Electric Cars

Nissan unveiled a pair of prototypes based on its BladeGlider electric sports car concept in Brazil.

Nissan, alone among high-volume electric car makers, owns half of the company that makes the battery cells for its cars. Tesla Motors doesn't own any of Panasonic, which has supplied all cells to date for its three vehicles (though Panasonic owns a small part of Tesla). GM doesn't own any of LG...

The second-generation Chevy Volt set a single-month Canadian plug-in electric vehicle sales record in July with 385 sales, the equivalent of about 3500 sales in the American market. That's more than August 2013, the Volt's best-ever month in the United States, when dealerships moved 3,351 units...

Tesla plans to make the gigafactory a net-zero facility.

Last month marked a major milestone for U.S. sales of plug-in electric cars: the 100,000th Chevrolet Volt was delivered. It's the first car with a plug in any segment to reach 100,000 units, and Chevy's justified in celebrating the occasion with a press release and a bit of fanfare. Both the Volt...

Charging cards offered by electric-car makers to potential buyers act as a combination of sales tool and spur to regional and national charging networks. They get new drivers over the hump of worrying about what happens if their car runs low on battery charge. And they make the process of charging...

Tesla's vice president of business development believes other carmakers aren't taking electric cars seriously.

Following the launch of the latest Smart Fortwo hatchback, it was only a matter of time before the trendy German brand would introduce an evolution of its Fortwo Electric Drive version as well. While some electric vehicles remained desperately uncool or overpriced, the Fortwo "ED" (as Germans...

Personal automobiles have given hundreds of millions of people the great luxury of a convenient and comfortable mode of transportation. But there's no escaping that manufacturing these vehicles, driving them for 10 years or more, and then disposing of them creates pollution that has a wide range of...

Elon Musk says Tesla is developing a Model X-based minibus.

Last Friday, Tesla Motors opened the doors of its battery "gigafactory" outside Reno, Nevada, to an invited group of Tesla owners. They toured the plant and heard presentations from CEO Elon Musk, among others. It was a celebratory occasion, marked by many photos and lots of deep Tesla gossip and...

It's long been assumed that while passenger vehicles may well start to transition to electric drive over the next decade or two, heavy commercial trucks won't. The energy density of liquid hydrocarbon fuel is particularly well suited to moving vehicles that can weigh 10 times the 2-ton weight of a...

Tesla Motors has made an indelible mark on the global auto industry, launching the first volume electric cars with few if any compromises in design, performance, or features. Both the Model S in 2012 and the Model X in 2015 remain the sole such cars with more than 200 miles of range. But they're...

General Motors has always had an aggressive schedule for launching its 2017 Chevrolet Bolt EV, the industry's first mass-priced electric car with 200 miles or more of range. It was revealed as a concept just 18 months ago at the 2015 Detroit Auto Show, with a production version unveiled at this...

Mobileye will stop supplying Tesla when its current contract expires.

By now, the Tesla Supercharger network has provided a superb case study showing the importance of a comprehensive nationwide network of DC fast-charging sites to make electric cars practical for long-distance trips. While the competing CHAdeMO and Combined Charging System (CCS) standards are...

Sales of plug-in electric cars are not evenly distributed across the U.S. by any means. California, with its pioneering zero-emission vehicle sales requirements, has always occupied an outsize place in the sales charts. Not only is it the most populous state in the union, with 39 million residents...

If it's built out to the full size in the original plans, the Tesla gigafactory outside Reno, Nevada, will cover 10 million square feet. That's the equivalent of more than 260 U.S. football fields, which would make it one of the largest buildings in the world. Yesterday, Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk...

Volkswagen may build an electric car in North America beginning in 2020.

We know that Audi, along with BMW, is convinced that the luxury car market must include high-performance battery-electric vehicles. And we know that VW Group's luxury brand will launch a sporty and all-electric crossover utility vehicle, to be called simply the Audi e-tron, for 2018. What we hadn't...