to wind down as planned, so supplies...

For decades, old electric cars--those built from the 1890s to 1930 or so, when the last remnants of the industry died out--were nothing more than oddities. Tall, imposing, mostly resembling closed horse carriages, they were stately but sidelined reminders of an entirely vanished way of propulsion...

Last December we told you that the His Holiness The Pope was keen on swapping his large gas-guzzling Mercedes SUV ‘popemobile’ for a suitable electric car. Now Vatican officials have confirmed the details of Pope Benedict XVI’s latest ride: a custom-made M-Class plug-in hybrid...

Google’s head offices in Mountain View, California has just got some new neighbors, but unlike most of the other companies in the fabled silicon valley it isn’t a fresh-faced venture-funded software or green tech startup firm. It’s an automaker. Moving into offices just over the...

After several months of using a 2011 Chevy Volt and a 2011 Nissan Leaf as our sole family transport, we have a better understanding of both cars than we did in March, when I first wrote about how they compared. First to arrive at our West Sacramento home was a beautiful crystal red 2011 Volt. We...

Despite media attempts to conjure a "sales battle" between the 2011 Chevy Volt and the 2011 Nissan Leaf, both companies are selling every car they can manage to get into the showrooms. Now Chevrolet has released its first look at who is actually buying its Volt range-extended electric cars. The...

You probably already know this, but electric cars and gasoline cars are completely different beasts. In fact, concepts we’ve become accustomed to in gasoline cars such as the creep and kick-down functions of an automatic gearbox are not natively present in a electrical drivetrain - and yet...

The recent study of Mini E drivers may need to be taken with a few grains of salt.

In the modern world of smart grids, smart phones and even smart cars, the Internet can connect two seemingly unrelated objects together. Take Nissan’s 2011 Leaf. Thanks to a built-in wireless modem, the all-electric car can both receive and send data through Nissan’s Carwings portal...

If you're on the U.S. waiting list for a 2011 Nissan Leaf, we certainly hope you already have a charging station already installed in your garage. Bloomberg caught wind that some consumers are having their orders dropped temporarily until they install a plug-in charger at home and present the...

We’re less than a week away from Father’s Day - the annual celebration of what our Fathers mean to us - and sometimes an excuse for presents, trips and surprises. If your Father is an electric vehicle fan but you haven’t yet got him a present don’t worry: here’s just...

In recent years at the 24 Hours of Le Mans endurance race there is an event called the Le Mans vers le Futur that takes place before the actual race in which a number of vehicles showcasing future automotive technology takes to the famous Circuit de la Sarthe for a couple of demonstration laps...

The 2011 Nissan Leaf may have been the first all-electric mass-produced electric car from a major automaker to hit the roads, but in the first few months following its launch Nissan came under a lot of criticism for not having a more sophisticated thermally managed battery pack inside the Leaf. Now...

For its second year of production, the 2012 Chevrolet Volt range-extended electric car will come down $1,000 in price and be offered with several new features and two new colors. The list price of the 2012 Volt, including an $850 destination fee, is $39,995. That compares to $41,000 for the 2011...

Ever since we told you all about the 2012 Volvo V60 Plug-in Hyrbid Station Wagon after we were invited to Volvo’s Swedish headquarters to get a sneak peak before its 2011 Geneva Motor Show debut, most of you have been telling us one thing. You wanted it to be available in the U.S. Someone at...