Electric Cars
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Interested in a future working with electric cars? A new degree course at the University of Colorado could be right up your (electric) avenue. With the help of a five-year, $954,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Energy, the University will be running a master's level course in electric car drivetrain technology. Earthtechling reports that the course will run by the Boulder and Colorado Springs faculty with both online courses and traditional classes. The course shouldn't only be beneficial to young, up-and-coming engineers either. It should also help provide extra training for the...
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October Electric Car Sales: Chevy Volt Outsells Nissan LeafNew-car sales figures are out for October, and in the plug-in electric car arena, Volt supporters can let out a muffled cheer. Finally. The hometown favorite outsold the imported Nissan Leaf by almost 260 units, the first time in many months it's been able to best the battery electric hatchback...
John Voelcker -
Lithium-ion cell maker Ener1 Stock To Be Delisted After Think CollapseEner1 Inc., the battery firm charged with supplying battery packs to the ill-fated Think electric car company and parent company of EnerDel -- a $118.5 million U.S. Department of Energy loan guarantee recipient -- was officially delisted from the Nasdaq stock exchange yesterday after it failed to...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
The Detonator: Electric Motorcycle Quieter Than Name SuggestsIf you were to come up with a list of characteristics of your average chopper bike, "near silence" probably wouldn't feature on it. Electric motors are great at doing "near silence" so to find one forming an integral part of The Detonator seems slightly incongruous. Built by Parker Brothers...
Antony Ingram -
Retro Electric Car Cool On eBay: 1980 Dodge ElectricaHaven't you heard? Retro is in fashion right now, so if you have a few thousand burning a hole in your pocket, there's just the vehicle waiting for you on eBay right now. Okay, so the Dodge Omni, on which this 1980 Dodge Electrica is based, was never the coolest of vehicles, but thirty years on it...
Antony Ingram -
Nissan Doesn’t Just Make Electric Cars: It Makes Electric Trucks, Vans TooNissan might be about to celebrate the end of one year selling its all-electric Leaf, but it isn’t just making passenger vehicles green: It’s electrifying its whole fleet. That was the message Nissan sent out last week when it unveiled a range of all-electric commercial plug-in vehicles...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
Electric cars are incredibly dangerous. They electrocute you if you take them through a car wash. In fact, just looking at them is dangerous. Why, they might cause heart attacks because they're so ... different. OK. Turning off the sarcasm key on our computer, we give you--for your Halloween enjoyment--the BATT-mobile! This is a photo we just had to reuse. (We got it on Facebook, but if you took it, please let us know so we can give you a proper photo credit!) You don't see that many black Nissan Leaf electric cars (presumably because the interiors heat up fiercely in hot climates), but this...
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Range Rover Plug-In Diesel Hybrid Prototype: Exclusive Photos!Sometimes, the staff of Green Car Reports has to travel hundreds, even thousands, of miles to bring you first drive reports, auto show highlights and exclusive green-car coverage. Other times, we just have to visit the local shopping mall. That's where we took these exclusive photographs of a...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
Nissan Leaf Electric Taxis Take On NYC In Pilot Plug-In PlanWith good reason, it's often said that the toughest auto endurance testing in the world is in taxi duty on the streets of New York City (and Jakarta, and Beijing, and Rio). While the New York City Taxi & Limousine Commission has pushed aggressively for high-mileage hybrids--mostly Ford Escape...
John Voelcker -
Want A Long Range Electric Car? Nissan Doesn't Think You DoIf you're holding out for an electric car that gets similar range to your fossil-fuelled car, then don't hold your breath for one from Nissan. That's the message implied by Nissan North America's director of product planning and strategy, Mark Perry. Speaking with Auto Observer, Perry says there is...
Antony Ingram -
Audi Launches Pilot Project In Munich With A1 E-tron Electric CarEarlier today, Audi launched the latest part of its plug-in electric vehicle program, commencing a public trail of its A1 e-tron range-extended electric car in Munich. Announced in September 2010 after Audi unveiled the A1 E-Tron concept car at the 2010 Geneva Motor Show, the 20-strong test car...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
RIP Bob Beaumont: Creator Of 1970s CitiCar Electric DiesAsk most people how long electric cars have been driving on the roads of the U.S. and they might give you an answer of a few years. If they’ve seen Chris Paine’s 2006 film Who Killed The Electric Car, or knows someone in the know, they may give you the real answer: about as long as...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
If you read only certain subsections of the "news," you might be forgiven for thinking that plug-in electric cars have been a sales disaster. They haven't. The Tesla Roadster, Nissan Leaf, and Chevrolet Volt are all built in quite small numbers, and their sales have been commensurately low, totaling slightly more than 15,000 by the end of this month. That means they register barely a blip against the 11 or 12 million vehicles sold annually in the U.S., or the 1 billion vehicles on the world's roads. We wanted to get a sense, though, of just how much use those cars are getting. We wondered...
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Tesla: We’re Making a New 2015 Roadster, Plus 3-Series BeatersTesla’s first electric car, the 2007-2011 Roadster, may have ceased production after its planned 2,500 (ish) car production run, but the Tesla Roadster will live on in an all-new car for 2014, Tesla has confirmed. In an interview with Autocar, Tesla CEO Elon Musk confirmed what we already...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
2012 Mitsubishi 'i': Taking The Electric Car On The RoadMitsubishi is showing U.S. specification, but pre-final production “i” cars in a touring roadshow
George Parrott -
GM To Build Electric Motor For Chevy Spark EV DomesticallyChevrolet announced today that it would build the electric motor for its upcoming Spark EV battery electric car in a plant in Maryland. The carmaker also released the power specification for the motor, which will offer 85 kilowatts (114 hp) of peak output and roughly two-thirds of that in sustained...
John Voelcker -
More Fisker Bad News: EPA Calls 20-MPG Karma A SubcompactIt's been a tough week for Fisker. The startup electric-car company finally got its car approved for sale, many months late, only to have the EPA rate its gas mileage at just 20 mpg in range-sustaining mode. Now, a new wrinkle to those ratings has come out: Based on the volume measurements it uses...
John Voelcker -
Great Scott! Here’s How The 2013 All-Electric DeLorean DrivesLet’s face it. If it hadn’t been for the highly popular Back To The Future film trilogy of the 1980s, the stainless-steel, gullwing-doored DeLeorean DMC-12 would probably have been relegated to the history books as an overly-expensive, unreliable sports car wannabe. But thanks to the...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
In the electric auto industry there are three types of car companies: Those who bring a successful electric car to market, those who bring an unsuccessful electric car to market, and those who perpetually claim their ground-breaking electric car is “coming soon”. California-based Aptera motors is one such company. But despite a history that contains more twists and turns than a Nepalese mountain pass, the small electric automaker is promising that it will soon have something exciting to share with the world. That’s the message being sent out by Aptera officials after we...
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Where Will Chevy Spark EV Be Built? Maybe It's Michigan?Two weeks ago, Chevrolet unveiled its 2013 Spark minicar and confirmed that it would offer a Spark EV all-electric model--a story GreenCarReports broke the night before. But within a few days, an intriguing question came up: Where does GM plan to build its first new all-electric car since the late...
John Voelcker -
Fisker's Federal Fiasco: Loans, 20-MPG Electric Cars, Shoddy ReportingCoverage of the low-interest loans granted by the Energy Department to Fisker Automotive has often been remarkably shoddy, so we provide some much-needed context and background.
John Voelcker -
Electric Fiat 500 Spied Testing In Michigan, Intro For 2013 LikelyAlmost two years ago, in January 2010, a mysterious electric version of the Fiat 500 appeared the Detroit Auto Show on the Chrysler stand. Then, two months later, Chrysler said it would sell an electric 500 in the U.S. market. Engineers at the company's Auburn Hills, Michigan, headquarters would...
John Voelcker -
Here’s How To Save $5,000 On A 2012 Nissan Leaf In North CarolinaNASCAR-loving North Carolina may not be the first place you’d think of as being particularly pro-electric car, but for 40-lucky residents the cost of buying a 2012 Nissan Leaf there just dropped by $5,000 thanks to a time-limited scheme being run by Advanced Energy. As part of its latest...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
BYD To California: You Don't Have Enough Electric Car Charging StationsOver the years, we’ve heard lots of excuses from electric car companies as to why they’ve had to delay the launch of a car. Ranging from delays in the part supply through to last-minute improvements and modifications to comply with new regulations, we think we’ve heard them all...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield