Electric Cars

Mercedes-Benz parent company Daimler is speeding up its shift towards electrification. The auto-maker remains on track to bolster its portfolio with 10 electric vehicles, but they’ll arrive three full years sooner than expected. The battery-powered cars are now scheduled to debut by 2022...

There are now three different vehicles powered by hydrogen fuel cells on sale in California, and we've driven them all. The 2017 Honda Clarity Fuel Cell is the first one in which we were able to forget about the powertrain and simply drive. It's the best of the three, although that won't matter...

Being a pioneer isn't easy. When you're pioneering new automotive technology, it can be challenging and sometimes costly. Just ask anyone who owned an early turbocharged sport sedan, for instance. That also applies, in some cases, to some of the first modern electric cars, and in particular the...

Never let it be said that Tesla CEO Elon Musk isn't a man of strong opinions. His tweets are the stuff of legend, his dismissals of hydrogen fuel-cell cars as "fool cells" have been consistent for many years, and if you get his attention, he will definitely tell you what he thinks. Perhaps U.K...

The 2017 Chevrolet Bolt EV is the first mass-priced electric car with more than 200 miles of range to go on sale in the U.S. That alone makes it a landmark vehicle, and has led to significant interest in the first electric car that provides comparable range to that of Tesla cars over the last nine...

The more camouflaged spy shots that emerge of a car being tested on public roads, the closer it likely is to being introduced. After seven years of the first-generation Nissan Leaf electric car, a redesign is due—some might say overdue. Now we have a second set of spy shots of the 2018 Leaf...

Next year should be a record year for sales of plug-in electric cars. A new crop of affordable electric cars with 200 miles of range or more will be available, joining this year's Chevrolet Bolt EV, including the next-generation Nissan Leaf and the mass-market Tesla Model 3. So our thoughts...

Even with recent efforts to expand it, electric-car charging infrastructure is nowhere near rivaling the ubiquity of gas stations. But what if electric cars didn't need to stop to charge? That's essentially what a new Honda research project aims to investigate. DON'T MISS: Honda Clarity EV electric...

Among German luxury brands, BMW was the first to show significant interest in electric cars. It launched its "i" sub-brand in Europe in 2013, and its plans have evolved to include adding all-electric powertrains to models within the main BMW brand in future. That is part of an effort to grow sales...

When the updated 2017 Renault Zoe was unveiled last fall at the Paris auto show, it became one of the few electric cars whose range effectively doubled over its model life. Launched in 2012 with a 22-kilowatt-hour lithium-ion battery, the five-door subcompact hatchback had an effective range of 60...

Many luxury automakers are planning new electric cars, both to meet future emissions standards and as a response to the success of Tesla. So far, though, no established automaker has discussed directly replacing an internal-combustion model with an all-electric one. But that may be exactly what...

Not all electric vehicles have wheels. Electric boats have actually been around for quite awhile, and now a California startup is trying to expand use of electric powertrains to another type of watercraft. Free Form Factory is partnering with Zero Motorcycles to use the motorcycle company's...

California is very different from the rest of the United States. All by itself, it's the sixth largest economy in the world. One eighth of all Americans live there. It's home to Silicon Valley, as well as much of the global entertainment industry, and it produces a large proportion of the nation's...

The news earlier this week that the Tesla Model 3 would skip its usual "beta" development phase came as a shock to the industry and even to Tesla fans. With no reported sitings to date of Model 3 development versions on the roads, that seemed a startling and risky thing for Tesla to do. Especially...

One-pedal driving is rather like the experience of owning an electric car: it can be hard to appreciate until you've spend time doing it. The phrase "one-pedal driving" refers to the ability of some electric cars to be driven almost entirely with the accelerator pedal alone. It's a feature much...

One of the challenges of electric cars is persuading potential buyers that they can do virtually everything that most other vehicles can. For those who live in wintry climates, that includes dealing with snow, slush, road salt, ice, and variable traction. Given the recent major snowstorms that hit...

It crops up in comments from electric-car advocates and clean-energy users fairly regularly. And it goes something like this: "Big Oil and Gas are on the verge of collapse, as clean energy and electric cars make them obsolete." Occasionally the sentiment is followed by an approving emoji. DON'T...

Charging infrastructure projects for electric cars have mostly focused on expanding the number of charging sites available to the public over the last six years. But now significant effort is also being put into increasing the power those public charging stations can provide. This is due to...

We've had a 2017 Chevrolet Bolt EV electric car in our fleet for a handful of days, and have been thinking about our impressions of the car in everyday use. While a major snowstorm cut half the days out of our test run—with a 7-foot snowdrift blocking the road to my house—we've been...

t