Toyota RAV4 News
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You might think that having a twisted lump of metal on your auto show stand probably isn't the best way to promote your latest product. Most manufacturers would agree with you. The customers tend to prefer cars shinier and in one piece. Volvo aren't "most manufacturers" though and they've never been a company to shy away from the safety aspect of their vehicles, so demonstrating a 2011 Volvo C30 electric car that's had an altercation with a deformable metal object at 40 miles per hour is the perfect way to demonstrate just how safe their car is. Many people have concerns about what electric...
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347.2 Miles! Tesla Takes New Production Car Distance RecordMany of us will have broken in the New Year celebrating with friends, sinking a few drinks, watching a firework display and generally being merry. For some though, the celebrations will have come later that day. Between the afternoon of December 31, 2010 and the end of January 1, 2011, Team VIN...
Antony Ingram -
2011 Chevrolet Volt: What Do Owners Think, A Few Weeks In?Much of 2010 was spent learning more and more details about Chevrolet's exciting new range-extended electric car, the Volt. Towards the end of the year our colleagues at GreenCarReports finally got to drive the vehicle, and more recently the first owners have taken delivery. So what do owners...
Antony Ingram -
Tegra For Tesla: 2012 Model S To Use Nvidia Graphics TechThe Tesla Motors company goes hand-in-hand with high technology. Their current 2011 Roadster 2.5 uses cutting edge aluminum and carbon-fiber construction and offers supercar-rivalling performance from its electric drivetrain. We've known about the upcoming 2012 Tesla Model S electric sedan for a...
Antony Ingram -
Can Electric-Car Clubs And Shows Really Bring In Buyers?As an electric car enthusiast or recently-converted gearhead, you'll no doubt be aware of the huge variety of clubs out there for virtually any make and model or automotive scene you can think of. For many people, a thriving scene and great social network might be the difference between choosing...
Antony Ingram -
New Electric Car Race Series Lines Up On The Grid [Video]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...
Antony Ingram -
If General Motors' EV1 had featured in the Disney Pixar animated film Cars, we can't imagine it would have been the happiest of characters. It might well have spent a little time complaining about its friends all being crushed back in 1999, and who could blame it? And four years ago it might have been equally unhappy when it was pulled from an exhibit in the Smithsonian Institute's National Museum of American History. Having taken pride of place as an example of electric vehicle technology, it was pulled from display, much to the dismay of EV enthusiasts at a time when the EV world was once...
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Jay Leno Takes Delivery Of Volt, Offers Up A SoundbiteNever 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...
Antony Ingram -
175mph (And More) In An Electric Car. Range? Don't Ask...What'll she do, mister? With electric cars, the response would more often than not usually be relating to the range. With Don Wales' Electric Bluebird, the answer might instead be 150 miles per hour. Maybe even 175 miles per hour. If the name Bluebird is familiar to you, then you'll probably...
Antony Ingram -
Toshiba Li-Ion Batteries To Appear In Honda's Electric CarFollowing years of claims they weren't interested in developing a battery-electric vehicle, Honda backtracked earlier this year and decided that they would produce one, with the 2012 Honda Fit EV concept finally revealed at the 2010 Los Angeles Auto Show last month. Now, Honda has announced that...
Antony Ingram -
Triac Electric Car - Three Wheels, 100 Miles And $25,000With the focus naturally going towards some of the big electric car launches we've had this year or established players like Tesla Motors, it's all too easy to forget that there are a wealth of smaller companies out there producing their own, unique take on electric transport. One such company is...
Antony Ingram -
Volt-Based 'Amp' Due In Detroit: Wise Move By Chevrolet?The Voltec powetrain used in the 2011 Chevrolet Volt has never been meant for just the one vehicle. Restricting a new technology developed at great expense to a single niche vehicle makes poor economic sense. The prediction by Car and Driver of a Volt-based Chevrolet Amp, thought to be close in...
Antony Ingram -
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 concept is resplendent in the familiar black colour scheme of London taxi cabs. According to U.K. magazine Autocar, Volkswagen is "deeply considering" putting its electric taxi concepts into production by 2013 in a pre-emptive move to prepare for likely future legislation forcing drivers in...
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Charging Station Incentives Sneak Into Tax Cut Extension BillAs recently as last week, it became apparent that the current federal 50 percent incentive towards the cost of installing an electric car charging station would expire on the 31st December this year. This would be particularly bad news to the vast majority of upcoming EV owners, many of whom...
Antony Ingram -
Electric Vehicle Collaborative To Help Introduce EVs in CAIf you were to draw up a listof places least in need of encouraging towards the use of electric cars, California would probably be right up there. As well as being the home of companies such as Tesla Motors and Coda Automotive, many EV manufacturers usually pick at least one city in the State to...
Antony Ingram -
Next-Gen Electric Car Batteries Only Five Years Away?There has undoubtably been a lot of work put into battery technology in the last few years as more and more electric vehicles hit the scene. One of the current trends is to use varying numbers of lithium-ion (Li-ion) cells, similar to those you'll find in a laptop computer. They offer numerous...
Antony Ingram -
Revenge Of The Electric Car Trailer: Watch It Now! [Video]It's finally here! Well, the trailer is anyway... We announced just under a month ago that the long awaited sequel to the film Who Killed The Electric Car?, the logically titled Revenge Of The Electric Car (ROTEC), would be previewed with a trailer released when 10,000 people became fans of the...
Antony Ingram -
2011 Nissan Leaf? Far Too Boring In Japan...If it ever really needed to be said, Japanese car tastes can be... "alternative", to put it in polite terms. As well as their Kei-Jidosha class of city cars that are absolutely miniscule compared to U.S. monsters, the country has produced some fairly crazy production cars over the years. That trend...
Antony Ingram -
Let us run a few engines past you. A warbling flat six. A growling V8. The howl of an inline four changing cam profiles. The smooth buzz of a rotary. How about some names now? Hemi. Vortec. Powerstroke. VTEC. Renesis. Ecoboost. Noticing a pattern? The first list is clearly engine layouts, and the second are trademarked brand names for particular motors. The similarity amongst them all is that you could probably link every single layout and name with a particular car company, or sometimes even with a particular model. Rotaries for example have been synonymous with Mazda for many years now, and...
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2011 Chevrolet Volt Rolls Down The Production Line [Video]We've already taken a behind-the-scenes look at how the 2011 Nissan Leaf electric car is produced with a "how it's made" video at the maker's Oppama factory in Japan. Now comes the turn of Chevrolet's Volt, with the release of a short time-lapse video in celebration of the official start to...
Antony Ingram -
Europe's First iAd With 2012 Renault Twizy Electric CarIf there's one gadget that seems to go hand in hand with electric cars, it's Apple's iPhone. We've seen apps that allow you to place reservations and even customise your order, apps that allow you to keep track of charging and even switch on your aircon or heater remotely, and earlier in the year...
Antony Ingram -
Cracker Barrel Installing EV Charge Points At Tennessee StoresCracker Barrel, not exactly the bastion of green technology, has launched a pilot program that will see a number of EV charge points installed at 24 of the restaurant chain’s outlets across the state of Tennessee. The company that prides itself on old-style country stores is taking a very...
Viknesh Vijayenthiran -
Gran Turismo Game Goes Green: Virtual Electric CarsDepending on your demographic, the new PlayStation 3 Gran Turismo 5 (GT5) video game is either your single most essential purchase this year, or a completely baffling piece of technology that you'll probably never buy. Ironically, the same could be said for the current wave of electric cars we've...
Antony Ingram -
Zero Emission Solar Charging At Chevrolet Volt Plant [Video]We've discussed before the issue of how clean electric cars really are when you take into consideration the source of the electricity you use to charge them - they're only as clean as the grid powering them. It's usually one of the first things EV dissenters bring up... "Yeah, but where does the...
Antony Ingram