History
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Early electric-car drivers faced the same infrastructure issues as their modern counterparts.
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VW Bus Hybrid That Never Was: The Microbus Prototype Of 1977
A Volkswagen hybrid prototype resurfaces after more than 30 years in obscurity.
Stephen Edelstein -
Famed U.S. Route 66 To Go Electric In Illinois, With State Support
Illinois will invest $1 million in charging stations along the historic Route 66 route.
Stephen Edelstein -
Electric-Car Rally Celebrates 'Sociability Run' 100 Years Ago: UPDATE
A century after the first major Electric Sociability Run, electric cars rallied in West Virginia.
Stephen Edelstein -
Volkswagen Shows Off Its 40-Year History Of Electric Cars
While its new 2015 Volkswagen e-Golf will be the first-ever plug-in electric VW sold in the U.S., the German carmaker has a surprisingly long history of prototype electric cars. Two weeks ago, during a drive event for its VW e-Golf and e-Up production models, along with prototype Golf GTE plug-in...
John Voelcker -
VW Beetle Celebrates 65 Years In U.S. (With A Few Missing)
The first Volkswagen Beetle was imported to the U.S. in January 1949.
Stephen Edelstein -
"Egger-Lohner electric vehicle, C.2 Phaeton model," or P1, was the first car designed by Ferdinand Porsche.
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Electric-Car Trivia: When Was Regenerative Braking First Used?
Regenerative braking is a standard and expected part of any electrified car now, from Honda's mild hybrids up through battery-electric vehicles like the Tesla Model S. It lets the car recapture energy from momentum, which would otherwise be wasted as brake heat, by running the electric motor in...
John Voelcker -
GM EV1 & Tesla Model S: Looking At 20 Years Of Electric Cars
Last week, we were struck by a single photo that captured electric cars across two decades. The image, showing a GM EV1 and a Tesla Model S on the Worcester Polytechnic Institute campus, was posted on Facebook by Tesla Motors [NSDQ:TSLA]. More than anything we've seen in a while, that photo showed...
John Voelcker -
Why The 2013 Nissan Leaf Is Really A 2001 Toyota Prius
A lot of media discussion these days seems to focus overly on the low sales of plug-in electric cars (this piece from Friday, for instance). That despite the fact that plug-ins are selling faster than hybrid vehicles did at the same phase of their launch. But automotive history may provide another...
John Voelcker -
Electric Cars Are Fast: First-Ever U.S. Speeding Ticket
Speeding is big business. There's no money to be made from it as an individual of course, unless you subscribe to the theory "time is money". But the U.S. Census Bureau estimates 100,000 Americans are ticketed for speeding every day, at an average cost of $150 per ticket--$5.5 billion a year in...
Antony Ingram -
Electric Cars Of The Future...As Imagined In The 1970s
Cars of the future--especially those from the past--always exert a powerful pull on our imaginations. They range from the outlandish (no wheels) to the bizarre (extreme styling exercises) to the jaw-dropping (powered by tiny nuclear powerplants). While the Fifties and Sixties may have been the...
John Voelcker -
George Lippincott was the founder and president of Nic-L-Silver Battery Company, Santa Ana, California, which made a popular line of American car batteries in the 1950s. Inspired by fiberglass-bodied sports cars being developed in Southern California at the time, he considered building his own line of battery powered vehicles. Lippincott hoped eventually to build 10 cars a day, with the market being primarily power companies and postal authorities. In 1958, he brought together a team of engineers and designers--including Indy race car builder Frank Kurtis--to design and engineer the chassis...
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1914 Detroit Electric: Pretty Spry For A Century Old (Video)
For decades, old electric cars--those built from the 1890s to 1930 or so, when the last remnants of the industry died out--were nothing more than oddities. Tall, imposing, mostly resembling closed horse carriages, they were stately but sidelined reminders of an entirely vanished way of propulsion...
John Voelcker -
eBay Find: 1982 Lucas-Reliant Hybrid British Concept Car
The history of the auto industry is littered with the carcasses of the cars and companies that didn't make it. Modern hybrid-electric vehicles were first commercialized by Toyota, with its 1997 Prius (sold in the U.S. starting in 2000). But many concepts, development vehicles, one-offs, and other...
John Voelcker