Electric Cars

Remember the world's first all-electric monster truck? If you're at the AutoRama Car Show in Kansas City, Missouri this weekend, you'll be able to see it in action. We're told it'll be "participating in two car-crush demonstrations per day", which sounds like a polite way of saying it'll be causing...

The right car can inspire people. Whether it's the poetic beauty of an Italian sports car or the noise of the race track, that inspiration takes many forms. For some, the all-electric Tesla Model S is their inspiration. The sleek electric sedan has certainly attracted attention far beyond that of...

Electric cars are often described as "zero emission vehicles". That's true, to an extent - you won't find a drop of any substance eminating from their non-existent tailpipes. But naturally, they get their energy from somewhere, and that somewhere is a country's electricity grid. Those can be less...

BMW's ActiveE coupe is a great little electric car. Even more so when it's working. It looks pretty good, there's decent performance on offer, and drivers enjoy BMW handling and BMW quality without having to feed a drop of gas into it. An electrified 1-Series coupe will never be quite as cool as...

If you're trying to get your hands on a plug-in Ford, it should soon get a little easier. Ford will more than quadrouple the number of dealers able to sell its plug-in models, the Ford Focus Electric, C-Max Energi plug-in hybrid and Fusion Energi plug-in hybrid this year. According to The Detroit...

Electric car owners coming out of winter will know just how much of a drain a car's accessories can put on their range. That makes energy-efficient accessories like the Bose Energy Efficient Series audio system available with the 2013 Nissan Leaf an easy option to understand. With no engine roar to...

If you've been following our reports on battery-swapping company Better Place, the news probably won't come as much of a surprise. The company has decided to shut down its operations in the U.S. and Australia, to concentrate on its original markets of Denmark and Israel. Loss-making Better Place...

If you were a car dealer, would you decide not to sell a plug-in electric car because you had to buy a $5,000 tool to service it? We didn't think so. Late last year, trade journal Automotive News wrote a story saying that a few Chevrolet dealers have stopped selling the Chevy Volt range-extended...

It's become increasingly common for carmakers to solicit volunteers to lease new-technology cars for a year or two, to gather real-world data about how the cars are actually driven and used. But those cars remain development prototypes, not production-quality vehicles. And as BMW ActiveE drivers...

Analyzing electric-car sales numbers and prognosticating on them is somewhere between a parlor game and a black art. Now one blogger has applied some Nate Silver-like statistical analysis to try to divine predictive patterns in sales of the Chevrolet Volt, the range-extended electric car that's...

If you're reading this, you probably already know a little bit about Tesla. Brainchild of entrepreneur Elon Musk, producer of electric vehicles, and upstart in the automotive market, Tesla Motors [NSDQ:TSLA] has been one of the highest-profile new brands of recent years. That high profile has done...

It happens every so often: a spate of media reports with gloom-and-doom headlines about what a dismal failure electric cars are. Take, for instance, this morning's in Reuters--"Electric Cars Head Toward Another Dead End"--or a weekend report in The Detroit News entitled "Electric Vehicle Sales...

Last week, the Chinese company Wanxiang got U.S. government approval to buy bankrupt lithium-ion cell maker A123 Systems. With that underway, will China's largest auto-parts company now turn its sights toward one of A123's biggest customers, Fisker Automotive? That seemed to be the implication from...

The Tesla Model S Performance looks great on paper. Not only does the 85 kWh Model S have an impressive 265-mile EPA-rated range, but it'll do the benchmark 0-60 mph sprint in only 4.4 seconds. That means the all-electric luxury sport sedan from Tesla Motors [NSDQ:TSLA] is at least as fast as V-8...

We’re going to let you in on a little insider’s secret: when manufacturers are shilling their wares, they tend to favor statistics that illustrate their own version of the truth. As any politician (or car company) will tell you, you can always find a set of numbers to work in your...

Whatever car you drive, whether powered by fossil fuels or electricity, range will vary depending on weather conditions. Typically, the average gasoline or diesel vehicle will be more economical in warmer weather, and less so when it's cold, where the dense air is matched by larger quantities of...

Car rental firm Hertz got in there early with electric cars, saying as far back as 2010 it would put the Nissan Leaf on its fleet. Several plug-in models have followed, and for its newest initiative, Hertz is targeting younger drivers. A Chevrolet Volt has joined the University of Connecticut's...

Unless you follow green cars fairly closely--or perhaps live in California--you may not know that the Golden State now requires the sale of certain number of battery electric cars. Between 2012 and 2014, the six highest-selling carmakers in the state must sell a combined 7,500 zero-emission...

Nissan announced today that it would provide 40 quick-charging stations to NRG, which will use them to expand its eVgo electric-car charging network into the Washington, D.C., region. Working with its dealers, local authorities, and charging-station partners. Nissan hopes to triple the number of...

Right now, we seem to get news about Tesla Motors or Fisker Automotive almost every day. Some is good, some isn't. Yesterday, Green Car Reports editor John Voelcker sat down with High Gear Media's social-media manager, Joel Feder, to discuss the two companies in a Google+ Hangout on Air. The live...