Electric
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Driving the 2011 Chevrolet Volt leads all sorts of people to ask you questions: passers-by, the guy at the parking garage...and sometimes, even museums. A few weeks ago, we had a Chevy Volt for review. At the time, we were asked by the Forward Thinking Museum in Manhattan not only to show its staff the car, but to let them shoot a video that puts plug-in cars into a much broader context. Specifically, why are electric cars more energy-efficient than most gasoline and diesel cars? How does recharging a plug-in car affect the electric power grid? And will we reach President Obama's goal of 1...
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Elon Musk, Bob Lutz On Red Carpet At 'Revenge of Electric Car' PremiereEvery movie has to have a premiere, and every premiere has to have a red carpet. When the red carpet is on a Manhattan sidewalk, with plenty of passers-by stopping to gawk, and many of the celebs are arriving in electric cars, things get a little more complicated. Still, last night's premiere of...
John Voelcker -
Review: 'Revenge Of The Electric Car' Optimistic, Accurate, Lacks A VillainFrom Michael Moore's Roger And Me in 1989 to Chris Paine's 2006 Who Killed The Electric Car?, there's no shortage of documentaries that portray auto-industry executives as incompetent, bumbling, short-sighted, arrogant fools. So it may be a surprise that merely five years later, two global...
John Voelcker -
Range Anxiety or Stupidity? Pushing an Electric Car to its LimitsYesterday we told you about our generally hassle-free, two-day, 520 mile round trip in a 2011 Nissan Leaf. Thanks to a succession of available rapid charging stations, a little measured driving and a few strategic detours we were able to arrive at both destination and start point without little...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
Why Californians Need A Parking Permit To Charge Electric CarsNo 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...
John Voelcker -
Are You Electric Car Ready? BMW’s New App Helps You DecideYou may recall earlier this year we wrote about an iPhone app designed to help prospective electric car buyers figure out just how big a battery pack their new electric car should have. Allowing full customization of technical parameters such as drag coefficient and vehicle weight, iEV was also a...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
It's taken as gospel by many of the people who have seen it since its 2006 release, and there's no denying its influence. "Who Killed the Electric?" seemingly stung General Motors enough that the company unveiled the Chevrolet Volt concept in 2007 and then, startled by its popularity, decided to put the range-extended electric car into limited production. Now, there's a sequel, appropriately titled "Revenge of the Electric Car," and it premieres tonight as part of Robert De Niro's Tribeca Film Festival in New York City. The paragraphs below are edited down from the press release announcing...
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2011 Nissan Leaf, 520 Miles, 2 Days: Here's HowWe 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...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
2011 Nissan Leaf Wins World Car of The YearOver the past year we’ve seen the 2011 Nissan Leaf win plenty of awards, including the accolade of European Car of The Year and even GreenCarReports’ Best Car to Buy 2011. But while its main competitor, the 2011 Chevrolet Volt, may have more awards to its name than Nissan’s first...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
Mitsubishi Prices 2012 'i' Electric Car At $27,990 Before Tax BreaksDriving electric just got cheaper, as Mitsubishi announced that its 2012 'i' electric car would be priced at just $27,990 before incentives when deliveries begin in California next January. That makes the 2012 Mitsubishi 'i' the least expensive plug-in car on sale in the U.S. market. It qualifies...
John Voelcker -
BMW Exec Trashes Electric Cars, Tax Credits at Launch of ActiveEIn the rulebook of product promotion, remembering to not say horrible things about your product has to be number one. It’s a shame BMW North America President and CEO Jim O’Donnell seems to have forgotten that fact while taking part in a public event. Speaking on Monday at an event in...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
Nissan Leaf Nismo RC Concept: New York Auto Show Live PhotosBlue light bathed the concept car in the corner before Nissan launched its 2012 Versa sedan at the 2011 New York Auto Show today. The images were so striking we thought we'd bring you a photo gallery of Nissan's electric race-car concept, just so you can see it from all angles, looking like nothing...
John Voelcker -
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, Coulomb has announced it will send electric car owners free ChargePass cards through the month of April 2011, waiving the usual sign-up fee. Coulomb is one of the oldest and most established electric vehicle infrastructure firms, being one of the firms responsible for providing charging stations to...
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Nissan’s New Electric Car Ad Zeroes In On Weird Coincidences (Video)What links a 1985 novel about a drug-addicted rich boy with the 2011 Nissan Leaf? Nothing, or something? It turns out to be both. You see, the 1985 novel Less Than Zero, later dramatized in 1987 as a film featuring a fresh-faced 22 year-old Robert Downey Jr., has a remarkably similar title to...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
BMW ActiveE Lease Price: $499 A Month For Electric 4-SeaterThe choices among electric cars just keep getting better, as BMW has now announced the lease details for the first stage of its evolution into BMW-branded electric cars. The ActiveE, an all-electric version of the 1-series, will be available for lease requests later this summer. It will be offered...
George Parrott -
BMW ActiveE Electric Car Priced At $499 Per Month, $2,250 DownElectric cars, at the moment, cost more to buy than gasoline cars of similar size and with similar features, powertrain excepted. Leases on electric cars from mass-market brands like Nissan and Chevrolet are often a little more competitive. The 2011 Nissan Leaf is $349 a month, the 2011 Chevy Volt...
John Voelcker -
Electric-Car Charging Stations Pop Up All Over, Hotels IncludedWhile 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...
John Voelcker -
2011 New York Auto Show Preview: Nissan Leaf Nismo RC ConceptIt might be just three days away from its official unveiling at the 2011 New York Auto Show, but Nissan just can’t help sharing its latest electric vehicle a little early. Called the Nissan Leaf Nismo RC - that’s Racing Competition - the all-electric race-prepared car looks a little...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
Occasionally, if something should go wrong, a Rolls-Royce will fail to proceed. So, too, will the Nissan Leaf--at least, under certain circumstances. More exactly, it will sometimes fail to start. But Nissan is fixing that with a service campaign announced today, affecting the nearly 8,000 Leafs built to date. The problem, as Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield reported on Monday, renders affected Leafs inoperable--essentially high-tech, high-value paperweights. Fortunately, Nissan says it has figured out the root cause of the problem and will be issuing a software update to fix it. Though potentially...
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Laguna Seca ReFuels Electric Car Racing, Everyone Welcome (Video)There’s something really wonderful about hearing the wind rush past your electric car accompanied by only the whine of an electric motor pushed to its very limit, tires squealing on the blacktop. If you agree with us you’ll be pleased to hear that drivers of everything from production...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
Is Your City Ready For Electric Vehicles?Ford has identified the 25 most electric vehicle (EV) ready cities in the U.S., based on the company’s latest research. The 25 cities are dotted all over the country from Hartford to Honolulu. A previous Pike research report highlighted 6 cities expected to be early EV adopters: New York, Los...
VentureBeat's GreenBeat -
Tesla V Top Gear: Top Gear’s Track Record With Electric CarsIt’s been two weeks since Californian electric automaker filed papers against the BBC’s Top Gear for libel in relation to a segment the popular entertainment show did on Tesla’s all-electric Roadster back in 2008. By now you’re probably familiar with the details of the case...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
Redesigned Audi A3 Getting New Sedan Model, Six Different Power SourcesAudi is currently working on a new generation of its A3, a preview of which we got at last month’s 2011 Geneva Motor Show in the form of the Audi A3 Sedan concept. Since then we’ve received these official sketches showing the design of the production version due early next year. While...
Viknesh Vijayenthiran -
Why Silicon Valley Won't Be Detroit For Green CarmakersWe don’t hear “death of Detroit” stories as often now as we did a year ago. When GM and Chrysler plunged into bankruptcy and the entire U.S. industry laid off tens of thousands of workers in one year, the effects on an already battered Detroit region were dire. And they led to a...
John Voelcker