Electric Cars

One week ago today, Americans elected a president. During the hard-fought campaign that preceded the election, Republican candidate Mitt Romney called Tesla a "loser" company, along with Fisker Automotive. Tesla Motors [NSDQ:TSLA] and other companies named by Romney had received loans or grants...

Automakers don't give up profits easily. So when one of the world's most profitable, BMW, commits to building a range of electric vehicles, they have to be taken seriously. BMW Chairman Dr. Norbert Reithofer has reaffirmed this commitment during a recent teleconference. "We consider electric...

No, Springo isn't a new scratch-off game. It's apparently the name of a new Chevrolet battery electric vehicle, though we'll never see it in North America. The Chevy Springo electric car will go on sale in China (and possibly other countries) at roughly the same time that the U.S. gets limited...

What would make electric cars perfect for you? Maybe it'd take a 300-mile range, or a sub-$15,000 price tag, or the ability to charge from empty in five minutes. But you could argue that current electric cars are already perfect--for car sharing schemes. City life Car sharing is becoming...

Ailing battery firm A123 Systems, which supplies batteries to Fisker, BMW and GM among others, could soon have a new owner after Delaware courts have imposed a deadline for bids. Two companies vying for A123 and its assets are auto-parts maker Johnson Controls, and Chinese auto-parts maker Wanxiang...

Most of the attention paid to plug-in electric cars goes to Nissan, Chevy, and Tesla. But in other countries, the hope of running small cars on grid power--no matter how unreliable that grid may be--lives as well. In India, the large truck maker Mahindra & Mahindra is preparing to launch the...

Electric cars may be the future, but in the present they're still a risk. Nissan knows this more than most, and at a conference reporting its Q2 2012 financial results, chief operating officer Toshiyuki Shiga says that Nissan would still like to penetrate the market more. However, he also expressed...

This seems to be our time for debunking dumb stories about plug-in electric cars. First, we had to educate a Forbes columnist (and oil-industry consultant) about how the auto industry works. Now, it's time to offer some gentle guidance to all those journalists who covered last month's release of a...

Tesla being what it is--a venture-funded startup battery-electric automaker in Silicon Valley--every utterance from its CEO Elon Musk becomes newsworthy. So a generalized hint at future development of its main product, the 2012 Tesla Model S electric sport sedan, becomes fodder for news stories. In...

Toyota has hinted at the launch of an electric sports car in the past, and even has a couple of prototypes out testing, including one based on its legendary 2000GT. However, ask Toyota if it plans to launch an electric version of its GT 86 (sold here as the Scion FR-S), its budget rear-wheel drive...

Fisker Automotive has had more than its share of trials and tribulations of late. Now, a new threat has emerged that holds the potential to harm the company severely, by cutting off its supply of lithium-ion battery packs. A123 Systems, its bankrupt battery supplier, wants to end the contract under...

As more and more people enter China's middle classes, demand for automobiles is increasing all the time. So is the quality of China's cars. As the kudos of imported brands becomes more attractive, Chinese companies are working hard to compete. Some are even breaking out of China and into the...

If you run an electric car, you may well have considered installing a dedicated charging station in your garage or on the side of your home. After all, who wants to wait a dozen hours or more for their EV to charge using a standard 110-Volt outlet? Last year we brought you news that Home Depot...

Which international carmaker currently has the largest range of electric vehicles? The answer is Renault. The French automaker has a significant EV portfolio--and as the French government puts greater emphasis on EVs, it may soon be joined by other carmakers too. Indeed, between electric cars...

There are two kinds of electric cars on sale in the U.S. these days. The first kind--the ones you should pay attention to--are the volume electric cars. Their makers want to sell as many as they can. The second kind are the "compliance cars," built solely to meet California regulations that require...

The words 'range anxiety' probably send a shudder down the spine of most electric car owners, even if they don't suffer from the condition themselves. Describing the sense of dread associated with running low on charge, it's often brought up without considering just how many EVs are currently used...

Electric car drivers have long had a little secret: The cars are generally much nicer to drive than gasoline cars. Now a new survey done at London Metropolitan University in England shows that despite initial skepticism, drivers of the plug-in vehicles came to like them better than gasoline cars in...

For many of us, lines at gas stations and homes without power are no more than news, but millions on the U.S. East Coast are still coping with the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. Many areas are still without power, and gasoline is a worryingly rare commodity for a transport system utterly dependent...

The biggest question facing tiny Tesla Motors right now is whether it can ramp up production of its Model S all-electric sport sedan and deliver enough of them to paying customers that it can generate the income it needs to keep going. On the quarterly Tesla Motors [NSDQ:TSLA] earnings call this...

We've written about the Renault Twizy electric minicar on several occasions in the past. After driving it in Ibiza we later tested it in the UK, and while flawed, it really does have appeal for those living in tight, crowded cities. By European standards, most cities in Florida aren't too crowded...