Electric Cars

Renault's absence from North America means the Zoe electric car won't be reaching U.S. shores any time soon. And that's kind of a shame. It's about as chic as you'd expect for a car originating from France, and makes you wonder why some other companies can't put a bit of effort into styling their...

It's the sweetest dream of every electric-car fan: a battery that could store enough energy to offer up to 1,000 miles of real-world range. While it's not going to arrive in showrooms any time soon, Israeli startup Phinergy thinks its aluminum-air energy storage device might just be that battery...

With a backlog of more than 10,000 depositors for the Tesla Model S, its maker is making and delivering electric luxury sedans as fast as it can. Among other benefits, that may allow Tesla Motors [NSDQ:TSLA] to achieve CEO Elon Musk's suggestion that the company could be profitable for the first...

It appears that the U.S. Department of Energy has had a change of heart. Four years ago, then-Energy Secretary Steven Chu was widely known as a skeptic about hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles. Last summer, he appeared to relent--and now the DoE has said it will launch a campaign to promote hydrogen...

We might live in a global economy, but in periods of economic downturn people like to know they're supporting their own country's economy. That's why some are a little displeased by Long Beach Transit's decision to buy ten elecric buses--made by a Chinese company. According to The Press-Telegram...

In the last few weeks, it's almost become a cliche: drivers in Silicon Valley say they see as many Tesla Model S electric luxury sedans on the roads as they do Nissan Leafs or Chevrolet Volts. With a likely total production of perhaps 6,000 cars thus far, the Model S is outnumbered on U.S. roads by...

Say "carpool lane" or "HOV Access" or "white sticker" or "green sticker," and most California commuters will begin to drool uncontrollably. The ability to drive in relatively uncrowded High-Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lanes with just a single person in the vehicle is a privilege that Californians will...

The first internal pacemakers were developed in the 1950s. Heart patients were naturally skeptical: How does it run? Will the battery die? Can I be electrocuted? Just two decades later, the devices had become commonplace. The Six-Million Dollar Man went prime time, and humanity was making its first...

Every month we report on sales of plug-in electric cars, which tripled last year over the total in 2011. As virtually every analyst and commentator has pointed out, electric cars have done better in their early years than hybrids did in theirs. So how is it that Car and Driver, the well-known...

Accessories are a huge part of the auto business, and for every car, somewhere there's a business (or a few dozen) offering aftermarket items the manufacturer hasn't, can't, or won't provide. And so it turns out to be for the Tesla Model S, the all-electric sport sedan from Silicon Valley startup...

it might not have been the number people were hoping for, but at 75 miles, an extra two miles of EPA range for the 2013 Nissan Leaf still represents an improvement. Even more so considering the EPA's electric car testing procedure for 2013 averages results from 100 percent and 80 percent charges...

Electric car fans have long been skeptical of government plans to install noisemakers to alert pedestrians to a car's presence--and now automakers are pushing for a different rule. The NHTSA wants electric and hybrid vehicles to emit a noise at speeds of up to 18.6 mph, while automakers want it to...

With almost 100,000 plug-in electric cars on U.S. roads now, congestion at charging stations is starting to crop up. And that has brought to light an issue of electric-car charging etiquette that may prove challenging: Should battery-electric cars get precedence over plug-in hybrids? The question...

People take air safety pretty seriously, so when smoke filled the cabin of a new Boeing 787 Dreamliner aircraft a few months back, the entire fleet was quickly grounded. It turned out to be an issue with the aircraft's lithium-ion batteries, used to power some secondary functions reducing load on...

Tesla did it, Mercedes-Benz is doing it, so why can't a Detroit company do it too? In this case, "it" is building a pricey, limited-production, two-seat all-electric sports car. Detroit Electric, a famous name adopted by a five-year-old startup in the Motor City, will reveal its plans next month...

Americans and Canadians alike returned to work this week after a festive St. Patrick's Day. For sales of plug-in electric vehicles in Canada, the (idiomatic, good) luck of the Irish arrived for one U.S. automaker. General Motors sold 51 Chevrolet Volts in Canada in February, up slightly from its...

Electric-car owners tend to be enthusiastic evangelists for the good points of driving on grid power. At least, the ones we hear from usually are. But there's another group of plug-in electric car owners who aren't quite as enthusiastic. In fact, up to one-third of electric-car buyers in Japan say...

The car you see in the images above has actually been in the making for several years, and for drivers in India it's one of the more significant vehicles released this year. It's called the Mahindra e2o, and you may recognise its previous name, the Reva NXR. The Reva name is already big in electric...

While Henrik Fisker's departure from the company he founded has dominated the headlines of late, Fisker Automotive itself still has other problems to deal with. Top of the list is finding a buyer to help fund its future, and up until now, two Chinese companies--Dongfeng Motor Group Co. and Zhejiang...

Range-extended electric cars are a great idea, mixing clean electric running for the majority of drivers' commutes, with an extra few hundred miles of gasoline running for those longer trips. As we alluded to last week though, the engine isn't always perfectly optimized for its task, often a...