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Last year, the 96,000 plug-in electric cars sold in the U.S. represented a bit more than half a percent of the total market of 16.5 million vehicles. Market share is a good statistic: It's useful, and easy to track. But we need to piece together the relationships between vehicle price, type, and...

A recent 1,200-mile East Coast road trip in my 2013 Tesla Model S electric car proved to be something of a turning point in my view of the car. Fitted with the smaller 60-kilowatt-hour battery pack, my car's EPA range of 208 miles was not quite enough to make it between Superchargers--Tesla's...

Just in time for the holiday-feast season, we now have published charts that detail the effect of cold weather on the battery range of Nissan Leaf and Chevy Volt electric cars. Think "range shrinkage". The data comes courtesy of FleetCarma, the Canadian company whose app MyCarma tracks vehicle...

After reading George Parrott's article yesterday about his effortless 1,200-mile West Coast road trip along Tesla's Supercharger Highway, I have only one thing to say. "George, you lucky bastard." You see, I too recently made a 1,200-mile journey in my Tesla Model S. And it wasn't quite so...

This started out as a feel-good article about another great experience I had with Tesla's extraordinary service program. But it morphed into a detective story that apparently solves the mystery of why my 60-kWh 2013 Tesla Model S still suffered a significant "vampire" power drain, even after...

Last month, Apple Stores in the United States began stocking the Automatic Link. And it might just point the way toward how to convince more car buyers that a plug-in electric car--or other alternatives, from hybrid to diesel to natural gas, for that matter--could make economic sense. The Automatic...

The Tesla Model S, for all its technical and design artistry, has a dirty little secret: the car has a substantial appetite for kilowatt-hours even when turned off and parked. Since the Model S was introduced in 2012, this "vampire" power drain from the cars sold so far has consumed roughly 15...

The Chevrolet Volt and Tesla Model S have jockeyed for the Canadian sales crown since the latter's arrival in Canada. October marked the 20th consecutive month that either the Chevy Volt or the Tesla Model S was the top-selling Canadian plug-in electric vehicle. In the 10 months for which we have...

Unless your name is Brinks, you rarely hear the words "armor" and "car" mentioned in the same sentence. But two recent widely-publicized fires in the Tesla Model S electric car have put the spotlight on how its battery pack is protected from severe impacts underneath the car. MORE: Tesla Fires...

Modern electric cars went on sale three years ago, and now we're starting to see assessments of their progress from a variety of perspectives. Last year, WWF Canada (the panda people, not the professional wrestlers) set a goal of having 600,000 electric vehicles on Canadian roads by 2020 – or...

Over the last couple of years, Tesla Motors has fought legal and legislative battles in a number of states over proposed or current state laws that try to stymie its unique factory-direct sales and service model. In most cases--Massachusetts, New York, and North Carolina, among others--Tesla has...

Today is Canadian Thanksgiving, though the country's electric vehicle enthusiasts could be forgiven a bit of pessimism. Plug-in car adoption has been slower than expected, and support seems unlikely from a federal government that has reshaped the country from mild, modest milquetoast to combative...

In the eight months I've owned my 60-kWh Tesla Model S, I've never had occasion to drive it more than 120 miles, comfortably within the car's EPA-rated 208-mile range. The phrase "range anxiety" was not in my lexicon. But last week, I got an invitation from Don Sherman, Technical Director of Car...

So how on earth do you use an electric car in places that consistently get many feet of snow every winter? Short answer: snow tires. Long answer: plan ahead. Being based in Vancouver--what passes for the Canadian tropics*, where snow had to be helicoptered onto local ski hills during the 2010...

The Chevrolet Volt and Tesla Model S were probably neck-and-neck in Canadian plug-in sales, in September In August, the Chevy Volt won the sales podium by an 84-56 margin over the Nissan Leaf. Government records showed 55 new Tesla Model S registrations, leaving the California automaker in a close...

Last spring, a map on Tesla's website promised that 18 new "Superchargers"--the ultra-fast charging stations for its Model S electric luxury car--would be activated around the U.S. during "Summer 2013." Though summer's not technically over until September 21, most of us have put away the sunscreen...

In July, we tentatively crowned the Tesla Model S as the top-selling plug-in electric carmaker in Canada, reasoning that the Muskmobile would top the 42 nationwide sales reported by the Volt and the Leaf. And we were right -- by the skin of our teeth. Government registration records showed 43 new...

A few months ago, some minor glitches in my 2013 Tesla Model S were fixed at the Tesla service center in White Plains, New York. It was a perfectly satisfactory experience, pretty much like any other service visit: Drive to the shop, read magazines for a couple of hours, get the car back, drive...

Electric cars achieved another milestone recently: Plug-in vehicles on American roads now outnumber the gas stations they whiz past on the roadside. We estimate the watershed (oil-shed?) event took place in early July--though there are some asterisks, as we'll discuss below. As early as next year...

Many who follow the progress of plug-in electric cars wonder why Toyota, despite its leadership in hybrids, lags other carmakers in its electric vehicles. The business principle of The Innovator's Dilemma suggests that the company has been slow to embrace electric cars not despite its hybrid...