youtube
-
A new ad for the Nissan Leaf flies high but says little, while an Audi E-tron ad helps hash through common concerns.
-
First all-electric airline could soar with converted old seaplanesBy land, by sea, and by air, battery power is expanding to drive all kinds of transportation. The most challenging of these modes may be air travel. It's harder to loft several thousand pounds of batteries into the air, to make them last potentially an hour or more. And if they run out of juice...
Eric C. Evarts -
Aston Martin Rapide E makes first public appearance at Monaco e-Grand PrixThe Aston Martin Rapide E just made its public debut sitting on a stand at the Shanghai auto show last month, but the company didn't wait long to show it off blasting around a track. The car appeared Saturday racing around the street circuit set up for the Formula E Monaco Grand Prix, which was run...
Eric C. Evarts -
YouTube-famous Tesla rebuilder opens shop in "coopetition" with TeslaWithout dealerships, service has been a regular challenge for Tesla and its owners. Reports are so rampant about months-long wait times for Tesla service that CEO Elon Musk has acknowledged that addressing service complaints is his No. 1 priority for 2019, especially after the company's sales...
Eric C. Evarts -
1960 Henney Kilowatt electric car was a junction box of 20th century futureWith the backing of utility companies and some leading engineers involved, the 1960 Henney Kilowatt could have been a turning point for electric cars.
Bengt Halvorson -
Epic electric road trip: After 3 years and 33 countries, it's a wrapWiebe Wakker took one very long drive in an electric car—for a total of 1119 days, covering 59,000 miles and traversing portions of 33 countries on the way from the Netherlands to Australia. It was, by just about any standard, an epic road trip. Wakker reached Sydney last Sunday, April 7, and...
Bengt Halvorson -
The series of ads takes head on the myths about electric cars ahead of the Audi E-tron's arrival this year.
-
Is hydrogen internal combustion a better idea than fuel cells?Although hydrogen—and hydrogen fuel cells—could still play an important role in future transportation, even many hydrogen advocates will admit that hydrogen internal combustion probably won't. It certainly wasn’t always this way. About 15 years ago there was great hope in the idea...
Bengt Halvorson -
New electric motor could eliminate transmissionsDesign can vary the ratio of torque to horsepower through a higher ratio of rotors to coils.
Eric C. Evarts -
Obama, buy that Volt!Former President Barack Obama made a promise on the campaign trail in 2012. Let's see if he keeps it—if even for his museum.
Bengt Halvorson -
Tesla starts Hardware 3 rollout: Enhanced Summon, red-light warningsLike Teslas rolling through parking lots on their own, the self-driving future is inching closer. This week, Tesla owners began to experience new features of the company's long-promised next update to its self-driving system, including Enhanced Summon, which is one of the first features of Tesla's...
Eric C. Evarts -
2020 Tesla Model Y: Latest price, range, specs for new crossover SUVThe 2020 Tesla Model Y borrows some of the same underpinnings of the Model 3 sedan, and marries it to what so many American families today want: a crossover utility vehicle shape. As such, the Model Y has the potential to amount to an even greater sales success than the Model 3. The California...
Bengt Halvorson -
Concept cars are relatively easy to build—particularly concepts of cars that may exist only on paper or as clay and foil design studies. That has given rise to a host of new concepts launched as online crowd-funded endeavors of various levels of seriousness and potential. One is Sono Motors, a German effort to build an electric car assisted by solar panels. The company showed a concept car last summer, and began testing in August. CHECK OUT: Sono Sion solar electric car promises 18 miles of range from solar panels Now Sono has revealed a production version of its electric hatchback...
-
Tesla Model 3 gets Supercharging V3 first: How about 75 miles of range in 5 minutes?If you road-trip with an electric car like a Tesla, you soon become acutely aware of miles per hour. That's not the miles per hour you see on the speedometer, but the rate at which the car will gain range when being fast-charged. It determines how quickly you can pull out of the charging station...
Bengt Halvorson -
Reused Nissan Leaf batteries make happy campers with powered pop-up trailerElectric-car batteries need to get recycled or reused at the end of their road. And campers are always in need of more batteries to stay out longer and run more things without resorting to gas power. Combine the two needs and you get the Nissan x Opus, an inflatable, folding camping trailer that...
Eric C. Evarts -
E-tron follows original Quattro to the ski slopes in Audi's latest adYou asked, now you've received. In our Twitter poll last week, readers told us that they think automakers should quit focusing on electric cars' green credentials in ads and start advertising their performance. Apparently Audi was reading their thoughts. After spending as much as $5 million (or...
Eric C. Evarts -
Bill Gates calls Tesla “an amazing product,” doesn't see electric trucks working quite yetElectric cars may be seen by some as part of a seemingly unstoppable, powerful technological wave that will disrupt not just the auto industry but most other forms of transportation. Don’t count on Bill Gates as one of those bright-eyed EV cheerleaders; on the other hand, don’t dismiss...
Bengt Halvorson -
Commentary: Toyota Corolla Hybrid ad brags about not plugging inIn Toyota's latest ad for its new Corolla Hybrid in Britain, it's 2002 all over again. The ad shows the new Corolla Hybrid (in non-U.S. hatchback form) bypassing all kinds of road transportation alternatives from different eras—from a stagecoach and an early brass-era car to 1950s hot rods...
Eric C. Evarts -
Audi’s 2019 Super Bowl ad for Sunday’s Big Game focuses in on the brand’s electric and electrified future. Like many EV ads, it’s a head-scratcher. In a series of almost clichéd nods to Field of Dreams, Back to the Future, and other movies that would be familiar to the target buyer, a man is walking through an overgrown field and encounters his grandfather, who gives him an emotional welcome and shows him to the barn or old garage. There he reveals the Audi e-tron GT, the brand’s upcoming fastback sedan that was revealed in drivable concept form in...
-
Tesla Model 3 vs Model S: Tighter dragstrip times, sharper traction systemTesla claims some astonishingly quick acceleration times, and for some of us, testing and verifying those times are part of the fun. To do that, the drag strip is the only safe and fully reliable source for accurate numbers. In February of 2015, I migrated to a Model S Performance, after owning a...
George Parrott -
Company claims to harness AI for quicker electric-car DC fast chargingAt CES earlier this month, GBatteries demonstrated that it could charge a 60-kwh battery pack, made up of off-the-shelf lithium-ion automotive cells, to half capacity in just 5 minutes, or to a full charge in 10 minutes. Further, the company is aiming, with a technology that employs AI elements, to...
Bengt Halvorson -
Toyota's newest self-driving test car is a Lexus LS luxury sedanIf you're going to develop a self-driving test vehicle, why not make it one that passengers would enjoy riding in? Perhaps that's the logic behind Toyota's choice of its new Lexus LS large luxury sedan as the basis for the P4, its latest automated-driving test vehicle—unveiled yesterday by...
John Voelcker -
All-electric helicopter makes record flightElectric transportation is about more than cars. Trucks and buses are also moving toward electric propulsion. Planes, with their long ranges and high power demands seem to be harder. Where electric power does seem to be making progress in the skies is in helicopters. An independent engineering...
Eric C. Evarts -
VW releases video of electric ID hatchback testing in South AfricaVolkswagen has heard the naysayers. After being caught cheating on emissions tests with its diesels and being forced to promote electric cars through various legal settlements around the world, the company clearly realizes it has a steep climb to convince consumers it is serious about selling a...
Eric C. Evarts