electric

If you happen to indulge in the twin passions of both electric cars and motorsport, you'll no doubt have heard of series such as the TTX-GP for electric racing motorcycles that holds events all over the world. A similar series has been slow to emerge for electric cars but at the recent United...

Chevy’s electric hybrid vehicle, the Volt, beat out the cheaper Nissan Leaf in electric car sales in the last month of 2010 as each manufacturer struggled to keep up with demand for their newest rides, the Associated Press reported today. The Volt went into production in mid-November and hit...

At the time of this writing, oil has sprinted above $90 a barrel, silver has jumped 80-plus percent in the last year and China just announced an 11 percent decrease in exports of rare earth metals for 2011. Will these constraints on critical resources, and their inevitable steep rise in costs and...

Right now, six companies are vying to win a contract that would provide 100 electric vehicles to the government’s General Administration services 214,000-strong fleet. One of them is Ford; the other, a relative newcomer called Smith Electric. But the government isn’t looking for...

Now that the 2011 Nissan Leaf and 2011 Chevy Volt have reached showrooms--a handful of them, anyhow--a new crop of electric vehicles will launch into the market for 2011. One of those may be the e6 all-electric crossover built by Chinese manufacturer BYD. Famed financier Warren Buffet was so...

This year — and next — will be a busy one for arrival of electric cars. The Ford Focus Electric and Coda’s sedan are slated for launch by 2011. The Nissan Leaf is slowly making its way to buyers in the U.S. and Europe, the Wheego Whip and LiFe are on sale in New York, and the...

Whilst the U.S. and Europe get the 2011 Chevrolet Volt and 2012 Opel and Vauxhall Ampera, it seems all the full battery-electric vehicles are going to the Far East, and they're keeping fairly quiet about it. A few months back we revealed GM's plans to test an electric version of the Chevrolet Cruze...

Never one to miss the opportunity for a pithy quote, petrolhead extraordinaire Jay Leno has come up trumps again whilst taking delivery of his new 2011 Chevrolet Volt. "Electricity is like sex. People lie about it," quipped Leno, referring to how owners are occasionally inclined to add a few more...

The General Motors EV1 still exerts a strange fascination for electric-car fans and civilians alike. Its sleek, aerodynamic shape and pioneering all-electric drive (despite an initial range of only about 70 miles) make it an important vehicle in U.S. automotive history. Fascination has only grown...

As 2010 draws to a close, we now have shipments of the 2011 Nissan LEAF and the 2011 Chevy Volt to customers around the United States. With the advent of these vehicles, is there still a business case for Better Place? To refresh your memory, Better Place is the venture between Shai Agassi and...

In one particularly hilarious scene in the TV show Weeds, Mary-Louise Parker’s soccer mom/drug dealer character inspires a scary drug lord to buy several Toyota Priuses after he successfully carries out a drive-by shooting while riding in hers. The selling point? The quietness of the hybrid...

For the past few years, we’ve witnessed the success of low-volume, high-priced, highway-capable electric vehicles in the Tesla Roadster. We’ve also just recently seen the advent of medium-volume, medium -priced highway-capable electric cars like the 2011 Chevy Volt and 2011 Nissan LEAF...

It's been a while since we checked in on the car that will likely make or break Silicon Valley electric-car startup Tesla Motors: the Model S, a five-door midsize sports luxury sedan it hopes to launch somewhere toward the end of 2012. Tesla hasn't said much about the Model S lately, but a number...

It’s official: Electric cars for the mass consumer crowd have arrived. The first all-electric Nissan Leaf was sold last week to a man in California, and more are trickling in. And the first Chevrolet Volts (pictured) — GM’s model that can go up to 50 miles on battery power before...

Whilst the 2013 Volkswagen Golf Blue eMotion might be responsible for many of the company's EV headlines, their smaller Up concept is possibly even more intriguing. The Wolfsburg maker has just revealed the third in a trio of electric taxi concepts. Following Berlin and Milano versions, the latest...

It was the first electric car sold in volume anywhere in the world, starting more than a year ago, and now the 2012 Mitsubishi "i" is officially coming to the U.S. market. The U.S. version was unveiled on Thursday at the 2010 Los Angeles Auto Show, though Mitsubishi provided few new details on how...

We took a look a few weeks ago at the five electric cars we reckoned you should do your best to see at the 2010 Los Angeles Auto Show. Our list included the 2011 Nissan Leaf, 2011 Chevrolet Volt, 2011 Coda Sedan, the 2012 Toyota RAV4 EV and the 2012 Mitsubishi i-MiEV. Our opinion hasn't changed -...

There's a lot we don't know about the 2012 Toyota RAV4 EV that Japan's largest automaker is prototyping with Silicon Valley startup Tesla Motors. That includes the battery pack size, traction motor power, and stated range--although 100 miles is the goal, according to Jim Lentz, president of Toyota...

Uh-oh, Nissan. There’s been word a-brewing on car forums for that the carmaker is experiencing delays in delivering the much-anticipated all-electric Leaf, which is slated to start arriving next month. But only five Leafs will arrive in the U.S. next month — one for each of the five...

We love it when people send us photos. Especially photos of things that manufacturers aren't necessarily keeping front and center for the cameras. The photo here is a "range extender" that Nissan uses to keep its 2011 Leaf electric cars fully charged for media events. The picture was taken (by a...