Electric

What comes first? The electric car or the charging point? Of course it depends on who you ask. Generally if you’re an existing electric car owner the answer is likely to be the former. If you’re a government official, prospective electric car owner or automaker the answer is likely to...

Back to the Future may have been right: The cars of tomorrow will be powered by capacitors (they will not, presumably, be able to time-travel). At least, that’s what Tesla CEO Elon Musk said at yesterday’s Cleantech Forum in San Francisco, unleashing a torrent of speculation that the...

Does your car have an app for that? If Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk has his way, it will. The electric-car maker’s CEO said at a conference today in San Francisco that the much-hyped Model S electric sedan will support third-party apps and text-to-voice capabilities. Musk made the announcement...

Just a few months in and we’re already hearing stories of electric car owners getting stranded as their new electric cars ‘suddenly’ run out of power. We’ve already examined the reasons behind why two 2011 Nissan Leaf drivers recently found themselves stranded without...

Should electric cars make noise? It’s one of the most contentious arguments in the electric vehicle world today, with passionate cases made on both sides for and against warning systems designed to announce the presence of a plug-in car to pedestrians. But early reports coming out of a recent...

Con men are well known for their ability to sell their victims fake goods, extract money or even con them out of their homes. But con men traditionally prey on individuals, concentrating on the vulnerable, naive or greedy. So just how did con men convince an automotive giant to hand over nearly...

It was the film that many electric car advocates cite as the reason they drive electric, but now electric car “who done it?” documentary Who Killed the Electric Car? has a sequel: Revenge of the Electric Car. And as the film’s director Chris Paine tells us on the ROTEC website...

Some things about the 2011 Chevrolet Volt we liked, and there were a few that puzzled us. But GM's innovative range-extended electric car also has its share of annoyances. We found several features irritating, or (to be more diplomatic) perhaps not-quite-entirely-thought-through yet. That's...

Every new car has a few teething problems, but a few reports of Nissan's all-electric Leaf running out of charge prematurely hasn't helped the age-old stereotype that electric cars will leave their owners stranded without power. But are these incidents as rare as the reports suggest and what...

As gas prices rise, electric cars look better and better. But any chances manufacturers had the last time gas hit $4 a gallon were extinguished thanks to the 2008 recession, which made electric vehicles’ high upfront costs unpalatable. Now it looks like they’ll have a second chance to...

The last we heard of Pininfarina and its Bluecar electric vehicle was that the company was looking to start production but a lack of financial support meant the project was never able to pass the concept stage. That was almost two years ago, however. Fast forward to today and we have news that...

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...

What happens when you give an Italian design studio free reign to create an electric car wearing one of Italy's most celebrated badges? You get the Abarth ScorpION concept, by IED. Unusually the ScorpION wasn't present on Abarth's own stand amongst the hotted-up Fiat 500s and a single seater series...

An open policy of reverse engineering, doors that fall off and shady sales practices are hardly the things you’d expect of an automaker trying to make it into the U.S. market. But as newly surfaced diplomatic cables published on Internet whistle-blowing site WikiLeaks show, the battery firm...

Is it a car? Is it a scooter? No: It's a Twizy, which could be considered a combination of the two. If you're following the world of electric cars with a keen eye then you'll no doubt be aware that French manufacturer Renault is taking electric vehicles quite seriously, just like its Japanese...

In the past few years we’ve seen electric charge stations pop up everywhere from gas stations to electronics stores and banks. But now electric car owners in the Pacific Northwest have a new place to charge: the grocery store. Enter Fred Meyer Store. Based in Portland Oregon, the firm has...

Yesterday Tesla Motors Vice President of Worldwide Sales and Ownership Experience George Blankenship wrote an update on the upcoming Model S electric sedan on the company blog. Alongside an update on the alpha testing of Tesla’s much anticipated seven seat sedan, Blankenship outlined the...

It may be the first full scale, all-electric production car from a major automaker to be sold in the U.S. but Nissan hasn’t exactly been quick to get it into the hands of customers. That should change however with the announcement that the Japanese factory responsible for making the five-seat...

If you read our guest post by actor, TV presenter and electric car convert Robert Llewellyn, you may have noticed his mention of a little electric microbus by the name of "Mia". Sitting in the middle of halls 4 and 5 with major manufacturers like Honda, Toyota, Renault and Ferrari in all...

We all know cars like the 2011 Nissan Leaf feature smart GPS systems capable of locating the nearest official electric car charging stations, but what happens when you combine the power of a social network with the need to plug your electric car in? Enter PlugShare, a new crowd-sourced way to find...