John Voelcker, Contributing Editor
Articles
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Fans of diesel-engined cars really, really love their vehicles, and we have a lot of them on this site.
So we're hoping that some Southern California diesel car fanatic will step up to the plate and...
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2014 BMW i3 Electric Car Price: How Much Will It Cost?With the 2014 BMW i3 electric car launch getting closer, the rumor mill is heating up. BMW will unveil its first production battery electric car at this fall's Frankfurt Motor Show, after showing a number of concept cars in both four-door and coupe forms. It has already given rides in BMW i3 test...
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One DC Quick-Charge Station For Every Four Electric Cars! But, Where?Imagine a paradise for electric-car drivers, where half the car's cost is subsidized and there's a nationwide network of DC quick-charging stations so plentiful that there's one for every four cars. Such a place exists, actually. It's called Estonia. The tiny country of 1.2 million people, nestled...
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2013 Nissan Sentra Quick Highway Fuel-Economy Test DriveWe hadn't driven a 2013 Nissan Sentra, the all-new compact sedan, until last week. And our drive was hardly representative, since we spent the bulk of it in the peculiar world of freeway traffic in Los Angeles. That means traffic moving at average speeds of anywhere from 60 to 85 mph, with...
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2014 Jeep Cherokee: New, Greener 4x4 With Old Name (Photos)Here you are: These are the first photos of the new 2014 Jeep Cherokee. Yep, that's right: Cherokee. No, not Grand Cherokee. Plain old Cherokee, the revival of a name that vanished (in the U.S.) a decade ago, although it's lived on in Europe. The new 2014 Cherokee is Jeep's replacement for the old...
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Fisker Drops Lawsuit Against Insurer Over 300 Flooded KarmasRemember those 338 Fisker Karma electric cars wrecked by Hurricane Sandy while they were sitting on a Port Newark dock? Remember the December lawsuit Fisker filed against its insurance company after its $33 million claim was denied? Never mind. Yesterday, according to Bloomberg, Fisker Automotive...
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Yesterday was a bumpy ride for the stockholders of electric-car maker Tesla Motors [NSDQ:TSLA].
Following the company's Wednesday release of its 2012 financial results, including an after-hours ...
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Ford Focus Electric Won't Sell Well, Says FordSome makers are investing in battery electric cars and doing their darnedest to make them market successes--think Nissan or Tesla, for example. Ford does not appear to be one of those companies. Since the second month that its plug-in hybrid C-Max Energi went on the market, its monthly sales have...
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Tesla Motors To Be Profitable Selling Electric Cars By April, It SaysTesla Motors announced its fourth-quarter and full-year results late yesterday, and offered some good news to the company's shareholders. That would be the projection that Tesla Motors [NSDQ:TSLA] will operate at a profit in the current quarter, which ends March 31. "We expect to be slightly...
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2013 Nissan Leaf: 75-Mile Range 'Anticipated' In New Test By EPAIt's the last piece of information on the new and updated 2013 Nissan Leaf electric car that everyone's been waiting for: its range. The projected number, Nissan says, is 75 miles--but that shouldn't be compared to the 73-mile range of the 2011 and 2012 Leaf models. That's because the EPA changed...
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Is Tomorrow The Most Important Day Ever For Tesla Motors?It's never dull over at Tesla Motors, but tomorrow is a particularly important day. It may, in fact, be the most important day in the electric-car maker's history. That's because after the stock market closes, Tesla Motors [NSDQ:TSLA] will give the first hints about whether it could genuinely...
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Tesla Model S Owners Crowdsource Trip To Counter NY Times ReportIt's been a week of Tesla Model S hullabaloo, centered around last Sunday's critical New York Times road test, Stalled Out on Tesla's Electric Highway. Now a set of defiant Tesla Model S owners are setting out to prove Times reporter John Broder wrong. They will replicate his trip from Maryland to...
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Electric-car drivers know the problem all too well. It's called "getting ICEd"--when a gasoline car parks in the spot for reserved for electric cars to use a public charging station.
Now a new...
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Zero-Emission 2014 Chevy Silverado Model Now AvailableIt doesn't get much attention as a green vehicle, but the 2014 Chevrolet Silverado pickup truck line is the best-selling vehicle line at General Motors. Now there's a zero-emission version, and it's available today. That means that you can acquire one even before this spring's launch of the all-new...
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Tesla's Elon Musk & NY Times: Disturbing Discrepancies On Model S Range ReportingGolly. Turns out nothing ignites the Internet quite like a rapid-fire online spat between Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk and The New York Times, the Grey Lady of establishment journalism. Like many such controversies, common ground turns out to be easier to find than you might think: It's a fact that...
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Consumer Reports Likes Fiat 500e: Still A Compliance Car, SadlySome electric cars aren't as good as we hoped--Coda Sedan, cough--while others are better than we expected. That latter group includes the 2013 Honda Fit EV and, now, according to Consumer Reports, the 2014 Fiat 500e. The battery electric conversion of Fiat's perky little 500 hatchback is powerful...
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Ignore The NY Times; Does Tesla Model S Own Silicon Valley Already?Yes, there's a big imbroglio going on right now over an article in The New York Times, followed by some tweets (1, 2, and 3) from Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk contradicting it. We're ignoring that, for the moment. Instead, we're bringing you an idea that made us chuckle. That idea is that the Tesla...
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To Sell Electric Cars In Northeast, Is More Charging Needed? Some ThoughtsCalifornia is a largely temperate state with a longstanding history of working to curb vehicle emissions. That makes it a perfect place for plug-in electric cars. The Northeastern states, on the other hand, are in the Snow Belt, meaning electric cars can lose as much as one third of their battery...
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Last week's Chicago Auto Show had relatively few debuts; the Chevrolet Cruze diesel and a redesigned Toyota Tundra pickup truck were the most noteworthy.
But the featured speaker at a luncheon thrown...
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CA Bill Would Extend Carpool Lane Access Perk For 10 YearsIt's one of the most valued perks for plug-in electric car buyers in California: the coveted green or white sticker that lets them travel in the carpool lane with just a single person in the car. But under current law, those stickers expire on January 1, 2015--just as the yellow stickers for...
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2014 Chevrolet Cruze Diesel: More Details From Chicago ShowThree years after the Chevrolet Cruze compact sedan was launched as a 2011 model, it gains a new model with a diesel engine for 2014--although there appears to be some confusion over just what that variant is called. The turbodiesel sedan was launched at the Chicago Auto Show last Thursday. Absent...
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2014 Chevrolet Cruze Clean Turbo Diesel: Full DetailsIt's been a long time coming, but the wraps are now off Chevy's first diesel-powered passenger car since 1986. The 2014 Chevrolet Clean Turbo Diesel model is being unveiled today at the Chicago Auto Show, and will go on sale the summer in the U.S. and Canada. The 2.0-liter direct-injected and...
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Does $5K Tool Really Cause Chevy Dealers To Drop Volt Electric Car?If you were a car dealer, would you decide not to sell a plug-in electric car because you had to buy a $5,000 tool to service it? We didn't think so. Late last year, trade journal Automotive News wrote a story saying that a few Chevrolet dealers have stopped selling the Chevy Volt range-extended...
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BMW ActiveE Motor Failures: The Price Of Leasing A Test Car?It's become increasingly common for carmakers to solicit volunteers to lease new-technology cars for a year or two, to gather real-world data about how the cars are actually driven and used. But those cars remain development prototypes, not production-quality vehicles. And as BMW ActiveE drivers...
John Voelcker