Electric Cars

New technology is brilliant. Just look at smartphones, for example--the world's information in the palm of your hands, with the ability to talk, text and take photos when the mood takes you. Or the Chevrolet Volt--38 miles of electric range, with the peace of mind of a gasoline engine backing you...

If you're a fan of electric cars, there's a fair chance BMW's i3 urban electric car is one of the vehicles you're most looking forward to in 2013. When it goes on sale in the fourth quarter of 2013, it's set to be one of the most advanced vehicles on the road--not least for its lightweight...

Much of the discussion around electric cars centers on their cost: high initial purchase price, low per-mile running costs. But electric cars don't just compete against economy cars with high fuel efficiency. As last week's unveiling of the 2014 Cadillac ELR range-extended electric luxury coupe...

Nobody particularly likes taxes, but as they go, gas tax is at least generally fair in how it's applied. The more gas you use, the more you pay. Use less, or none at all, and you pay less--or nothing. Virginia residents will soon be paying nothing even if they drive gas guzzlers, as Governor Bob...

Based on the Volt, but dressed in a very sharp new suit, the 2014 Cadillac ELR promises to bring the joys of greener driving to the executive sector. Not that the luxury segment hasn't already been a hotbed of hybrid development in recent years, though initially slow on the uptake. That makes...

There's good news and bad news for green car fans in the latest J.D. Power and Associates Avoider Study. For a decade, that study has interviewed recent car buyers, asking detailed questions about their purchase decisions. As you might guess from the title of the survey, Power focuses not only on...

Well, duh. The day after it unveiled the 2014 Cadillac ELR range-extended electric luxury coupe, GM's North America chief Mark Reuss told attendees at a trade event that "the electric car is not dead." “That’s despite what you might hear, and despite what you might read about Americans...

As part of the recent fiscal cliff deal passed by Congress, many green energy programs saw renewed focus and deadline extensions, allowing people to benefit from them for a little longer. Included in these programs is the Alternative Fuel Vehicle Refueling Property credit. This allows eligible...

Gosh, those crazy electric cars. They're so different and confusing, eh? We've now come across a new and thus-far unparalleled example of just how far people will go to avoid dealing with the realities of electric cars. Which are, of course, smooth, quiet, and torquey, meaning they're fast off the...

Plug-in electric cars get a lot of press, perhaps more than their current sales might warrant. It's clear to industry analysts that the proportion of plug-ins among new cars produced will grow, slowly, over the coming years and decades. But don't count the gasoline engine out just yet. The rate of...

Better Place, the battery-swapping network operating in Israel and Denmark, didn't have an easy 2012, and 2013 is looking little better. Indeed, Reuters now confirms the departure of their current CEO, Evan Thornley. Better Place founder Shai Agassi was ousted last October, following losses of $490...

Ex-GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz played an instrumental part in getting Chevrolet's range-extended electric car, the Volt, to market. So important was his role that he's often considered the "father of the Volt"--but at the Detroit Auto Show, Lutz has said that he'd not have launched the car's...

Coda Automotive, the startup maker that builds the 2012 Coda Sedan electric car, is going through some very tough times. But it looks like one of its three dealers is trying to figure out the right price point for the all-electric compact sedan--which was originally priced at $38,145, including a...

What does an 800 horsepower electric truck look like? Just that little bit meaner than any other production truck, as it turns out--if Via Motors' XTRUX electric truck is anything to go by. The wildly powerful range-extended truck was unveiled at this week's Detroit Auto Show. Loosely based on the...

Volkswagen Group of America and Eaton have together unveiled a new single-port Combined Charging System (CCS). The CCS meets the approved standard for charging from the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE), and combines one-phase AC charging, three-phase AC charging, DC home charging and DC fast...

Last summer wasn't easy for Nissan or its electric car, the Leaf. A spate of owners in Arizona discovered they were quickly losing battery capacity, far earlier than Nissan suggested it might happen--the hot climate was playing havoc with battery life. Luckily for worried Leaf owners, those...

We know the specifications and details of the 2013 Nissan Leaf, which has now gone into production in Smyrna, Tennessee. But the missing piece of information has always been: What will the battery electric car cost now that it's built in North America? During an electric vehicle roundtable today at...

Unveiled live at the 2013 Detroit Auto Show, Tesla Motors [NSDQ:TSLA] is giving us new ideas as to what the interior of its Model X crossover may look like. Tesla calls it an "interior exploration", giving a hint as to the different colors and trim materials you can expect from the production Model...

One hurdle down: Tesla is now delivering production Model S electric cars to paying customers from its reservations list of 18,000 or so. Next hurdle: Can Tesla Motors [NSDQ:TSLA] bring in enough cash from those sales, and ramp up production fast enough, to keep the company solvent? It would appear...

Next week is the annual Detroit Auto Show, one of the most important events on the automotive calendar and increasingly a place for car companies to show off new green technology. Given consumer tastes and the trends in the market, it should come as no surprise that the list of green cars, whether...