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  • Linear Labs Hunstable Electric Turbine motor

    Design can vary the ratio of torque to horsepower through a higher ratio of rotors to coils.

  • President Obama inspects the 2011 Chevrolet Volt
    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.

  • Tesla Model 3 Enhanced Summon video still [by YouTuber  Nagaraj Kelageri]
    Tesla starts Hardware 3 rollout: Enhanced Summon, red-light warnings

    Like 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...

  • Tesla Model Y
    2020 Tesla Model Y: Latest price, range, specs for new crossover SUV

    The 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...

  • Sono Sion solar assisted electric car
    Production Sono Sion solar-assisted car makes appearance

    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...

  • Tesla Supercharger site in Dorno, Italy, photo by problemidiricarica.wordpress.com/
    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...

  • Nissan x Opus camper with reused Leaf batteries in Britain with Nissan Qashqai

    Electric-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 relies on second-life batteries from used Nissan Leafs. Nissan showed the camper at the Caravan, Camping, and Motorhome Show in Birmingham, England this week. CHECK OUT: Volvo reuses bus batteries for solar storage The Opus is an existing folding camping trailer, something like a pop-up camper in the...

  • Audi e-tron ski slope ad
    E-tron follows original Quattro to the ski slopes in Audi's latest ad

    You 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...

  • Bill Gates
    Bill Gates calls Tesla “an amazing product,” doesn't see electric trucks working quite yet

    Electric 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...

  • 2017 Toyota Prius Prime, Catskill Mountains, NY, Nov 2016
    Commentary: Toyota Corolla Hybrid ad brags about not plugging in

    In 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...

  • 2019 Audi Super Bowl ad, "Cashew," featuring e-tron GT concept
    Audi Super Bowl ad: Heavenly electric-car future, hackneyed themes?

    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...

  • George Parrott's 2018 Tesla Model 3 with orange wrap [CREDIT: George Parrott]
    Tesla Model 3 vs Model S: Tighter dragstrip times, sharper traction system

    Tesla 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...

  • 2015 Nissan Leaf with CHAdeMO fast-charging cable plugged in  [photo John Briggs]

    At 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 boost charging speeds without accelerating degradation and rendering electric-vehicle battery packs useless. Such a technology could help lessen the effects of fast-charging battery packs in vehicles. The more often you fast-charge an electric-car battery pack—and the higher the charge...

  • Toyota Research Institute P4 Automated Driving Test Vehicle
    Toyota's newest self-driving test car is a Lexus LS luxury sedan

    If 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...

  • Guinness record-setting electric helicopter by Tier 1 Engineering
    All-electric helicopter makes record flight

    Electric 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...

  • 2020 Volkswagen ID 3 spy shots
    VW releases video of electric ID hatchback testing in South Africa

    Volkswagen 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...

  • Lithium-ion cell and battery pack assembly for Nissan Leaf electric car in Sunderland, U.K., plant
    Electric cars cheaper than gas ones by 2020, says Chinese battery supplier

    Envision Energy, a Chinese company that bought Nissan's former AESC battery business, says it will be able to make battery packs for less than $100 per kilowatt-hour in the next two years. That number is significant, because it's the threshold at which automakers and analysts say electric cars will...

  • Rivian R1T electric pickup concept teaser
    Rivian teases electric pickup and SUV planned for LA auto show

    A new startup automaker, Rivian, plans to beat Tesla to the punch with an electric pickup truck. After years of stealth, the company is finally poised to reveal its new pickup and SUV at the LA auto show later this month. This week, the company set up a media site complete with space for pictures...

  • 2018 Tesla Model 3

    Tesla confirmed last Thursday that Track Mode has started rolling out for the Model 3 Performance, in an update for vehicles that have already received Version 9 of the automaker’s vehicle software. The company emphasized that Track Mode is intended specifically for closed circuits. It’s primarily a series of updates to the vehicle dynamics controller—to allow more ‘steering’ of the vehicle using the front and rear motors. It also includes stronger cooling for the vehicle’s power systems and higher regenerative braking levels. While stability control...

  • University of Michigan algae biodiesel project
    Algae blooms could be a boon for eco-diesel under DOE-funded project

    Algae-based biodiesel has been hyped in the past as a renewable fuel that can be produced here in the U.S., lowering greenhouse-gas emissions without displacing food crops or taxing water supplies. And yet it still hasn’t arrived in any significant way. There’s no single factor to blame...

  • Rich Rebuilds flooded Tesla Model S, via YouTube
    What happens to electric cars that have been flooded?

    With all the floods from Hurricane Florence, what happens to electric cars? That's the question many electric car owners may be asking after the 100-year hurricane dropped more than two feet of rain in North Carolina, where a burgeoning electric car movement was springing up. The answer is: It...

  • 2019 DS 3 Crossback
    French luxury brand DS previews electric DS 3 crossover SUV

    The French luxury arm of Citroen, DS, released plans for its first electric car last Friday. The DS 3 Crossback is a funky-looking small SUV, something along the lines of the Mini Countryman. It's set to debut at the Paris auto show early next month. While the base version will use a turbocharged...

  • BMW i Vision Dynamics concept, 2017 Frankfurt Motor Show
    Supplier tests compact 100-kwh battery pack in BMW i3

    Using new battery-pack architecture, BMW battery supplier Lion Smart has crammed triple the battery capacity into a BMW i3s. Lion Smart's 100-kilowatt-hour battery gives the little city car a range of 435 miles on a charge, in the same footprint as the original battery pack. Lion Smart has...

  • Micro Mobility Systems Microlino
    Updated electric Isetta microcar ready for sale in Europe

    Microlino, the maker of scooters and kickboards is ready to launch an electric microcar in Europe. Run by two Swiss brothers, the company unveiled its recreation of the tiny single-door BMW Isetta at the Geneva auto show two years ago, and has now partnered with with boutique Italian coachmaker...

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