Electric Cars
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If you saw yesterday’s 2011 Tesla Roadster Sport 2.5: First Drive Review you’ll know that we were lucky enough to borrow a Lightning Green example of Tesla’s latest electric sports car for the weekend. Three days, 100 kilowatts of electricity, a couple of hard frosts, countless lates, thousands of corners and just over 450 miles covered, we’ve got to know the Tesla Roadster Sport 2.5 pretty well. But rather than punishing the super-quick, super sexy sport version of the Roadster on a racing track, we subjected it to the regular hum-drum of a weekend. As well as giving...
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BREAKING: Brammo Launches 2011 Enertia Plus Electric Motorcycle, Doubles RangeWhat happens when a company releases an update to a vehicle which promises twice as much fun as its predecessor? It happens rarely, but today an Oregonian company has accomplished just that. Keen to show the world that electric vehicles don’t always have to have four wheels to be impressive...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
2011 Tesla Roadster Sport 2.5: First Drive ReviewThe Tesla Roadster is known among gearheads and electric car advocates as being the sports car that smashes all preconceptions about electric vehicles. So when Tesla announced its aptly-named revision to the iconic all-electric car we just had to see if the Californian-based automaker could beat...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
Two Things About Electric Cars The Wall Street Journal MissedWe read a lot of stuff about green cars and, lately, most of it's about electric cars. Sometimes the coverage is unquestioning and adulatory. More often it's cranky and dismissive. But major media outlets are working hard to understand the complexities of what is a huge, slow, expensive, and very...
John Voelcker -
Help Plug In America, MBA Student Analyze Social Media EV RoleAs you'll no doubt be aware, websites such as AllCarsElectric and our sister site GreenCarReports use social media such as Twitter and Facebook to allow our readers to keep up to date with the latest EV and green car news. We aren't alone, either. Companies like Nissan, GM, THINK, Smart and various...
Antony Ingram -
2011 Chevrolet Volt: Full Driving ImpressionsFinally, after almost four years, we've driven the 2011 Chevrolet Volt in a variety of conditions, talked over our impressions, and reached a conclusion: Yes, the 2011 Volt electric car is a real car. It may be propelled by electricity. It may plug into a wall socket or a special garage recharger...
John Voelcker -
Pretty much anyone who's driven one loves the performance of the Tesla Roadster, the first modern electric car with a lithium-ion battery pack. The 2011 Chevrolet Volt is a much less radical electric car than the Roadster in certain ways, and one of them is its accelerator response. Volt: Just like an automatic GM's engineers have tuned the control software to mimic the behavior of a standard gasoline-engine car fitted with an automatic transmission. There's the standard idle creep at a stoplight, and if you lift off the accelerator, the car coasts freely, with little regenerative braking...
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Ready For Your Electric Car? Don’t Forget The Smart PhoneIf you’ve got one of the many new electric cars due to launch this year on order you’re probably as excited about going electric as our own Marty Padgett, who is one of the many patiently waiting for a 2011 Nissan Leaf. You’ve already talked with your dealer and perhaps even had a...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
Volkswagen Gains EV Experience With Ex-Renault ExpertDespite Volkswagen's green technology mainly being focused on clean diesels, the company are clearly serious about their EV program too, having lured Joerg Sommer from Renault to be their new sales director for e-mobility. The ex-Renault man previously ran the French company's EV brand operations...
Antony Ingram -
Toyota To Pay Tesla $60 Million For RAV4 Electric ComponentsWhat does it cost to develop an electric vehicle these days? In the case of the upcoming electric Toyota RAV4 crossover, $60 million. At least, that's the amount that Toyota will pay Tesla Motors under a contract to supply lithium-ion battery packs, electric motors, gearboxes, power electronics...
John Voelcker -
2011 Chevrolet Volt Production Number To Rise Slightly, AgainOnce again, Chevrolet has upped planned production volumes of its 2011 Volt electric car in the face of strong demand and the likelihood that many dealers have more buyers than cars to sell them. In July, at a media event discussing launch markets and other details, Volt marketing manager Tony...
John Voelcker -
Touched By Tesla: Why Tesla’s Future Lies In EngineeringDespite what some electric car conversion advocates will tell you, making a good electric car is extremely hard. It takes skill, money, resources and many hours of time. What’s more, the history books are littered with the names of small independent companies who tired and failed to produce...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
If you're reading this website, chances are you're already someone giving some consideration to owning an electric car. If so, great! You're one step further than the next guy to an oil-free future. However, for some the next hurdle could be a bigger one - should you lease the electric car of your choice, or should you pull out all the stops and splash out your hard-earned green on actually buying one? Luckily, AllCarsElectric is here to offer you the "pros" and "cons" of both. You're on your own choosing a paintwork color though... Leasing: Pros and Cons Leasing is a very tempting...
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The 2011 Tesla Roadster 2.5 What Do YOU Want To Know?We’ve already covered the updated 2011 Tesla Roadster 2.5 upgrade on AllCarsElectric and although our John Voelcker has given the 2010 Roadster a 7.4 out of 10 over at TheCarConnection, we’ve yet to put the 2011 Roadster 2.5 through its paces. Updated with a new grille, some performance...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
Your Ultimate Guide To Electric Car Charging EtiquetteThe end of 2010 is fast approaching and that means in a few short months we’ll see the launch of several different plug-in vehicles. But as the 2011 Nissan Leaf, 2011 Coda Sedan, 2011 Chevrolet Volt, 2011 Wheego Whip LiFE and others hit the roads of the U.S., hundreds of new electric car and...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
2011 Nissan Leaf: While You Wait, Have Some StickersYou've heard by now that I'm buying a 2011 Nissan Leaf. In case you're wondering, it's a Cayenne Red SV, which I'm hoping implies some hyper-real blend of Porsche and Lamborghini performance. Maybe? Maybe not. I won't be among the first folks to take delivery, though. Lance Armstrong already has...
Martin Padgett -
Best Buy Joins Electric Car Infrastructure, Installs Charging PointsAs any gadget geek will tell you, the electronics retailer Best Buy is a great place to get everything from the latest windscreen televisions and kitchen appliances through to electric bicycles and even in select stores, the 2011 Brammo Enertia. We already know how switched onto electric cars Best...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
THINK City World's Best-Selling City EV; 2,500 And CountingWith the media kerfuffle surrounding the 2011 Chevrolet Volt and anticipation mounting for 2011 Nissan Leaf customers, it's easy to forget that there are other electric cars out there. Even successful ones, it seems. Swedish electric city car maker THINK are more than 20 years old and have just...
Antony Ingram -
This will be our last word on the whole "GM Lied!" and "Is the Volt a hybrid?" controversy, which blew up yesterday at the first day of the 2011 Chevrolet Volt press launch. Late last night, GM issued a press release (largely reprised on its Voltage site) entitled "Clearing up confusion about the Chevy Volt." The company noted, "some confusion has emerged about details of the Volt’s drive technology." Well, yes. Indeed. Electric yes, hybrid OK, gasoline-driven ... no In brief, GM revealed a mode of operation for the Volt in which under certain circumstances, the gasoline engine...
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Five Reasons Why Voltgate Won’t Hurt Sales Of The 2011 Chevy VoltWhen the proverbial waste-product hit the fan yesterday with the revelation that GM could possibly have “lied to us” about just how its 2011 Chevy Volt operated we sat back and waited for the dust to settle. After all, the tabloid reporting of some sites didn’t tell us anything we...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
Video: Charging The 2011 Chevrolet VoltFor some reason, while none of us think twice about plugging in our mobile phones to recharge overnight, the prospect of plugging in a car makes some people very nervous. On yesterday's test drive of a 2011 Chevrolet Volt range-extended electric car, we visited the Detroit-Hamtramck factory where...
John Voelcker -
Four Ways To Combate Long-Distance Electric Car Range AnxietyRange Anxiety, or the fear that an electric car will run out of charge before it reaches its destination, has to be the ultimate boogeyman of the electric car world. It stems from the fact that most electric cars on the market today have a range per-charge much smaller than the 200-500 miles...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
2011 Chevrolet Volt: First Impressions, Tech And QuestionsIf you follow AllCarsElectric with any regularity, you might just be familiar with a certain new Chevrolet known as the Volt. We've probably mentioned it at some point... Well, the 2011 Chevrolet Volt is now here and our partner site GreenCarReports has been putting the car through its paces at the...
Antony Ingram -
Enterprise To Add 100 2011 Coda Sedans To Its Electric Car FleetElectric cars and the rental market seem made for one another. While you’re not easily going to be able to make huge long-distance family trips in an electric rental car, all electric rental cars are ideal for visitors to larger cities throughout the U.S., be they on holiday or stop-over...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield