Electric Cars
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Will the auto industry change more in the next decade than it has in the past century? We think that's hyperbole. There will be big changes, including the arrival of electric cars in volume, but to say the cars of 2020 will be as different from today's as the cars of today were from those in 1911 ... well, that's a bit of a stretch. Undaunted by what we might think, Merrill Lynch auto analyst Steve Milunovich has issued a "Buy" recommendation to kick off the firm's coverage of Tesla Motors stock. In his note, he said, "In our view, CEO Elon Musk may be similar to Steve Jobs in being a...
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Curious Tire-Kickers Keep Tesla Busy Even Without Cars to SellDrop by your local Apple retail store, and you’re bound to see it humming with visitors. But while some are there to hand over their hard-earned cash for a new computer or mobile device many more are there to soak up the apple store experience. Most are there just to window shop, dreaming of...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
2011 Frankfurt Auto Show: Audi Gives More Details on Electric Urban ConceptYesterday we brought you news of a highly camouflaged all-electric minicar spotted in the center of Berlin and wearing the unmistakable linked ring Audi badge. At the time, we postulated that the tiny electric runabout was probably Audi’s e-tron city concept car. Now Audi has confirmed that...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
Top Gear Nissan Leaf Episode Sparks Healthy Debate, Positive ReactionsA little over a week ago, the BBC aired an episode of its popular motoring entertainment program Top Gear in which presenters Jeremy Clarkson and James May searched in vain for an electric-car charging station. They needed to recharge their fully-drained 2011 Nissan Leaf in the rural English county...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
Live in Idaho and Want an Electric Car? You’re In For a Long WaitIf California is the undisputed capital of electric cars in North America, which state is its antithesis? According to the Idaho Business Review, Idaho could be that state, with both the 2012 Chevrolet Volt and 2012 Nissan Leaf unavailable at present. Worse still, Nissan won’t be even making...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
Is This Audi’s All-Electric City E-Tron? We Think So (Video)Audi might have not chosen the best name for its new range of all-electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles, but it certainly knows how to cause a stir in downtown Berlin. Spotted posing for photographs in the center of Berlin earlier this week is what we can only assume is Audi’s City e-tron...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
It’s almost a year since the Progressive Insurance Automotive X-Prize came to a conclusion, but we’ve heard relatively little from its various winners. Until Now. Enter the Finnish team which came runners up in the Alternative (Side by Side) category with the conventionally-styled Electric Race About (E-RA). While driving south from Finland to attend the E-Miglia Rally in Munich, the team dropped by Nürburg, Germany, home to the famous Nordschleife racetrack. Naturally, the team had to find out just how good the E-RA was on the circuit, letting GT and American Le Mans driver...
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Nissan Goes Toyota One Better With Cooler-Looking Cargo Ship (Video)Call it the battle of the clean-car cargo ships. First Toyota retrofitted its Auriga Leader car transporter ship with a diesel hybrid powertrain, allowing some energy to be recaptured in a bank of nickel-metal-hydride batteries just like those used in its Prius and other hybrid cars. That ship got...
John Voelcker -
2012 Ford Focus Electric Only Available in NY, CA This YearIt may have just appeared on The Late Show last week, but Ford’s all-electric 2012 Focus won’t be hitting the streets en masse until spring 2012. At least, that’s what David Finnegan, Electrified Vehicles Marketing Manager at Ford Motor Company has told forum members at...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
Would You Pay $4 For 90 Minutes Of Electric Car Charging?A few weeks ago we told you that pharmaceuticals giant Walgreens had begun to install Level 2 electric car stations at stores in New York City, Houston, Dallas-Fort Worth and Chicago. While the presence of electric car charging stations -- an estimated 800 at Walgreens stores alone -- are a great...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
BMW's UK MINI E Test Ends: Drivers Happy, But...A few months after BMW and MINI's electric car study ended in the United States, a similar scheme run in the U.K. has also come to a close, and the results are in... ...and if you've read the results of the American tests, the figures coming from the U.K. will all look very familiar. Basically, all...
Antony Ingram -
2012 Toyota RAV4 EV To Be Built In Toyota Plant, Not By TeslaThis much we know already: Tesla Motors will build battery packs and electric drive systems for the upcoming 2012 Toyota RAV4 EV electric crossover. What we didn't know was where that car would be assembled. Would it be the Canadian factory that builds standard gasoline RAV4s for North America, or...
John Voelcker -
We’ve known about Chinese firm BYD for some time now. In fact, its all-electric e6 was unveiled before the word Leaf became the name of an electric car. But despite unveiling a car long before many of its rivals, BYD won’t be bringing the e6 to the U.S. until the middle of next year. If the firm’s past reputation is anything to go by, we’d suggest that date is highly likely to change. The information comes courtesy of freelance journalist Alysha Webb, who interviewed Stella Li, senior vice president of BYD Co. last week. In her article over at Plugincars.com, Webb...
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Join All Cars Electric As We Move To Green Car Reports Next Week!If you’re a regular at All Cars Electric You’ll know that we have a sister site, Green Car Reports. Together, we’ve been covering the latest news in plug-in vehicles and other green cars for quite some time. In the past few years we’ve seen electric cars move from vaporware...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
Nissan Gives First Charging Station To City Visited By Top Gear (BREAKING)If you’ve been following the story of what happened when popular British entertainment show Top Gear took a 2011 Nissan Leaf and 2011 Peugeot iOn (nee Mitsubishi i) for a drive to the rural eastern U.K. city of Lincoln, you’ll know that Nissan wasn’t exactly happy with the way its...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
2012 Ford Focus Gives Letterman a Late Show Test-DriveYou’re the CEO of a global automaker who has just been invited to appear as a guest on the internationally renowned Late Show With David Letterman to talk about your new electric car. But rather than just talk about it, why not bring the car along too? And then let the show’s host drive...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
2012 Toyota Prius Plug-in Hybrid: Five Things We HateIn the past year, we’ve put the 2012 Toyota Prius Plug-in Hybrid through an extensive set of test-drives, resulting in our first drive report, winter test-drive, financial analysis and even a family vacation. With so many miles behind the wheel, our editorial team has already shared our five...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
2012 Toyota Prius Plug-in Hybrid: Five Things We LikeWe’ve now had four chances to put the 2012 Toyota Prius Plug-in Hybrid through its paces, covering everything from fast-moving freeways and inner city streets through to mountain passes and trips to the local Costco. In the end we concluded that for some drivers, Toyota’s 13...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
Nissan’s all-electric Leaf isn’t having a great time of it this week in the mainstream media. Firstly, Nissan had to defend itself against popular British motoring entertainment program Top Gear after it showed the electric hatchback in a less-than favorable light, quoting a battery expert who said the Leaf’s 24 kilowatt hour battery pack would need replacing after just three years. Now British newspaper The Telegraph has joined in the fight, claiming that a new battery pack for the Leaf would cost owners a few hundred dollars shy of $32,000. In an article published...
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Say Hello To Electric Car Battery Swaps, Chinese StyleWe all know that one of the biggest challenges facing electric cars is the fact that recharging a battery pack is orders of magnitude slower than filling a gasoline car’s fuel tank. As battery packs have become more advanced, we’ve seen an increased use of rapid charging technologies...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
Tesla Releases Trio Test-Track Fun Model S Teaser VideoIf Tesla’s Model S all-electric seven-seat sedan were in high school, it would be the kind of girl every heterosexual boy would lust after and every teenage girl would want to be. At least, that’s certainly the line being taken by Tesla in its latest teasing track-test video, in which...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
Top Gear On Electric Cars: “We Are Allowed To Put Into A Film What We Want To”Uh-ho. Those crafty chaps known as the BBC Top Gear team may have thought they got away with their recent review of the 2011 Nissan Leaf and 2011 Peugeot iOn (a rebadged predecessor to the 2012 Mitsubishi i) - but they would be wrong. The fur started flying yesterday, when Nissan Senior Vice...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
2012 Toyota Prius Plug-in Hybrid: Everything to Everyone?The iconic Toyota Prius was the car which started the hybrid revolution. Offering fuel economy that very few other gasoline cars could hope to achieve, it has been loved by politicians, movie stars and wannabe greenies for over ten years. Although Toyota improved its hybrid drivetrain for the...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
Nissan North America Releases Android App for Leaf Electric CarEver since the launch of the 2011 Nissan Leaf, owners have been able to remotely access information about their car’s state of charge, estimated range and even pre-heat or cool the cabin using Nissan’s built-in telematics service - Carwings. But unless you happened to own an iPhone in...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield