Battery Electric Vehicle (BEV)

Tesla's announcement last month of its new service program sounded almost too good to be true. If anything went wrong with my 2013 Tesla Model S, promised CEO Elon Musk, instead of schlepping to the nearest service center, I would simply await the arrival in my driveway of the Tesla service tech...

Well, chalk one up for basic economic theory: If you lower the price of a good, more people will want to own it. In the case of the 2013 Honda Fit EV, the low-volume battery-electric version of the Honda Fit subcompact hatchback, a cut in the monthly lease price did the trick. Through the end of...

Reporters interview CEOs all the time, but it's rare for those CEOs to end interviews abruptly. Which is what makes an article in Barron's about Tesla Motors [NSDQ:TSLA] and its current high stock price so entertaining. In "Recharge Now!", author Bill Alpert opens with a comparison between Tesla...

The problem with battery electric cars is that you can't take them on long trips, because they take so long to recharge. Or so goes the common wisdom, anyhow. Would a trip from Los Angeles to New York City in an electric car perhaps refute that statement? That's the idea discussed by CEO Elon Musk...

Plug-in car sales continued at a steady pace in May, with early estimates of perhaps 6,500 to 7,000 sold overall. As always, precise figures are impossible because Tesla Motors [NSDQ:TSLA] does not report monthly sales as every other carmaker does. We'll refine our totals as more reports come in...

Forgive the cynicism, but color us not all that surprised at the news that startup automaker Detroit Electric is postponing production of its SP:01 electric sports car by "at least a month." Launched in a flurry of media attention in early April, the plug-in electric SP:01 sports coupe is...

Does the supposedly clean, green Tesla Model S really pollute more than a gas-guzzling Jeep Grand Cherokee sport-utility vehicle? That's what one analyst has claimed. In an exhaustive 6,500-word article on the financial website Seeking Alpha, analyst Nathan Weiss lays out a case that the Model S...

Tesla Motors has accomplished many remarkable things in its short life as a startup maker of electric cars. But, to clear up a common misperception, its supporters should understand that it has not--yet--made a profit in its core business: designing, building, and selling the Model S all-electric...

Better Place, the electric-car service that pioneered battery swapping for passenger cars, filed for bankruptcy yesterday in Israel. A statement on the Better Place website said it had applied to a court for an orderly dissolution of the company to protect "the rights of its employees, customers...

Today marks my first anniversary driving a Better Place Renault Fluence ZE battery-electric car. So it seemed appropriate to summarize my experience to date with the Better Place service, which has had some challenges but is still very much in operation. I paid around $45,000 upfront for my car and...

It's a major threat to national security: A natural resource needed by one or many nations is controlled by only a few countries, which don't much like how the rest of the world runs itself. It applies to oil. It applies to rare-earth metals. Some worry it also applies to lithium, the element used...

How far will state car-dealer associations go to prevent Tesla Motors from opening its electric-car showrooms and selling cars over the Internet? A long, long way. In North Carolina, a new law passed by the state Senate would apparently make it illegal for Tesla to e-mail its customers. In other...

I've been leasing a 2011 Chevrolet Volt for almost two years now. And about three months ago, I took delivery of a 2013 Tesla Model S, the 60-kWh version. So I've gotten an extended first-hand look at arguably the two most technically advanced production cars in the U.S.--and the two best-selling...

Since Tesla issued its first-quarter financials last week, its stock has been on a tear. Not only did the company have its first profitable quarter ever, but the many investors who had shorted the stock of Tesla Motors [NSDQ:TSLA] are now faced with the threat of expensive margin calls. So Tesla is...

It often takes awhile to get gas-mileage ratings onto the EPA's official website, and it's no different with electric-car efficiency numbers. Now we have the final ratings for the 2013 Nissan Leaf compact hatchback: It's rated at 115 MPGe, up from the 99 MPGe for 2011 and 2012 models. MPGe stands...

The Better Place electric-car system has not had a good run of news lately. But despite little attention, it has managed to boost the sales rate in Israel for its cars, along with subscriptions to its battery-switching service. Deliveries for all of 2012 were 518 cars. Roughly the first 100 were...

Electric-car maker Tesla is on a roll--its first quarter was profitable, its stock price is soaring, and Consumer Reports gave its Model S a rave review. That has led many writers to compare the company to Apple Inc. [NSDQ:AAPL]. Now one analyst has taken it further: In a Bloomberg column, Chamath...

After our quick drive of a 2013 Nissan Leaf before the New York Auto Show in late March, we were finally able to spend some extended time with the updated electric car outside Nashville. Our initial impressions remain the same: The Leaf is a perfectly normal, competent compact five-door hatchback...

Take one very small Mitsubishi i-MiEV electric minicar with a flower decal on the side. Fold in three severe Belgian elderly ladies with disapproving looks. Incorporate one blatantly obvious occurrence of plumber butt in public. Then add one young motorcycle police officer to the resulting mix...

Wow. Chalk up another huge accolade for the Tesla Model S electric car: Consumer Reports has awarded it 99 out of 100 points, and said it's the best car the magazine has tested since 2007. In fact, the magazine's descriptions of the luxury sport sedan brim with adjectives. The Tesla Model S "is...