Battery Electric Vehicle (BEV)

We look at a lot of concept and production cars during auto shows, but rarely does one make us laugh right out loud. The special version of the 2012 Mitsubishi 'i' electric car on display at the Los Angeles Auto Show a couple of weeks ago, however, did just that. Perhaps in honor of southern...

Last year, the only volume battery electric car on sale in the U.S. was the Nissan Leaf. But for 2012, there's a new electric vehicle in town: the 2012 Mitsubishi 'i'. The egg-shaped minicar is Mitsubishi's first plug-in offering, but it's actually been around longer than the Leaf, with tens of...

Well, now the news is out: The 2012 Ford Focus Electric, the company's first-ever mass-market battery electric vehicle, will be priced at $39,995. Perhaps not coincidentally, that's exactly the price of the 2012 Chevrolet Volt, crosstown rival GM's extended-range electric vehicle (achieved by some...

Mitsubishi is showing U.S. specification, but pre-final production “i” cars in a touring roadshow

Chevrolet announced today that it would build the electric motor for its upcoming Spark EV battery electric car in a plant in Maryland. The carmaker also released the power specification for the motor, which will offer 85 kilowatts (114 hp) of peak output and roughly two-thirds of that in sustained...

GM [NYSE:GM] had hoped to announce its latest green vehicle tomorrow morning, at a nice, orderly, staged press event to celebrate Chevrolet's 100th birthday. But one of its hometown papers jumped the gun and broke the news: The largest domestic car company will launch a small battery electric...

Maybe you can beat 'em and join 'em at the same time? That may be what General Motors is hoping with its announcement this morning that it would develop electric cars with its longtime Chinese partner SAIC. In Shanghai this morning, GM CEO Dan Akerson and SAIC Motor Corp. chairman Hu Maoyuan signed...

The 84th Academy Awards -- otherwise known as The Oscars -- might be many months away, but we’re probably going to see a stretched Nissan Leaf acting as red-carpet transport. Or at least, that’s what we think might be happening after a limousine company has confirmed that it has been...

General Motors announced this morning that it would jointly design and engineer "future electric vehicles" with Korea's LG Group, in a statement that raised more questions than it answered. The announcement, the company said, will "help GM expand the number and types of electric vehicles it makes...

Presumably following studies on whether bears really do defecate in the woods and to which religion the Pope actually pertains, The Greenling Institute in California has released a new report suggesting that expensive electric vehicles aren't benefitting communities of low income. The new study...

We all know that one of the biggest challenges facing electric cars is the fact that recharging a battery pack is orders of magnitude slower than filling a gasoline car’s fuel tank. As battery packs have become more advanced, we’ve seen an increased use of rapid charging technologies...

BMW today revealed concept versions of its first-ever production electric cars: the i3 battery electric minicar and i8 plug-in hybrid sports coupe. The designs and details of both cars were unveiled in a Frankfurt press conference that was broadcast globally on the Internet. That degree of...

The concept version of the 2014 BMW i3 unveiled today in Frankfurt shows just how radical a change BMW has made from its legacy of gasoline-powered, front-engine, rear-drive sporty vehicles. For one, it’s entirely powered by electricity. The flat lithium-ion battery pack is built into the...

Right now, the sole plug-in vehicle you can buy from Chevrolet--or indeed all of General Motors--is the 2011 Volt range-extended electric car. But that doesn't mean GM isn't testing a lot of other concepts. The company just isn't doing it in North America, the sole region where Volts are sold this...

For decades, old electric cars--those built from the 1890s to 1930 or so, when the last remnants of the industry died out--were nothing more than oddities. Tall, imposing, mostly resembling closed horse carriages, they were stately but sidelined reminders of an entirely vanished way of propulsion...

The recent study of Mini E drivers may need to be taken with a few grains of salt.

Every self-respecting spy need the latest gadgets to keep them safe, suave and sexy. But while James Bond would be nothing without the technological prowess of Q, his favorite brand of automobiles looks to be turning its attention towards its own electric wizardry in the form of the all-electric...

No sooner do I discuss University of Illinois researchers who have created 3D antennas for mobile phones using nanotechnology than another group of researchers at the University of Illinois (this time at Urbana-Champaign) have developed 3D material for batteries that combines the qualities of...

Electric cars are much on the minds of green buyers these days, despite limited supplies of the 2011 Nissan Leaf and 2011 Chevrolet Volt. But there's also a second tier of suppliers, beyond the major carmakers, that also offers or plans to offer buyers their own plug-in electric vehicles. One such...

Think car buyers understand what a hybrid is, or a plug-in electric car? Think again. A new survey conducted by research firm Synovate finds that many of almost 1,900 new-car "buyers and intenders" don't understand how hybrid vehicles work. Worse, most of them don't seem to understand how...