Electric Cars

The big unknown in global efforts to reduce carbon emissions is China. It is industrializing at a rapid pace, and a burgeoning middle class has savings galore to spend on its first automobiles--including luxury European brands. By some estimates, the world's current 800 million vehicles will grow...

On the face of it, buying or selling a used electric car could seem like a great idea if you either need to make more room in your garage for your shiny new plug-in ride or you just can’t afford the sticker shock associated with buying new. However, we’ve been watching Internet auction...

Atlanta-based Wheego Electric Cars Inc may have just delivered its first all-electric two-seat LiFe, but it is also fighting for its life. Talking candidly to Lindsay Chappell from Automotive News, Wheego CEO Mike McQuary painted a bleak picture of the firm and its future. “My constraint is...

It is apparently quite possible that the local utility company that provides the power to charge your new electric vehicle may not have "all its ducks in a row" when it comes to charging you properly for that electricity. I recently bought both a 2011 Nissan Leaf and a 2011 Chevy Volt, and well...

Last fall, the Peugeot EX1 Concept lit imaginations on fire when it debuted at the Paris Motor Show. Is it a three-wheeled bike? A car? Something totally different? I suppose the last option is the closest to correct. It's got four wheels, but the rear track is narrower than the front track. And a...

Automaker BYD is by far China's most aggressive when it comes to electric cars. It launched its F3DM sedan, the world's first production plug-in hybrid, back in December 2008--sales have been poor--and has been testing its all-electric e6 crossover with both taxi fleets in Shenzhen, China, and the...

Here’s a question. Would you put your kids in branded clothes for a $109,000 sports car? If you answered yes, then we think that’s the answer Silicon-Valley electric car firm Tesla Motors is hoping for after it has quietly launched a new line of clothing aimed specifically at those way...

As those who purchased Betamax when everyone else was choosing VHS will tell you, being at the cutting edge of technology is sometimes very, very expensive. The latest victims of “early-adopter light-wallet syndrome” aren’t buying a new video collection though: they’re...

This year we’ve seen a dramatic increase in the number of companies working towards detaching the electric car from its charging cable. Now Toyota, the world’s largest automaker, has joined the inductive charging revolution with a substantial undisclosed investment in WiTricity...

If you love the thrill of motor racing but the carbon footprint of Nascar and Formula 1 is getting you down then the decidedly lower-emissions all-electric racing offered by the 2011 EV Cup may be for you. Conceived a few years ago and attracting entries from former competitors in The American Le...

A study conducted by the energy research and advisory firm E Source has revealed that as much as 85 percent of consumers could be ready to buy plug-in electric cars, provided the conditions were right. The data for the report was collected from the Nielsen Energy Survey, which asked 3,200 energy...

In the world of electric cars, launch delays seem to be the rule rather than the exception, but one particular automaker seems even more susceptible to changing schedules than any other. A year ago California-based Coda Automotive was upbeat, promising its $44,900 electric sedan would be on the...

You wouldn’t know it, but until recently Chrysler was responsible for one of the most recognizable electric vehicle brands worldwide. But like the embarrassing cousin at the family reunion, Chrysler’s ownership of low-speed Neighborhood Electric Vehicle manufacturers Global Electric...

Spend much time looking into electric cars online and you’ll come across the old chestnut that suggests that battery electric and plug-in hybrid cars just aren’t as safe as their gasoline-engined counterparts. But the two best-selling mainstream electric cars of the year have just put...

Ask any electric car owner to list their favorite benefits of driving an electric car and the chances are that not queuing for gasoline is among them. With relatively few electric cars on the road and public charging stations still hardly oversubscribed, finding a place to plug in is relatively...

In just under a week, electric vehicle owners in Los Angeles will be find that owning an electric car will have got a lot easier. As part of a program recently announced by Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, residents of the city will be able to fast-track applications to install electric...

Late last week a couple in Atlanta, Georgia became the first owners of the latest battery electric car to hit the roads, the 2011 Wheego LiFe. Handed over to commemorate Earth Day 2011, the small electric car which bears a passing resemblance to the 2011 Smart ForTwo electric drive is the first...

Driving the 2011 Chevrolet Volt leads all sorts of people to ask you questions: passers-by, the guy at the parking garage...and sometimes, even museums. A few weeks ago, we had a Chevy Volt for review. At the time, we were asked by the Forward Thinking Museum in Manhattan not only to show its staff...

Every movie has to have a premiere, and every premiere has to have a red carpet. When the red carpet is on a Manhattan sidewalk, with plenty of passers-by stopping to gawk, and many of the celebs are arriving in electric cars, things get a little more complicated. Still, last night's premiere of...

From Michael Moore's Roger And Me in 1989 to Chris Paine's 2006 Who Killed The Electric Car?, there's no shortage of documentaries that portray auto-industry executives as incompetent, bumbling, short-sighted, arrogant fools. So it may be a surprise that merely five years later, two global...