Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield, Contributing Writer

Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield is a self-confessed petrol head. She grew up in a carless family but was able at a very early age to name cars passing her on the street while other girls her age were more interested in Barbie Dolls. Although she trained as a classical musician she’s now a full-time broadcaster and journalist, covering green fuels and tech. After passing her driving test she’s owned a wide selection of cars, including a 1962 Morris Minor Woodie Hotrod; a single seat electric bubble car; a ’92 Honda Prelude; a ’91 Volvo 240; a ’04 Toyota Prius Plug in Hybrid (which she converted herself); an ’85 VW electric factory built rabbit; and a ’09 Smart ForTwo CDI Nikki specializes in electric vehicles, but also enjoys clandestine gas-guzzling, working on the rule that the larger and noisier the better. She is also loves riding motorcycles, but currently doesn't own one. Nikki also hosts the TransportEvolved podcast. She lives in Bristol UK with her wife, their two daughters and their Border Collie.

Articles

Nissan Leaf Fails To Attempt Backwards Hillclimb Record Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield July 5, 2011

Last week we told you about Nissan’s plans to break some novel world records at the world-famous 2011 Goodwood Festival of Speed.

Unlike some of the other competitors there who sought the...
Toyota's Electric-Car Hat Trick: Three New EVs for 2012
It’s official: next year Toyota will launch not one, but three plug-in vehicles in the year ahead. Announced at Toyota’s Annual National Dealer meeting in Las Vegas, the trio of vehicles will consist of one plug-in hybrid and two pure electric vehicles to the U.S. market by the end of...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield July 5, 2011

Nissan Prepares NV200 Electric Minivan For Global Trials
Nissan took the next step in its aim to become the world leader in electric vehicle technology yesterday with the announcement that it was starting a global test program for an all-electric minivan. Based on the versatile NV200 minivan platform currently popular in Europe and Japan with delivery...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield July 5, 2011
Rolls-Royce Prepares Electric Prototype For World Tour
While we think Rolls-Royce is unlikely to be selling an all-electric Phantom any time soon, the British luxury car maker has been putting its 102EX Electric Phantom through a whole series of tests ahead of a worldwide tour to ensure it behaves in an appropriate manner at all times. One of the most...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield June 29, 2011
Ford To Facebook Fans: “How Should The 2012 Focus Electric Sound?”
The days of the almost silent electric car are gone. Motivated by a severe case of liticaphobia - or the fear of lawsuits - the auto industry has already agreed that electric cars should have some form of audible warning system fitted as standard to alert pedestrians of their approach. But while...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield June 29, 2011
2011 Chevrolet Volt Prove It Can Be An Electric Wizard Too
When is a 2011 Chevrolet Volt not a plug-in hybrid? When it covers 2,500 miles between fill-ups. That’s how far Maryland resident Jeff Parmet has driven in his 2011 Chevrolet Volt in the past six months. In fact, he’s just visited the gas pump for the first time since buying the car...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield June 27, 2011
Electric Car With EV1 Heritage Sets New Pikes Peak Record Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield June 27, 2011

For the past week or so the famous Pikes Peak in Colorado has rung with the sound of cars and motorcycles climbing the 12.42 mile course to its 14,110 foot summit.

But yesterday for a few minutes,...

Electric Car Fan Takes 2011 Leaf on 480 Mile Road Trip
You have to go from San Diego, CA to Tucson, AZ, a distance of around 480 miles. With a variety of options available to you, which do you choose? Most people wouldn’t hesitate to book a flight, and some would even consider the train. But one electric car fan decided to make the trip in his...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield June 27, 2011
Five Ways to Disguise an Electric Car Charging Station
If you own an electric car you’ll also be familiar with the wide variety of charging stations on the market today. If you’ll forgive us for saying so, very few of them are design classics. There’s a good reason too - charging stations are nothing more than appliances, built...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield June 24, 2011
Nissan Gets Creative To Set Electric World Record In Reverse
Earlier this week we said that that Nissan needed a new, quirky way of advertising its 2011 Nissan Leaf that didn’t involve making household gadgets run on gasoline or relying on trained polar bears. Nissan can’t have heard us. Instead of a quirky new ad campaign, Nissan is attempting...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield June 24, 2011
Tesla Owner Electrifies Autocross Event With Roadster Fun (Video)
How do you legally have fun with a $109,000 electric sportscar that can do 0-60 in under 4 seconds, has excellent grip, and a top speed of 125 mph? That’s exactly the question facing many Tesla Roadster owners looking to test their cars - and themselves - to the limit in a safe environment...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield June 23, 2011
First Drive Report: 2011 Liberty E-Range Electric Range Rover
If you’re a regular visitor to this site, you’ll know that we’ve said before that making a good electric car is hard, even for large automakers like Ford, Nissan, Toyota and Chevrolet. As for turning a production gasoline or diesel car into an electric one? It’s a whole...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield June 23, 2011

Think Thunk: Electric Car Maker Goes Bankrupt (Again) Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield June 22, 2011

Making an electric car is a particularly tough business, fraught with financial risk, engineering challenges and tough competition from small-scale and mainstream automakers alike.

And in that...
Director's Cut Of Electric Car Ads: Gas-Powered Everything (Video)
Remember Nissan’s latest 2011 Leaf commercial? Asking the viewer to imagine a world where everything from your cellphone to your microwave oven was powered by gasoline, the 60-second advert played essentially questioned why many people would choose electricity over gasoline to power their...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield June 22, 2011
2011 Liberty E-Range Electric SUV. What do You Want to Know?
While you probably remember the great success and untimely demise of Toyota’s previous all-electric RAV4 EV, larger, pure electric SUV haven’t yet been attempted by major automakers. But a transatlantic firm called Liberty has been working on changing that with an electric vehicle based...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield June 22, 2011
2011 Nissan Leaf: 5 Things We’ve Learned After 5,000 Miles
Earlier this year we took delivery of our very own 2011 Nissan Leaf. Just like the thousands of other customers worldwide, we took our place in the queue last year and had an agonizingly long wait before we were sitting behind the wheel. But just under 3 months and 5,000 miles after driving off the...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield June 21, 2011
Want a $500 Electric Car Charging Station? So Does the DoE
If you’re in the market for an Electric car you’ll know that besides the obvious financial burden of paying for the car itself you probably want to budget a few thousand dollars extra to account for the installation of a dedicated electric car charging station in your home. At the...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield June 21, 2011
BYD Fails to Electrify Chinese Stock Market, Gets a Buffeting
Chinese electric car and battery firm Build Your Dreams (BYD) has announced that its Initial Public Offering (IPO) on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange raised just $219 million, 65% of what the Warren-Buffet backed firm had hoped to raise. But was the $177 million delta between the actual money raised...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield June 21, 2011

Musk: If You Want a Tesla Roadster, You’d Better Hurry Up Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield June 20, 2011

Californian electric auto maker Tesla Motors might be in the final stages of bringing its 2012 Model S luxury sedan to market, but if you want to own one of its iconic two-seat roadsters...
Vatican: Electric Cars Too Slow, Hybrid Popemobile on Way
Last December we told you that the His Holiness The Pope was keen on swapping his large gas-guzzling Mercedes SUV ‘popemobile’ for a suitable electric car. Now Vatican officials have confirmed the details of Pope Benedict XVI’s latest ride: a custom-made M-Class plug-in hybrid...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield June 20, 2011
Renault-Nissan Gets Geeky, Sets Up Silicon Valley Research Center
Google’s head offices in Mountain View, California has just got some new neighbors, but unlike most of the other companies in the fabled silicon valley it isn’t a fresh-faced venture-funded software or green tech startup firm. It’s an automaker. Moving into offices just over the...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield June 20, 2011
Who Make The Best Electric Car Sales People? Early Adopters
If you were in the market for a new car then you might find yourself visiting your local dealership to get a test-drive and grill the salesperson about fuel economy, specifications and financing. But it turns out that in the case of electric cars it’s not the dealers which make the most...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield June 17, 2011
Why Jeeves Won’t Be Plugging In The Electric Rolls-Royce Any Time Soon
Rolls-Royce is the epitome of opulent automobiles and the ultimate - if very British - expression of good fortune and taste. But although the British automaker has made an all electric prototype of its iconic Phantom Coupe, it doesn’t plan to bring it into production any time soon...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield June 17, 2011
Why CNBC Is Flat-Out Wrong On Electric-Car Charging
The transition from gasoline to plug-in hybrid and fully electric cars will admittedly be a slow one, but sometimes we wonder if our colleagues in the mainstream media would rather the transition not happen at all. At least, that’s the message we got reading an article by the usually balanced...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield June 16, 2011