Electric Cars

Despite filing for bankruptcy protection yesterday, lithium-ion battery firm A123 Systems has said the factories where it makes electric car battery cells will be saved, thanks to a $125 million deal with automotive parts maker Johnson Controls. Already a huge Tier One global automotive parts...

Color us, oh, not very surprised at all. General Motors confirmed yesterday that it would build the 2014 Cadillac ELR range-extended electric luxury coupe at its Detroit-Hamtramck plant, on the same line that builds the ELR's Chevrolet Volt sibling. While this had long been discussed in the...

The 2012 Toyota Prius Plug-In Hybrid is the second best-selling plug-in electric car in the U.S. today. It outsells the Nissan Leaf and is bested only by the Chevrolet Volt. But if you view it as an electric car, it’s an odd duck indeed. The car’s plug-in hybrid powertrain adds a...

Smart is all about breaking preconceptions. Small cars can't be safe? Not the case. Cheap cars have to be dull? Not a bit of it. Here are a few more: Polo is only played by high society folk on horses, Spring Break is a wild vacation, and electric bikes are just a tool for commuting. Not according...

The 2013 Kia Soul hasn't really registered with those of us concerned about fuel economy and emissions. That's despite the Soul Eco achieving a respectable 36 mpg highway and 32 combined in EPA testing. However, the Soul could get a lot greener in 2014, as Kia has apparently confirmed an electric...

Less than three weeks ago, Fisker Automotive announced it has successfully closed its latest round of funding, netting a total of $100 million more in funds to develop its next plug-in hybrid car, the mid-size Atlantic Sedan. Hopes of driving one any time soon were dashed yesterday, however, when...

For centuries, the role of Judge has carried with it a solemn duty to uphold justice, the law, and to ascertain which facts are true, and which are not. So when a journalist in Carmi, Illinois spotted a Second Circuit Judge charging his electric car at Wayne County Courthouse, they ran a story...

Motorcycles, as any biker will tell you, are as much a device for recreation as they are a method of transport. More so even than many cars, they're bought for the thrill of the open road, the interaction between man and machine, and the freedom to go anywhere. And that, says The New York Times, is...

They pop up like weeds, these "Electric cars are failures" articles--and you just have to keep killing them. The latest is an opinion piece titled, "Why the Electric Car Failed," published last week in U.S. News & World Report. Author Michael Lynch identifies himself as a researcher for the...

Back in 2010, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency was awarded a $7 million regional grant to oversee a fleet of 61 electric taxi cabs, complete with four battery sapping stations. Two years later, neither the taxi cabs, nor the battery swap stations have been launched. According to...

Ever since Nissan launched its Leaf electric car in late 2010, it has offered owners the ability to remotely start charging, using its Carwings telematics system and smartphone apps. The Nissan Leaf also has a feature letting owners pre-program a start time for charging and pre-heating, but only...

There's probably relief in Palo Alto this morning, as Tesla Motors executives quietly give thanks that their company was not named in last night's vice-presidential debate. The startup electric-car company in Silicon Valley was explicitly cited in last week's presidential debate by candidate Mitt...

Graphene is described as a "wonder material" within the scientific community, winning the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics. It's incredibly light, incredibly strong and very simple. Made up from sheets of carbon only a single atom thick, it's the material's potential use in batteries that has us...

If you drive a regular gasoline car in California, you’ll know that the past week has been far from easy, with gas prices peaking at over $5 a gallon in places. But while many car drivers were suffering unbelievably high gas prices, plug-in and electric car dealers across the state have...

If you've been looking at buying a new electric car, you'll have noticed a slightly different measurement of economy on the official labels: MPGe. But what does MPGe actually mean? Luckily, Ford is here to help you, so check out the video above to learn more. Effectively, MPGe is a measure that...

Our hearts sink a little every time we discover news of an electric car fire. Will others also go up in flames? Will the media turn it into an anti-EV frenzy, like they did with the Chevy Volt? Reports of an electric Smart ForTwo going up in flames at a home in Florida brought all those thoughts...

While gas prices in the state of California are finally dropping following last week’s Southern California peak of more than $5 per gallon, the financial and social implications of such high gas prices are still being felt by its residents. As The LA Times reported earlier this week...

Yesterday, the California Energy Commission approved a $10 million grant to Tesla Motors which it said would help the electric automaker prepare for the launch of its second mass-produced car, the Tesla Model X Crossover SUV. Under the terms of the agreement, Tesla will have to match the $10...

It’s official: the 2013 Ford C-Max Energi is the most efficient plug-in hybrid to date, achieving a cool 100 miles per gallon equivalent combined in official EPA fuel economy tests. Announced last night by Ford, the $33,745 2013 Ford C-Max Energi has beaten both the 95 MPGe rating of the 2012...

If we had to pick one word to describe Tesla Motors, "audacious" would be at the top of the list. Not only did founder Elon Musk decide to build a car company, which in itself is pretty gutsy. He chose to create a car company that builds nothing but electric cars -- pricey, high-end electric cars...