Electric

The long wait is over. At least, it soon will be. At an event at General Motors’ Detroit Hamtramck facility which was streamed live on the Internet, everyone from government officials and GM board members down to the factory workers responsible for manufacturing the extended range electric...

Audi is demonstrating the use of solar energy for future mobility by converting the roof of one of its factories in Ingolstadt, Germany to solar panels. Here, Audi e-tron models will in future have their batteries charged with current obtained directly from the photovoltaic equipment installed on...

If like us, you were waiting with baited breath for the official EPA rating for the 2011 Chevrolet Volt you’ll have heard that the day before Thanksgiving Chevrolet announced the official figures were back for its first plug-in range-extended electric car. But unlike the 2011 Nissan...

The main thing to understand about the Toyota Prius Plug-In Hybrid is that it's not an "electric car" as many people use the term. Yes, it plugs in to any electric socket to recharge the 5.2-kilowatt-hour lithium-ion battery pack. And, yes, its Hybrid Synergy Drive system uses electric torque...

A few months ago we reported that the diminutive Think City had snatched the top spot as the world’s best-selling city EV with over 2,500 vehicles now on the road. But that claim is now dwarfed by Mitsubishi, which last week celebrated the 5,000th i-Miev electric car to roll off its Japanese...

The 2011 Nissan Leaf all-electric car has been designated as Europe's 2011 Car of the Year, according to reports in Autocar and other media outlets. While the Leaf won our GreenCarReports 2011 Best Car To Buy award, the bulk of similar U.S. awards went instead to the 2011 Chevrolet Volt...

Depending on your demographic, the new PlayStation 3 Gran Turismo 5 (GT5) video game is either your single most essential purchase this year, or a completely baffling piece of technology that you'll probably never buy. Ironically, the same could be said for the current wave of electric cars we've...

Psh. Plugs. They’re, like, so 2008. There’s been a surge of attention over the last year towards products that that can charge your smartphone wirelessly, like the devices PowerMat makes. Just set it down on the charging mat and let your phone juice up. But according to a new report...

The shenanigans continue. Just this week the Nissan LEAF was rated at 99 mpg-equivalent by the EPA, raising the ire of our own John Voelcker--and justifiably so. Today, the Volt gets similar treatment and a similar rating, but only in EV mode. Add in the gas-only mode's 37 mpg rating and the...

How do you go from selling clothes to electric cars? George Blankenship, Tesla’s Vice President of Design and Store Development knows. A 20-year veteran of global clothing store GAP and the man responsible for Apple’s successful retail stores, Blankenship jokes that these previous jobs...

Last week at the 2010 Los Angeles Auto Show, we announced that the 2011 Nissan Leaf electric car was the winner of the GreenCarReports 2011 Best Car To Buy award. That same week, a flurry of other media outlets almost uniformly gave their "car of year" awards to the 2011 Chevrolet Volt...

Earlier this week Nissan announced that it had finally received its EPA official ratings for the 2011 Nissan Leaf. Earlier this week our John Voelcker had a lot to say on its 99MPGe figure, indicating the equivalent miles-per-gallon fuel consumption of a car which runs on electricity. Yes, we know...

In 2011 a crack task force was sent to the United States by a Japanese manufacturer for a car that's making headlines. These men were promptly trained to be experts in their field. Today, wanted by thousands of owners, they survive as a rapid response unit. If you have a problem, if no one else can...

Startup electric-car company Coda Automotive didn't hold a press conference at the 2010 Los Angeles Auto Show last week, but they did exhibit their car for the first time. Under the theme "Zen meets Tech," their booth featured a bright yellow 2011 Coda Sedan in the center, next to a full-size model...

Let’s face it: Google loves its green cars. Its also home to some of the best tech-savvy engineers in the world. Engineers who love their tech and love to innovate. So what better way to put a new electric car through its paces than make it part of Google’s GFleet - a pool of cars the...

It can't have been a particular easy 2010 Los Angeles Auto Show for Coda Autmotive's newly minted interim CEO, Steven "Mac" Heller. Just one day before Coda hosted a reception at its new "Zen meets Tech" display booth at the greenest of all U.S. auto shows, the startup electric car company...

Just how fuel efficient is an electric car? That’s been the question facing the EPA for months as it has battled the ratings system to give consumers a realistic and useful way of comparing electric cars against gasoline counterparts. Now we know. The EPA has decreed that the 2011 Nissan Leaf...

After several years of taunting and many months of speculation, the 2010 Los Angeles Auto Show is finally the venue chosen for Mitsubishi to show off their U.S.-specification 'i' electric car to an expecting public. We've featured the Japanese-spec 'i' several times, as the company has shipped...

You have to feel a little sorry for CODA automotive. A few months ago the Santa Monica firm was striding towards a December launch of its 2011 Sedan. Then as a prequel to announcing its first all-electric car would be delayed by nearly 9 months its Senior VP of Sales and Marketing left, closely...

It was the first electric car sold in volume anywhere in the world, starting more than a year ago, and now the 2012 Mitsubishi "i" is officially coming to the U.S. market. The U.S. version was unveiled on Thursday at the 2010 Los Angeles Auto Show, though Mitsubishi provided few new details on how...