Electric Cars

  • Carbon fiber structural battery

    Automakers seem to be in agreement that the ‘skateboard’ location for heavy battery packs—low and wide beneath the passenger floor—is the ideal layout for electric vehicles. Decades from now that might not be the case. Researchers in Sweden have examined the possibility of using the vehicle shell as a battery casing itself—with the carbon-fiber body shell as an electrode. DON’T MISS: Carbon fiber from plants close to carbon-neutral? “If all these functions were part of a car or aircraft body, this could reduce the weight by up to 50 percent,”...

  • 2018 Tesla Model 3
    Tesla Model 3 range-efficiency edge is a serious market strength

    Although Tesla may still sometimes be finding its way in terms of how to build cars themselves, it retains a distinct advantage over pretty much every other automaker in one respect: superb power management. Buried in the company’s third-quarter 2018 financial results—hailing a...

  • Uber electric car
    Uber to bank London surcharge toward electric vehicles for its drivers

    Uber announced Tuesday that it will levy a surcharge for its ride-hailing passengers in London. The goal: to get 20,000 drivers to go all-electric by the end of 2021, on the way to make every car using its ride-hailing app an electric vehicle in the smog- and congestion-prone city by 2025. The...

  • 2018 Tesla Model 3
    Lower-cost Tesla Model 3: Does 260 miles, $46K before incentives split the difference? [Updated]

    UPDATE: Tesla originally rolled out the Model 3 Mid Range at a base price of $45,000 on 10/18. Less than six days later it's raised the price $1,000, and we've adjusted the numbers in this piece to reflect that. “We made a slight adjustment to our pricing for Model 3 following the...

  • 2019 Chevrolet Bolt EV
    GM confirms it will reach EV tax credit ceiling this year—then phaseout begins

    Beginning next April, buyers of General Motors’ electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids won’t be getting the same break on their purchase as those who buy those vehicles from any other brand. Any other brand but Tesla, that is. GM has confirmed to Green Car Reports that it will reach...

  • Dyson Automotive Manufacturing facility  -  Singapore  -  rendering
    Dyson plans to build its electric car in Singapore

    Dyson, the British maker of premium vacuum cleaners, aims to enter the electric-car arena—and it’s chosen Singapore as the global assembly site. The company confirmed that its board has ratified the decision for the company itself to construct what it calls a “purpose-built...

  • Tesla Motors production line for Tesla Model S, Fremont, California

    Last year employee parking lots overflowed at Tesla’s Fremont, California, plant. By comparing the headcount of Tesla's factory at present versus historically, it’s easy to grasp why the facility has seemed so crowded. At its heyday, Toyota and GM needed 4,400 people at Fremont. Tesla has an on-site workforce estimated to be 10,000—including some administrative staff, according to Tesla—although that's for a pace of maybe 250,000 cars annually (versus Toyota and GM's 450,000 vehicles). Even at that, not every Model 3 is assembled under the roof of the assembly plant...

  • Mercedes-Benz GLC F-Cell, 2017 Frankfurt Motor Show
    Mercedes invests in pilot program to keep fuel cells alive

    Mercedes-Benz is launching a new trial for fuel-cell cars in Germany, with aims to study real-world use patterns. Mercedes will begin leasing its GLC F-Cell fuel-cell SUVs to fleet customers in Germany for $917 a month, according to a report in Automotive News Europe (Subscription required.) No...

  • North Carolina State University fast charger is much smaller, half the cost
    New fast charger is more efficient, smaller, and half the cost

    Researchers at North Carolina State University have developed a 50-kw fast charger that they say costs half as much as conventional DC fast chargers, is more efficient, and only 1/16th the size. Instead of being mounted on concrete slabs, sometimes in two locations, with a transformer behind a...

  • Nissan prototype 60-kWh battery pack  -  Nissan Technical Center, October 2015
    Report: Battery production could offset emissions gains from electric cars

    A new report shows that emissions from producing large battery packs for electric cars could cancel out improvements from their low emissions for years. The report comes from Bloomberg New Energy Finance, which is usually optimistic about electric cars. In May, the analytic arm of the finance...

  • BMW and Nissan electric car fast-charging station
    How soon can all new-car sales realistically be electric? Take our Twitter poll

    Israel and Britain recently joined a growing list of countries that plan to phase out sales of gas and diesel cars and trucks. Most of the countries have set a target date between 2030 and 2050 to convert all new-vehicle sales to electric power. A few, such as China, have announced plans to set...

  • BMW iX3 Concept front 3/4
    BMW says 85 percent of cars will still have engines in 2030

    Once a leader in electric cars, BMW now says it expects 85 percent of its cars still to have internal combustion engines by 2030. Speaking to Australian reporters for GoAuto at the Paris auto show earlier in October, BMW board member for development Klaus Froehlich said, “A very optimistic...

  • NantEnergy batteries with solar array

    Until now, solid-state lithium-ion cells have been the likely path forward for battery technology, potentially finding their way into some production vehicles by 2025. But one other battery possibility is increasingly looking viable for the near future: zinc-air. The firm NantEnergy has made some new and exceptional claims about its latest zinc air batteries: that they can be reliably recharged thousands of times, that the tech can be extended to cars in the future, and that they already clear the $100-per-kwh manufacturing-cost barrier—right now, in 2018. CHECK OUT: Electric-car...

  • Massachusetts updates green-car parking signs at Logan Airport [CREDIT: JOHN BRIGGS]
    MA updates signs to allow electric-vehicle parking: reader success story

    Bureaucracies have some funny ways of saying they were wrong and you were right. Even if they can't tell you they made a mistake, it's nice to see them fix a problem they created. The latest bureaucracy to demonstrate this is Massport, which operates the parking garages at Boston's Logan...

  • 2018 Tesla Model 3
    Tesla removes Full Self Driving option from website for all models

    Friday marked exactly two years since Tesla announced that every one of its cars was being produced with the hardware needed for Full Self-Driving. Friday was also the first full day that Tesla removed the option from its configurator—at the same time that it introduced a new $45k Model 3 Mid...

  • VW future communicating lights
    Short(er)-range Tesla, Porsche Taycan wagon, U.S. cuts CO2: Today's Car News

    A new shorter-range Tesla Model 3 drops into the mix—but not the $35,000 model that many deposit-holders have been waiting for. Porsche will add a more utilitarian hatchback design to its upcoming Taycan electric-car lineup. And VW gives its vehicle lighting more of a message. All this and...

  • Prototype production of battery modules for BMW Group’s fifth-generation electric powertrain
    BMW sets up end-to-end battery recycling in Europe

    Teaming with a new Swedish battery supplier and a Belgian recycling company, BMW is aiming to build a fully sustainable future battery supply chain. The company announced on Monday that it formed a partnership with Northvolt, which is building Europe's largest battery factory for electric cars in...

  • Porsche Mission E Cross Turismo concept
    Porsche adds wagon to upcoming Taycan electric lineup

    Porsche announced Friday that it will expand its high-powered upcoming electric-car lineup from one model to two, with a new stretched-roof crossover hatchback joining the standard Taycan liftback. The Taycan electric sedan is a Tesla Model S competitor scheduled to go into production in 2019. It...

  • 2013 Audi TDI range

    Audi agreed on Tuesday to pay a $928 million fine to put the diesel emissions-cheating scandal behind it in its home country, Germany. The 800 million Euro fine to German authorities, consists of $923 million (795 million Euros) in profits the company made selling diesels that didn't comply with emissions standards plus the maximum fine of $5.8 million (5 million Euros), according to a Bloomberg report. German authorities have been closing in on Audi in their investigation, arresting key executives, and releasing emails that allegedly show collusion between Audi and its competitors as well as...

  • Smokestacks pollution air quality
    EPA: Cleaner power generation offset increase of vehicle emissions in 2017

    U.S. emissions of global-warming greenhouse gases fell 2.7 percent in 2017, despite the Trump administration's efforts to revive coal use in the U.S., the EPA announced on Monday. The EPA released data for 2017, showing an even larger 4.5 percent drop in emissions from power plants compared with...

  • Mazda Kai concept, 2017 Tokyo Motor Show
    2020 BMW i4, Google Maps chargers, Jaguar I-Pace efficiency, Tesla factory: Today's Car News

    Tesla acquires land in Shanghai. Jaguar releases MPGe and range numbers for its new I-Pace electric crossover. Google Maps adds electric-car charging locations. And BMW reveals details of its upcoming electric i4. All this and more on Green Car Reports. Tesla announced it has now acquired the land...

  • 2019 Jaguar I-Pace, photographed outside Tesla Store, Mount Kisco, NY
    2019 Jaguar I-Pace gets official range, MPGe ratings

    Now that it has finally delivered the first retail example of its I-Pace, Jaguar has released official range and MPGe estimates for this new luxurious electric crossover. As we reported on Monday, the I-Pace is rated at 234 miles of range, a little short of the 240 that Jaguar indicated it was...

  • 2014 Tesla Model S in China
    Tesla secures site for Chinese factory

    In the midst of escalating trade wars, Tesla is moving ahead with its plans to build a factory in China. The company announced on Wednesday that it signed a "land transfer" agreement with the Shanghai government for a 212-acre plot to build its proposed Chinese factory. The land transfer agreement...

  • Electrify America 350 kw chargers at Home Depot in Chicopee, Mass.
    Google Maps adds electric-car charging locations

    In a banner day for electric-car drivers, Google announced on Wednesday that it will add electric-car charging stations to Google Maps. The app will now show Tesla Supercharging stations as well as ChargePoint, EVgo, Blink, and SemaConnect networks in the U.S. as well as networks in Britain...

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