Electric Cars

The Land Rover Defender is as much an automotive icon in Great Britain as the Jaguar E-Type, MGB or the Austin Mini. It's not as glamorous as any of them, but the car's chunky styling, go-anywhere ability and incredible longevity have resulted in the design barely changing since its introduction in...

Electric car-friendly Oregon may join the growing list of states imposing a dedicated tax on electric vehicles. Like other states looking to tax electric and fuel efficient cars, Oregon is pre-empting a rise in the number of electric vehicles on the roads and a subsequent fall in revenue from gas...

Electric cars aren't evenly distributed across the U.S. By far the largest single market for them is California. And in a sign of increasing adoption rates--there are now roughly 75,000 plug-in cars on the nation's roads--some electric-car drivers are facing a new problem. Charging stations in...

Almost two years ago, I took delivery of one of the very first 2011 Nissan Leafs to be imported into the United Kingdom. With its two-year anniversary approaching, and more than 32,000 miles on the clock, has our family's opinion of the Nissan Leaf changed? What has life with the car been like? And...

Unusual urban microcars have been a staple of Japanese auto shows for years, but as electric propulsion becomes more realistic and city landscapes change, most big carmakers have now developed some kind of tiny urban electric vehicle. Latest to debut is Toyota's i-Road concept, due at next week's...

The Geneva Motor Show is almost upon us. Physically small in size next to many international shows, there's nevertheless plenty to look at, particularly if you're interested in green transport and concept vehicles. This year should be another spectacular one for green vehicles, with a few...

It's early days for both electric vehicles and autonomous cars, but the technology for the two seems to go hand-in-hand. After all, what better way to be whizzed home after a hard day at work than in a smooth, quiet, green, and entirely autonomous electric car? It'd be like living in the future...

Imagine a paradise for electric-car drivers, where half the car's cost is subsidized and there's a nationwide network of DC quick-charging stations so plentiful that there's one for every four cars. Such a place exists, actually. It's called Estonia. The tiny country of 1.2 million people, nestled...

After 1,386 days of waiting, I first glimpsed my new 2013 Tesla Model S electric sport sedan at a local discount tire store. The Tesla Motors [NSDQ:TSLA] delivery rep who was bringing the car up from the New Jersey distribution center to my house in New York's Hudson Valley had called me from the...

There's a train of thought that goes thus: If you're going to launch an electric concept car, you may as well give it outrageous performance and range statistics as it'll never see the light of day anyway, and nobody can prove you wrong. Someone at Silex Power clearly thinks along similar lines, as...

Tesla Motors, a notorious review in The New York Times of its Model S electric sedan, and the company's future were the topics of discussion last week among High Gear Media editors during a Google+ Hangout on Air video chat. The participants were editorial director Marty Padgett, social media...

Plenty of supercar makers are getting in on the electric car act, these days. Porsche, Ferrari and McLaren all have hybrids and plug-in hybrids on the way--McLaren's was revealed just the other day. Then there are dedicated electric supercars, like the Rimac Concept One, or Mercedes SLS AMG E-Cell...

Imagine, for a second, you're doing some dodgy criminal dealings, and the cops are onto your hideout location. You still have time though--you've heard no sirens, no vehicle pulling up outside the warehouse. And that would be your final mistake--just because you've not heard anything, doesn't mean...

All is not well with Japan's electric taxi drivers. Two years ago, in February 2011, the city of Osaka introduced a fleet of fifty Nissan Leaf taxis. The deal was a cooperative arrangement between Nissan, 30 taxi firms, and the government--each was being subsidized to the tune of 1,780,000...

Remember those 338 Fisker Karma electric cars wrecked by Hurricane Sandy while they were sitting on a Port Newark dock? Remember the December lawsuit Fisker filed against its insurance company after its $33 million claim was denied? Never mind. Yesterday, according to Bloomberg, Fisker Automotive...

Some makers are investing in battery electric cars and doing their darnedest to make them market successes--think Nissan or Tesla, for example. Ford does not appear to be one of those companies. Since the second month that its plug-in hybrid C-Max Energi went on the market, its monthly sales have...

If you've ever bought a car, you might have experienced the frustration that comes with a sales person who doesn't really know about the car they're selling. That's not an experience you'll have had in an Apple retail store though, where the Genius Bar program provides product experts to hand out...

Stars and green cars are nothing new--several have admitted to owning Toyota Prius in the past, while others have been spotted in Tesla Roadsters or Fisker Karmas. At Global Green USA's 10th Pre-Oscar party on Wednesday, a host more stars were caught alongside two electric vehicles--the 2013...

Tesla Motors announced its fourth-quarter and full-year results late yesterday, and offered some good news to the company's shareholders. That would be the projection that Tesla Motors [NSDQ:TSLA] will operate at a profit in the current quarter, which ends March 31. "We expect to be slightly...

It's the last piece of information on the new and updated 2013 Nissan Leaf electric car that everyone's been waiting for: its range. The projected number, Nissan says, is 75 miles--but that shouldn't be compared to the 73-mile range of the 2011 and 2012 Leaf models. That's because the EPA changed...