Electric

Tucked away in a little corner just off Hall 6 at the 2011 Geneva Motor Show, something weird and frightening lurked. Hiding behind the shiny stands of Kia and Smart and sitting in what looked like a poorly-carpeted entrance foyer, a collection of electric motoring misfits vied for the attention of...

During the Detroit Auto Show in January, we visited the Think electric-car assembly plant in Elkhart, Indiana. It's not necessarily a place you'd expect to find electric cars being put together, but the rows of electric two-seat hatchbacks in blue, red, and black turned out to be surprisingly...

To battery swap or fast-charge? That’s the question facing automakers worldwide as they decide on the best standard to adopt to charge the latest generation of electric cars. But just like the early days of video cassettes, a standard war is waging in which there can only be one winner. And...

The Smart brand has enjoyed modest success in the U.S. since its launch here back in 2007 but with a lack of any new models or updates, the oddly-designed minicar brand has fallen largely off the radar of late. Furthermore, even with all the hoopla surrounding electric vehicles at the moment...

You just never know what you'll hear at conferences. You might, for instance, hear Nissan America's director of product planning, Mark Perry, casually mention that the Nissan Leaf electric car now permits Level II 240-Volt charging at 3.3 kilowatts--"and we'll raise that in a year or so." In other...

by Robert Llewellyn I was only there for one day, and I'm still recovering; car shows are fairly energy sapping events. Everyone I met in Halle 7 said the same thing, "Oh, Geneva is the best one. It's not too big, you can get around and see everything." Remind me never to go to the really big ones...

German outfit Irmscher has just unveiled its latest rival to the Caterham and Ariel Atom set--but with a green flavor--the new 7 Selectra electric roadster concept. Making its debut this week at the 2011 Geneva Motor Show, the 7 Selectra shares the familiar ‘Lotus 7’ roadster body with...

Competition is heating up in the electric car sector, and the next few years will be a challenging testing ground for startups looking to gain a foothold among consumers as more and more major automakers launch electric and hybrid cars. Some startups have lofty ambitions. Electric car startup Coda...

Democracy can be a messy and ugly thing to watch in practice. Especially when it's being pointed toward carmakers, which aren't often the subject of mass protests pointed toward their future product lines. This morning, we received an e-mail with a link to a Causes page urging Mitsubishi not to...

Chevrolet's Volt has only been on sale for a short while but sales are respectable and Chevrolet have pulled out all the stops to build a quality product and bridge the technology gap between the vehicles that everyone is used to and the new generation of electric cars. In Europe, General Motors'...

Three years after it shipped its first production Roadsters, Tesla Motors is on the brink of launching its 2012 Model S luxury sedan. In preparation, it has announced a nationwide tour, giving eager fans and reservation holders a chance to get up close and personal with the car everyone has been...

There are very few vehicles so instantly recognisable world-wide as Volkswagen’s iconic VW microbus. But while examples of the rear-engined classic have unofficially been receiving electric drivetrain transplants for decades courtesy of electric vehicle devotees, we haven’t seen an...

An all-electric Rolls-Royce Phantom. Just think about it: If the engineers do their jobs properly, the occupants should sense absolutely no difference in the near-silent, creamy smooth surge of power that wafts them from estate to yacht, or factory to mansion. And now we have video, courtesy of...

Cooperation between automotive brands is hardly new, but on the face of it the latest joint automotive project between the owner of luxury car maker Mercedes-Benz and an upstart Chinese battery firm best known for missing its own deadlines isn't that obvious. Peel back the layers however and it...

Mitsubishi is currently working on a new global small car positioned below its Colt hatchback and scheduled to enter production at a newly erected plant in Thailand in March of 2012. We first heard about the project late last year but at this week’s 2011 Geneva Motor Show the Japanese...

The Geneva motor show has always been known for its green vehicles, but electric cars played a greater part than ever this year. French marque Renault was one of the main players with its range of four production electric vehicles. As part of the "Papillon Vert" (Green Butterfly) exhibition...

The automotive world is, it seems, a very strange place. Less than a month after Hyundai admitted it had delayed the 2011 Sonata Hybrid launch in the U.S. to remove a feature that let the driver disable its virtual engine sound at speeds below 12 miles per hour, Nissan Europe has confirmed that it...

Google said today it had invested in a startup called Transphorm, whose power-conversion efficiency technology could some day help create more efficient electric cars. The company’s technology can reduce by up to 90 percent the power lost when one form of energy is converted to the other...

What’s better for a new brand of car than a bunch of A-list celebrities choosing it as the vehicle of choice around Hollywood? For BMW, the answer is simple: A starring role in the next blockbuster. While it may look more like the futuristic car driven by Chief John Anderton in the 2002...

Dozens, even hundreds, of different models get recalled each year by their makers to address defects or potential problems. Most pass unnoticed, except to the owners who get letters in the mail asking them to bring their vehicle back to the dealer. But three recalls in as many months isn't a...