Electric Cars

A few years ago, the concept of an electric car achieving 300 miles on a charge was virtually unheard of. That made one duo's achievement in a Tesla Roadster very special indeed, even if their average speed was relatively low. But now, you can do that with a Tesla Model S and a few eco driving...

The month wouldn't be complete without another battery technology breakthrough, and this time it's the turn of lithium-sulfur technology. Researchers at the US Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory are experimenting with a lithium-sulfur battery design with twice the...

You might have noticed a few recent high-profile stories about road debris puncturing the battery packs of Tesla Model S electric cars, causing fires. CEO and founder of Tesla Motors [NSDQ:TSLA], Elon Musk, has remarked that despite these incidents, a similar situation would be far worse for...

BMW is hedging its bets with the i3 electric city car. You can buy it not only as a pure electric vehicle, but also as a range-extended electric car. And if the extra price and curiously stunted extra range hadn't put you off so far, perhaps reviews of the range-extended model might dissuade you...

GM has offered one reason the Chevy Volt-based Cadillac ELR is so expensive, but it's not the reason you might have been expecting. Priced similarly to Tesla's Model S sedan, it's logical to think that Cadillac may be angling for undecided cross-shoppers in the "green luxury" market. Instead...

Last month, Apple Stores in the United States began stocking the Automatic Link. And it might just point the way toward how to convince more car buyers that a plug-in electric car--or other alternatives, from hybrid to diesel to natural gas, for that matter--could make economic sense. The Automatic...

Via Motors will offer what could be the ultimate accessory for its extended-range electric truck: a solar bed cover.

Mazda is a relative minnow in the auto industry sea, but for such an independent company it punches above its weight in engineering terms. It's still one of few companies to offer a simple two-seater sports car in a world of more profitable crossovers and hatchbacks. It's developed an entirely new...

Nissan is readying a new lithium-ion chemistry for its Leaf electric car, aimed at better range performance in hot-weather climates. And it's likely bound for all Leaf models in the first half of next year. Last week at the Tokyo Motor Show, Andy Palmer, Nissan's executive vice president and global...

It's been a bumpy few months for electric car maker, Tesla Motors [NSDQ:TSLA]. While enjoying the highs of high customer satisfaction and continued praise for the Model S electric sedan, the company has also endured high scrutiny for a trio of accident-related fires in its vehicles. CEO Elon Musk...

As part of its relentless niche-filling, BMW has given us both compact crossovers like the X1, and electric cars like the new i3. It hasn't yet combined the two though--at least not in North America. Move to China, and it's a different story. The German marque's Chinese partner, Brilliance, has...

The Tesla Model S, for all its technical and design artistry, has a dirty little secret: the car has a substantial appetite for kilowatt-hours even when turned off and parked. Since the Model S was introduced in 2012, this "vampire" power drain from the cars sold so far has consumed roughly 15...

Tesla might have had a bad day this week, but every cloud has a silver lining. While the NHTSA rebukes it for reporting a five-plus star crash test rating and the company suffers the departure of sales supremo George Blankenship, Model S customers couldn't be happier. In fact, their customer...

It's pretty clear that many car buyers are very interested in electric cars, and that they love them when they drive them. Electric cars have a handful of natural advantages that offset their higher purchase cost: They cost far less per mile than gasoline cars, and they're simply nicer to drive...

There must be days where Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk feels his multiple burdens more acutely than others. Today may be one, because yesterday was not a good day for Tesla. First, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) issued a new set of publicity rules for its crash-testing...

Is it a case of picking the right electric car for the right job? Or could a lack of "range anxiety" really lead drivers to cover more miles? It's a kind of chicken-or-egg question, but it came to mind when our author Matthew Klippenstein sent us some data. On average, owners of the Nissan Leaf...

The Nissan e-NV200 electric van will go on sale in Japan in mid-2014.

This morning, we got all the details on the new Volkswagen e-Golf electric car, ahead of its debut next week at the Los Angeles Auto Show. The E-Golf is a battery-electric version of the all-new seventh-generation VW Golf, which will go on sale in the U.S. next spring as a 2015 model. The electric...

It's hard to picture how much fuel we use as a nation when given the raw data--the numbers are usually so unimaginably vast they lose all meaning. Just how vast is spelled out succinctly when we're shown how much we save by driving electric or hybrid vehicles. In the case of the Chevrolet Volt...

Ever had to keep a really big secret? Respected automotive engineer Gordon Murray has: Having known for quite some time who one of the biggest customers for his highly-efficient iStream production process was, Murray has been unable to reveal it to us all. Now that secret is officially out...