Italy
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Italy has been an electric-car backwater in Europe, but a new populist government has dramatic plans to change that. According to a Bloomberg report, the new Five Star government elected in March is calling for incentives to put 1 million electric cars on Italy's roads by 2022. Last year, data from the European Automobile Manufacturers Association showed only 2,600 electric cars were sold in Italy, along with other 2,200 plug-in hybrid vehicles. The country has fewer than 5,000 electric cars registered today, Bloomberg estimates. That number puts it last among 16 large Western European...
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Rome joins European ban-diesel bandwagon after German court rulingFirst Paris, then a pair of German cities, and now the Eternal City. Two weeks ago, the mayor of Rome announced on her Facebook page that the city would ban diesel cars altogether by 2024. It's not clear whether the ban applies solely to the older, most-polluting diesels as it does already in...
John Voelcker -
Milan Pays Drivers To Leave Cars At Home, Take Public Transit
Traffic often finds its own balance: Cars will flow onto less-crowded roads, while drivers will avoid congested routes or--to some degree--change their driving habits and times. But there's a limit to this flexibility, given how many people now drive to their jobs or other commitments. That means...
John Voelcker -
Jeep Renegade Is 'Male,' While Fiat 500X Will Be More 'Female': Analyst
The 2015 Jeep Renegade, a subcompact crossover from Jeep's owner Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, won't go on sale for a few more months--although it's now in dealerships in Europe. The littlest Jeep will add incremental sales in North America, although its main markets are likely to be Asia and Europe...
John Voelcker -
Italy's Crisp Carabinieri Get New Patrol Cars: Tiny Electric Minicars
The Mitsubishi i-MiEV joins Italy's Carabinieri.
Stephen Edelstein -
Inductive Charging: It's Charged (A Few) Italian Buses For 10 Years Now
Inductive charging is one of those "wait a few years" technologies, right? Not if you live in Italy, where inductive charging isn't just being used now, but has been for a decade in bus fleets in Turin and Genoa. The buses are charged each night at the depot, but to ensure they remain topped up...
Antony Ingram -
The last we heard of Pininfarina and its Bluecar electric vehicle was that the company was looking to start production but a lack of financial support meant the project was never able to pass the concept stage. That was almost two years ago, however. Fast forward to today and we have news that Pininfarina has signed a deal to lease out a portion of its factory near Turin in Italy to a company called Cecomp, which plans to build a run of roughly 4,000 Bluecars. The cars aren’t to be sold to the public but rather used by Autolib, a French car-sharing company. The deal is reportedly worth...
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Abarth ScorpION: The Electric Car With A Sting In Its Tail
What happens when you give an Italian design studio free reign to create an electric car wearing one of Italy's most celebrated badges? You get the Abarth ScorpION concept, by IED. Unusually the ScorpION wasn't present on Abarth's own stand amongst the hotted-up Fiat 500s and a single seater series...
Antony Ingram -
EV Rentals Available In Bergamo, Italy
Say you're an eco-conscious tourist on vacation in Italy and you'd like to explore the outskirts of Milan, but you left your driver's license in the hotel safe. No problem. Catch a cab 25 miles northeast to Bergamo and rent an Italian-made Startlab Open Street EV. The Startlab is an electric...
Robert Scardino
![Inductive Power Transfer wireless charging used in Turin buses. [Image: Conductix-Wampfler]](https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/ibimg/hgm/491x276-1/100/392/inductive-power-transfer-wireless-charging-used-in-turin-buses-image-conductix-wampfler_100392428.jpg)
