Electric Cars
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It's no secret among owners of the Chevy Volt range-extended electric car that the innovative car's advertising and marketing has been muddled at best. Now, with a new 2016 Volt to be unveiled next January, Chevrolet's recently-arrived global chief marketing officer promises that a thorough overhaul is coming. DON'T MISS: Three Years Later, Most Consumers Don't Understand The Chevy Volt That executive, Tim Mahoney, may be best-known in the business for creating the memorable campaign, "Love. It's What Makes A Subaru A Subaru." Owners to evangelize He told trade journal Automotive News that...
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2016 Chevrolet Volt To Debut At Detroit Show, First Teaser Photo ReleasedGeneral Motors confirmed this morning that the revised 2016 Chevrolet Volt range-extended electric car will be released at next January's Detroit Auto Show. And the company released the first teaser image of the car, showing a more rounded rear to the liftgate of what will likely continue as a...
John Voelcker -
Nissan And Mitsubishi To Join Forces On Low-Cost Electric MinicarMitsubishi was the earliest maker to launch a modern battery-electric small car and sell it in volume, and Nissan has emerged as by far the world's highest-volume seller of electric cars. Now the two makers have announced they're teaming up to develop an inexpensive electric minicar. According to...
John Voelcker -
Toyota, Honda, Hyundai Fuel-Cell Cars: How Many Will Be Sold?With almost 250,000 plug-in electric cars on U.S. roads--and double that number globally--electric vehicles are starting to establish a small foothold in the market. More than 10,000 a month were sold this past May, June, and July. But with hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles now offered by Hyundai, and...
John Voelcker -
Tesla Resolves Chinese Trademark Fight 'Completely, Amicably'Is this the end of Tesla's Chinese trademark battle?
Stephen Edelstein -
What's Inside Chevrolet Volt Battery Pack And Drivetrain? Video Teardown Shows AllThere's a childish pleasure in seeing something disassembled to its component parts, whether it's a jigsaw puzzle, Lego set or an entire car. The Chevrolet Volt is new enough that you're unlikely to see too many broken up at scrapyards right now, but crash-damaged ones still give some individuals...
Antony Ingram -
Audi and Volkswagen will undertake a carbon offset program to negate emissions.
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The Challenge For Electric-Car Sales Is Car Dealers, AgainCar dealers maximize their profits by selling the highest number of cars at the highest possible prices in the least possible time. Plug-in electric cars are unfamiliar to most buyers, and require more explanation--sometimes a great deal more--along with specific types of support during and after...
John Voelcker -
FINAL UPDATE: Plug-In Electric Car Sales In July: Leaf, Volt Both Do WellSales of plug-in electric cars in the U.S. continued their rise in July, as Nissan delivered more than 3,000 Leaf battery electric cars and Chevy more than 2,000 Volt range-extended electrics. It's was only the second time that the two cars together have sold more than 5,000 units in a single...
John Voelcker -
Plug-in Electric Car Sales In Canada, Jul 2014: Volt Victorious, Leaf LoomsThe Chevrolet Volt range-extended electric car remains Canada's plug-in sales champion, but the Nissan Leaf battery-electric--the best-selling electric car in history--is coming up fast in its rear-view mirror As consistently as the Toyota Camry tops the U.S. car sales charts, the Chevy Volt leads...
Matthew Klippenstein -
Tesla Needs More Office Space Too (It's Not Just The Gigafactory)It wasn't so long ago--not quite four years, actually--that Tesla's new headquarters and office complex in the foothills of Palo Alto, California, seemed a big and audacious gamble. My, how times change. With its factory in nearby Fremont cranking out several hundred Model S electric cars a week...
John Voelcker -
When Will Electric Cars Compete in the Mainstream Market?Electric-car advocates often take it as an article of faith that electric propulsion will one day compete directly with vehicles powered by fossil fuels. Many would go further, arguing that electric cars are already competitive with those using an internal-combustion engine, or ICE, in the consumer...
John Briggs -
Improving the modern electric drivetrain isn't easy, but it's certainly worthwhile. It's rewarding too, for any one entering the Google and IEEE 'Littlebox Challenge'--a competition to design a smaller, high power density inverter. The prize? One million dollars. ALSO SEE: When Will Electric Cars Compete In The Mainstream? The idea behind the competition is mainly to reduce the size of inverters, according to Green Car Congress (via Charged EVs). At the moment, the inverter in a Fiat 500e electric car has a volume of about five liters. In the Prius, it's around 5.4 liters. That makes...
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CA Tesla Owner Calculates That UberX Is Cheaper Than Electric CarOne owner calculates that he's saving money by leaving his Tesla Roadster parked.
Stephen Edelstein -
Fisker Karma Finnish Production To Resume Following Fixes, New Model LaterThe new owners of the Fisker luxury car brand will resume production of the Karma range-extended electric sedan initially at a contractor's factory in Finland--but not until the company has fixed "about 250 bugs" in the vehicle. The news came as executives of Wanxiang, China's largest auto parts...
John Voelcker -
Tesla: 8,763 Cars Built, 7,579 Sold, 'Potential' Nevada Gigafactory Ground Broken: Q2 Earnings ReportTesla Motors built 8,763 Model S electric cars and delivered 7,579 of them to customers during the second quarter, according to just-released second-quarter results. It expects to build about 9,000 cars this quarter, and deliver 7,800, largely due to a two-week production shutdown for retooling at...
John Voelcker -
IIHS Tests Small Cars On Small Overlap: Volt Does OK, Leaf 'Struggles'One of the toughest crash tests a car can face is the new small-frontal-overlap, introduced by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety in 2012. By crashing a vehicle so that only 25 percent of its front end contacts the barrier, far greater forces are transmitted through the car than in a...
Antony Ingram -
Tesla, Panasonic Sign Gigafactory Pact; Nevada Site Work Already Underway?Now it's official: Panasonic and Tesla Motors will build the "gigafactory," a huge lithium-ion cell fabrication and battery-pack production facility in the western United States. Today Tesla will report its second-quarter earnings after the market closes, and CEO Elon Musk was bound to face...
John Voelcker -
Existing lithium-ion batteries rely on the movement of lithium ions between the anode and cathode--and back--as the battery charges and discharges. It's one of the best options we have for powering electric vehicles (and most consumer electronic devices, for that matter) but there's still room for improvement. Researchers at Stanford University have published a report in the Nature Nanotechnology journal detailing the creation of a pure lithium anode, potentially boosting battery efficiency by a large margin over today's units. ALSO SEE: New Lithium-Ion Battery Uses Peroxide To Boost Energy...
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Infiniti LE Electric Luxury Sedan To Be Built After All, With Higher RangeSome vehicles have complex, protracted development histories--and it looks like the Infiniti LE electric luxury sedan may be one of them. Following a period in which its development was suspended by Infiniti's then-CEO Johan de Nysschen (who most recently heads Cadillac), the LE is now back on...
John Voelcker -
Tesla CEO Elon Musk Makes It Big: Will Appear On 'The Simpsons' As HimselfWealth? Success? Power? All of these fade to insignificance as ways to show you've "made it" in life, compared to a guest appearance on The Simpsons. Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk has certainly made it, and to prove it he'll be guest-starring in the 26th season of the popular cartoon comedy. READ...
Antony Ingram -
BMW i3 Electric Car Owners To Get Free DC Fast Charging Through 2015California BMW i3 owners will get free DC fast charging on the NRG eVgo network through 2015.
Stephen Edelstein -
Hard Realities Of Battery Research: Promising Electrode Hasn't Panned OutNews of new battery technologies breaks regularly, most researchers claiming to have devised a system promising greater range, better stability, lighter weight, lower cost--all characteristics desirable in electric vehicles. All require a caveat though: This technology may never get beyond the...
Antony Ingram -
Tesla And Panasonic Reach Agreement On Gigafactory Project: ReportPanasonic will reportedly invest funds and provide equipment for the massive lithium-ion cell factory.
Stephen Edelstein