Electric

If you drive an electric car on a daily basis, the chances are your car has more than enough range to tackle the daily commute on a single charge, so charging at work isn't a concern. Unless that is, you’re one of the few to drive well beyond the range of a round trip, and already have a...

There are currently 10,000 or so publicly-available electric car charging stations in the U.S., in addition to countless private charging stations in homes and businesses across the nation. The current number of charging stations in the U.S. today makes electric cars trump all other...

When General Motors began producing the Chevrolet Volt in 2010, many staunch electric car fans dismissed it, saying its on-board gasoline engine meant it was only a hybrid, not a true electric car. With sixty-three percent of all Chevrolet Volt trips to date being made in electric-only mode, most...

Range anxiety, or the fear that an electric car will run out of charge before you reach your destination. is a real and present fear for many first-time electric car drivers and buyers. Even though research clearly shows that present electric cars can satisfy the requirements of 95 percent of all...

According to a recent, very peppy General Motors ad campaign, many Chevrolet Volt owners are brimming with enthusiasm about their plug-in hybrid. Then again, having Chevy Volt owners evangelize about their cars in an ad designed to sell the plug-in hybrid is hardly a fair yardstick to gauge how...

Driving pre-production prototypes of new electric cars is part of life here at GreenCarReports, as it enables us to give you the best possible evaluation of an up-coming new car before it hits the dealer lots. Recently however, we got a chance to sit behind the wheel again of the Volkswagen Golf...

Compared with gasoline cars, electric cars are cheap to refuel, especially when charged at night using specialist electric car rates. Designed to encourage the charging of electric vehicles at night time when grid demand is naturally lower, electric car rates are substantially cheaper per...

Although Audi has no production plans as yet for its A3 e-tron electric car, the automaker is still working hard to promote electric cars through its small A3 e-tron test fleet. Last month, Audi released a video in which we met some of its e-Pilots: the lucky few Audi employees chosen to put the A3...

It’s official: not only does the 2013 Ford C-Max Energi Plug-in hybrid travel further in all-electric mode than the 2012 Toyota Prius Plug-in hybrid, but it will cost less too. As Ford detailed last night, its first plug-in hybrid will retail for $33,750, has a combined gasoline + electric...

The Nissan Leaf may have gone on sale in December 2010, but later this year, production of Nissan’s all-electric hatchback will start for the first time in Smyrna, Tennessee. We’ve been looking forward to the 2013 Nissan Leaf for some time, with hints from Nissan that...

Although electric cars are very energy efficient, electric car battery packs can’t store as much energy as a tank full of gasoline, resulting in much shorter driving range between fill-ups than a gas car. At present, engineers around the world are working on the problem, developing everything...

One of the reasons people make the switch from a gasoline car to an electric car is to benefit from the reduced running costs. With some careful planning -- and special time of use tariffs that make night-time electricity cheaper -- charging an electric car can be pretty cheap. But what if you...

More than two months after a few Nissan Leafs in Arizona began to lose capacity bars in the extreme heat and suffer premature battery aging, Nissan has started formal investigations into the issue. While being interviewed over the telephone by Arizona’s KPHO 5 station in Phoenix, Mark Perry...

One of the most common complaints we get at GreenCarReports is that we refer to the 2012 Chevrolet Volt as an electric car. Because it has a range-extending gasoline engine, some say, it is only a plug-in hybrid and therefore not worthy to be classed as an electric car. As we’ve illustrated...

Plugging an electric car into a charging station might seem like a simple process, but sometimes even the simplest of processes can go wrong. Over the weekend, we heard reports of several cases of Nissan Leaf owners whose Leafs had sustained damage after charging at GE WattStation Level 2 charging...

If you drive an electric car, you’ll be familiar with the frustration that occurs when you arrive at a charging station to find you can’t use it because you don’t have the correct smart card, key, or dongle. For those without the correct card, some charging providers can unlock a...

You know the score: you’re running late for a meeting, dinner date or flight, and need to find somewhere to charge your electric car while you’re gone. So you head to the nearest parking garage where you know there’s free electric car charging, park up, plug in and head off. But...

It officially ended production last year, but the iconic Tesla Roadster is still being developed and tweaked thanks to a few enterprising Tesla owners and fans. The latest must-have for any Tesla Roadster? A small adaptor that allows Tesla Roadster owners to charge their cars at any public J-1772...

As battery technology improves, the cost of producing battery packs drops, and the number of electric cars on the road increases, it’s pretty reasonable to expect the sticker price of electric cars to drop in the coming years. But how much will they drop by, and how quickly? How much, for...

In the automotive world, there are automakers who ignore plug-in vehicle technology, those who experiment with it, those who do it because they have to, and those for whom it is part of the company future. With its 2012 i electric minicar already on sale in the U.S., and its Outlander plug-in...