Electric Cars

Radically new powertrains are widely assumed to lose money for the companies that launch them. Toyota's hybrid-electric system, launched in Japan in 1997, likely didn't break even until sometime after the 2004 launch of the second-generation Prius. Long-range battery-electric vehicles are the same...

The big new debuts at the 2018 Detroit auto show are largely pickup trucks, one of them being the new mid-size 2019 Ford Ranger. Ford also introduced a new Bullitt Mustang, honoring the 51st anniversary of the legendary 1968 movie, and a high-performance ST version of the Edge crossover. (Is it the...

Tesla can now add another notch to its sales board. Rhode Island will allow the direct sale of Teslas and has issued a state dealer license to the company to open a dealer in Warwick. Additionally, the city itself issued its own license to the electric-vehicle manufacturer, which plans to take over...

Electric cars still cost significantly more to buy than gasoline-powered vehicles of the same size and capabilities. But cars that plug in are almost always cheaper to run per mile, often by a significant multiple. A study released Thursday has quantified those differences, comparing the...

Juxtaposed against a growing electric-vehicle market in China and increasingly stringent global carbon-emission limits, a survey by KPMG has revealed a majority of global auto executives believe electric vehicles are a fool's errand. Those executives believe electric cars will eventually be...

The first member of Audi's forthcoming wave of electric cars is expected to start landing in European driveways this fall, possibly neck and neck with the Jaguar I-Pace. The all-electric Audi e-tron SUV will have dimensions similar to the Audi Q5 SUV and should offer enough charge from its...

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has aspirations of vertically integrating his companies as much as possible, trying to avoid traditional suppliers wherever he can. While Tesla has been successful in developing things like their electric motors in-house, the company still relies on others for many of the...

The idea of an all-electric Corvette is either either a wonderful marriage of American history and electric performance or complete sacrilege. Love it or hate it, it's now a reality. A company called Genovation rolled out the creation, the Genovation Extreme Electric (GXE), at the 2018 Consumer...

Birthed from the uncommon alliance between watch company Swatch and Mercedes-Benz, Smart's goal was to bring a stylish city car to the masses with a level of personalization not seen in other models. The first Fortwo rolled off the line at Smartville (in Hambach, France) almost 20 years ago, but it...

Though generally mum on details, Porsche has been trickling out tidbits on its forthcoming MIssion E electric sedan since it first unveiled the concept at the 2015 Frankfurt Motor Show. Porsche let slip another detail in late December. It had already revealed a claimed 200-mile recharge within 15...

Mazda's famed rotary engine may spin once again. The automaker confirmed the development of a range-extending rotary engine with Toyota for use in a shared future project. Toyota revealed the e-Palette concept on Monday at the 2018 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The vehicle, a...

Updates to conventional cars come in a predictable pattern. Once a new model is launched, it gets only minor tweaks to features, prices, and paint colors for two or three years. Then in the third or fourth year, it gets what the industry calls a "mid-cycle refresh": some updated sheetmetal, perhaps...

It's 41 degrees F outside. Your electric car, rated for 100 miles, has been charging all night in the cold. Ahead of you lies a 80-mile drive. How confident are you that you'll make it to your destination? What if you want to set your climate control to a comfortable 70 degrees F? Germany's...

It's well known that a battery-electric version of the Kia Niro will join the lineup soon, completing a range that now comprises the Niro Hybrid and the recently launched plug-in hybrid. Most observers had assumed the Niro EV would use the same underpinnings as its corporate sibling the Hyundai...

Norway was one of the earliest nations to set a coherent and broad-based national plan to cut its carbon emissions, and then stick to it. For road transport, it plans to phase out sales of cars with internal-combustion engines by 2025 using a variety of carrots (financial incentives and special...

As China stares down climate change and smog alerts in numerous cities, the central government has extended its tax rebates for hybrid and electric vehicles for another three years. Announced on December 27, the move is one of many recently that will eventually see traditional internal-combustion...

It was clear late last year that the number of plug-in electric cars sold in the U.S. during 2017 would set a new record. December is always a strong sales month for all vehicles, and dealerships across the country have rushed to deliver new cars, crossovers, and trucks to hit their year-end...

Amidst all the coverage on Wednesday of the Tesla Model 3 production numbers, we realized we'd forgotten one piece of the Model 3 saga. That would be the official EPA range and efficiency ratings for the 2017 Tesla Model 3 Long Range version. Those were issued at the end of November, and they...

As with any innovation, coverage of plug-in electric cars by mainstream media has been, shall we say, variable. Seven years after the first Nissan Leaf and Chevrolet Volt were delivered to their buyers in December 2010, misconceptions and misinformation abound. Technology is often not a strong suit...

We tend to take batteries for granted. Day after day, we recharge batteries and expect them to work without giving a thought to how they work or to their state of health. But Akira Yoshino is different. He's one of the pioneers of lithium-ion battery technology. DON'T MISS: Lithium-ion battery...