Electric Cars

Imagine the scene: you’re an advertising executive for General Motors given the task of finding new and exciting ways to promote the Chevrolet Volt’s sponsorship of the annual Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. The chances are you’d think up something grand, like putting a...

We're big fans of the Renault Twizy electric car. Designed exclusively for urban use, it's a vehicle you'd purchase as much with the heart as you would with the head. Buyers of the Comuta-Car might have bought them with the stomach, as it does look rather like a wedge of cheese, but it's every bit...

Compared with the task of enticing regular buyers into electric cars, offloading electric supercars onto the super-rich is an easy task. The usual limitations of range or cost don't matter to buyers with dozens of other cars and money to burn, so the $980,000 Rimac Concept_One will sell itself. In...

These days, unless you’re an ardent fan of hybrid or electric cars, it can be pretty hard to tell them apart from their gasoline equivalents. For the average motorist it isn’t an issue, but for first responders attending the scene of an accident, it’s important to know what a...

When Coda Automotive started production and sales of its 2012 Sedan earlier this year, it ended years of doubt and confusion about the firm’s abilities to bring a highway-capable electric car to market. Yesterday, Coda CEO Phil Murtaugh confirmed Coda’s intent to manufacture a second...

Let’s face it. The U.S. auto industry hasn’t always been very good at advertising the benefits of the electric car. Among them of course, General Motor’s infamous 1996 ad for its EV-1, the cringe-worthy Chevy Volt Dance, the Nissan Leaf Bear Hug ad, and of course, Nissan’s...

The electric vehicle world is watching the rollout of Better Place's electric-car network in Israel with interest, but some have asked whether Better Place has an effective monopoly on electric cars granted by the Israeli Government. Better Place says its service and its cars compete with gasoline...

It's always interesting when companies change things between press releases. In this case, the vehicle we described on Friday as the BYD Chin (based on BYD's own press release)--an updated version of the world's first plug-in hybrid, the BYD F3DM--now turns out to be called the BYD Qin. Which, as...

Earlier this spring at the 2012 Geneva Motor Show, Bentley pulled the covers off the EXP9 F Concept, its first ever SUV in its 94-year history. Now, just six-weeks later at the 2012 Beijing Auto Show, the luxury automaker has confirmed details of the range of engines it plans to offer with the EXP...

Earlier today, German automaker Audi unveiled the latest in its e-tron plug-in concept cars at the 2012 Beijing Auto Show. Based upon the A6 L, a highly-popular Chinese-only variant of the A6 sedan, the A6 L e-tron plug-in hybrid concept combines a 2.0-liter turbocharged, direct injected gasoline...

Owning and driving an electric car is very much dependant on personal circumstances right now. You can either afford one, or you can't. You can either get away with the limited range of an EV, or you can't. You're either motivated to reduce your impact on the planet, or you're not. A new survey by...

Today is Friday, which means we, like many other editorial teams around the world, are on the lookout for a fun, lighthearted story to end the week. This week, our chosen light-hearted story comes courtesy of the humble pizza delivery scooter. Hated in cities worldwide for their annoying, buzzing...

How will you be charging your electric car in future? In your garage? At work? At a rest stop somewhere with a fast charger? Or will you be using a wireless charger, embedded in a parking spot somewhere, that you can simply park over and forget about? It's a question many are asking, and one...

Remember the world's very first production plug-in hybrid? No, not the 2011 Chevy Volt. Not the 2012 Toyota Prius Plug-In Hybrid either. Way back in late 2008, it was the Chinese BYD F3DM, with a lithium-ion battery pack and a combined parallel and series hybrid powertrain inserted into the...

There’s an ongoing joke among electric car owners that every new electric car should come with a free wallet. Why? To store the array of cards, tags and access keys that electric car drivers inevitably collect to gain access to an increasingly complicated public charging network. Earlier this...

We love data, and articles that analyze data. We love them a little less when their opening lines sneer at sites like this one by calling them the "sunshine, lollipops and rainbows electric car press." Still, there are far more interesting problems with a recent analysis on Seeking Alpha entitled...

The 2012 Ford Focus Electric is the company's first-ever production battery-electric vehicle, and that alone makes it noteworthy. But the fact that it's also pleasant to drive--somewhat on the fun side of unremarkable--means that it's the first compact all-electric competitor to the Nissan Leaf...

Over the past few years, while we've seen a slow and steady increase in the number of electric cars available on the market, the electric motorcycle industry has positively exploded. Primarily designed to satisfy the commuting needs of inner-city residents, most electric motorcycles and scooters...

If you want something to blame for the relatively high prices of the current wave of electric cars, blame the cost of batteries. The technology required to produce the popular lithium-ion batteries used in most electric vehicles isn't cheap, and that cost is passed on to the consumer. Bring down...

For Fisker Automotive, the last twelve months haven’t been exactly easy. Beset by delays, recalls and even a legal case from an irate investor, Fisker hit a low point in February when it was forced to lay off workers after missing deadlines associated with much-needed U.S. Department of...