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Yesterday afternoon, BMW hosted a Special Sneak Peek Preview Event of the BMW i3 and BMW i8 concept electric cars in New York. Both cars will make their official U.S. debut at next week's Los Angeles Auto Show. After an hour-long photo session, we were addressed by Richard Kim, exterior designer...

A couple of weeks ago, BMW invited me to come to Munich and take part in the first drive of production versions of the BMW ActiveE, their second battery electric test vehicle. A bit of background: I've been something of a high-profile MINI E pioneers, maintaining an active blog about my...

“In America, we like everyone to know about the good work we’re doing anonymously,” Jay Leno explained to Top Gear’s James May, discussing his views of the green-car mentality in the U.S. His point: The models we buy affirm their conscientiousness (and our own) with...

After several months of using a 2011 Chevy Volt and a 2011 Nissan Leaf as our sole family transport, we have a better understanding of both cars than we did in March, when I first wrote about how they compared. First to arrive at our West Sacramento home was a beautiful crystal red 2011 Volt. We...

So you bought a 2011 Nissan Leaf, and paid for the optional $700 quick-charge connector. Now you're able to get an 80-percent battery recharge in just 30 minutes, albeit from very few places right now. Promising, right? Not so fast, sonny. It appears that U.S. makers of electric cars are likely to...

The 2011 Geneva Motor Show in March brought a number of new models out of the closet. But for the green car fan, two concepts were the gems of the show: the return of the legendary Volkswagen Microbus, and an electric sports car from Nissan that just might be affordable. Bulli for the Microbus The...

Cars that consume less fuel have many benefits, including lower gasoline costs. Now it turns out that they also bring significant public-health benefits, reducing health-care costs and premature deaths from cardiopulmonary causes. The challenge is that the costs and benefits aren't equally spread...

World supplies of the highly popular Toyota Prius hybrid could be further threatened by new electric power problems in Japan. The Japanese government requested on Friday, May 6, that the Hamaoka nuclear power plant system shut down all of its reactors, which supply to the central Japanese power...

Three weeks ago, in a suburban park in Roseville, California--just outside the state capital, Sacramento--a community celebration of Earth Day served as a gathering of the greenest cars now available. Both participants and random park-goers were drawn to the cars, providing a chance for eager...

Vacaville, California, has the distinction of the very first public Level 3 or DC quick charging station for electric cars to be installed in the United States. It was first activated in late May 2010, and was used very soon after for a small fleet of Mitsubishi i-MIEV models to make a trip from...

What is the basic purpose of the new electric cars? For most of us, it is as a city or local commuting vehicle. The basic commuting "appliance" might be optimized to: 1. cost as little as possible to acquire; 2. have decent functional range for the typical commute or errand, e.g. 50 miles?; and 3...

It is apparently quite possible that the local utility company that provides the power to charge your new electric vehicle may not have "all its ducks in a row" when it comes to charging you properly for that electricity. I recently bought both a 2011 Nissan Leaf and a 2011 Chevy Volt, and well...

Last fall, the Peugeot EX1 Concept lit imaginations on fire when it debuted at the Paris Motor Show. Is it a three-wheeled bike? A car? Something totally different? I suppose the last option is the closest to correct. It's got four wheels, but the rear track is narrower than the front track. And a...

As of the middle of April, gasoline is approaching $4.00 per gallon across the United States and oil is surging past $110 per barrel. More and more energy observers are talking about "$5 per gallon fuel" here in the U.S. So how do you minimize your gasoline costs and maximize your mileage? What...

The choices among electric cars just keep getting better, as BMW has now announced the lease details for the first stage of its evolution into BMW-branded electric cars. The ActiveE, an all-electric version of the 1-series, will be available for lease requests later this summer. It will be offered...

These are exciting times to be a car shopper, as the choices in every possible category just keep getting better and more fuel-efficient. The options for ecologically sensitive hybrid buyers have taken a major step forward with the introduction of the 2011 Chevrolet Volt and the imminent arrival of...

Electric cars like the 2011 Chevrolet Volt and 2011 Fisker Karma get around the problem of range anxiety the old-fashioned way: They use gasoline engines. They do it because the battery systems of pure electric vehicles are large, heavy, and expensive, but the range they produce is still...

One way for potential buyers to get familiar with electric cars is to rent one. Several rental companies, among them Enterprise, have announced plans to rent 2011 Nissan Leaf and other electric models at selected locations. Renting an electric car lets you spend far more time in one than the...

Not all electric cars are the same. Buyers can now choose between "pure" battery electric vehicles and a car with a combination power train termed either a range-extended electric vehicle, which uses a gasoline engine to generate electricity to run the car, or a plug-in hybrid (PHEV) that adds...

The formal name for what many of us more casually call “Level 3” charging is CHAdeMo, which is the only currently installed standard to reduce electric-car charging time for an 80-percent charge to less than an hour. The CHAdeMo interface is an option on the 2011 Nissan Leaf; on that...