Electric Cars

Over the weekend we heard the disturbing news that a BYD e6 electric taxi in Shenzhen China had burst into flames and killed three of its occupants after being hit by a speeding drunk driver. According to eyewitness reports, the BYD e6 taxi, one of around 400 e6 electric taxis being used in the...

If reader response is any guide, there's a lot of interest in the 2012 Ford Focus Electric--which logged 12 sales last December and January but hasn't been heard from since. Now, it appears that the first retail customer has taken delivery of Ford's new all-electric compact hatchback. Very, very...

Turning on an electric car is a strange, ethereal experience. After years of turning the key on regular cars and feeling them burst noisily into life, the glow of instruments and occasional musical jingle of an EV feels soothing and futuristic. Turn on an ultra violet light over artist Ian Cook's...

Electric-car charging stations may be coming to the U.S. Senate garage, under a bill passed yesterday on a bipartisan basis. But fear not, zealous guardians of the sacred taxpayer dollar--no public funds will be used for the installation. Yesterday, S.739 was passed by the Senate. The bill had been...

If you’re in the market for an electric car, the chances are you’ve resigned yourself to the fact that you’re going to need to spend upwards of $30,000 in order to get a modern, convenient electric car. If that’s too much, you can always go second hand with any number of...

There's kind of a running joke within the electric car world that the next generation of batteries is just a decade away. And the next time you ask, it's still a decade away. Even a decade later. Well, according to the U.S. Department of Energy, the next generation of usable battery technology...

By carefully controlling the launch of the 2012 Ford Focus Electric, Ford is trying to appease buyers who want an electric car, while satisfying accountants who are hesitant to invest heavily in the launch.

A funny thing happened around the politics of electric cars. The screaming stopped. We've waited almost two months to write about it, but it would appear that the chorus of right-wing attacks on electric cars--including the Chevrolet Volt--has mysteriously and quite suddenly abated. In late March...

Car buyers are notoriously fond of focusing only on the purchase price of new vehicles, without much thinking about the total cost of ownership. For electric cars that may cost twice or more what a similar-size gasoline vehicle does, that's a problem. Still, two separate pieces of evidence begin to...

Nissan announced yesterday that it would start building its e-NV 200 electric van in Spain next year The small van will be Nissan's second electric vehicle globally. It follows the Leaf compact electric hatchback, which went on sale in December 2010 as a 2011 model. First shown at this year's...

One of the first experiences many of today's electric car drivers had with EVs may well have been with a home-built conversion. With comparatively few factory-built electric cars available until quite recently, conversions and low-volume production models were the only ways into electric vehicle...

Always read the fine print. That's a lesson every car buyer should take to heart. Especially since Nissan, Chevrolet, Tesla, and Mitsubishi all now engage in a pricing practice of which they should be ashamed. It's so-called "net pricing" of their electric cars, in which the price appearing in...

Ever since Daimler invested $50 million for 9 percent of Tesla back in May 2009, the two companies have had a close working relationship on electric car technology. Since that investment, Tesla has provided Smart and Mercedes-Benz with drivetrains for various electric cars, including...

All over the U.S., police forces rely on hundreds of highly-trained motorcycle riders enforcing law and order on specially-built motorcycles like the 2012 Harley Davidson 2012 Electra Guide or 2012 BMW Boxer. Now Californian electric motorcycle manufacturer Zero motorcycles is offering police...

Since about 1930, U.S. vehicles have largely been fueled on gasoline. Diesel passenger vehicles arrived in the 1960s, and there are now about 120,000 locations in the U.S. that offer one or both fuels. Since then, several alternative fuels have been proposed but largely failed to get a...

When Toyota first announced that it was going to resurrect its iconic RAV4 EV after an absence of nearly ten years, electric car fans rejoiced. After all, the original 1997-2003 RAV4 EVs are so reliable and so beloved that they still command a high price at auction. When the production version of...

We've already brought you news of Mitsubishi's two challengers for this year's Pikes Peak hillclimb, but now the Japanese firm has revealed its purpose-built prototype, set to take to the stage on July 8. While a largely stock Mitsubishi i will be driven up the hill by Beccy Gordon, racing-driver...

Here are two subjects we never thought would go together: zombies, and plug-in cars. But the winning entry in the 2012 MOFILM Barcelona Chevrolet Volt Video Contest by director Josh Soskin does just that, and now it's being aired by Chevrolet Europe to help drum up interest for its plug-in hybrid...

Are you mulling the purchase of an electric car? Or maybe wondering about wiring in your garage, and whether it would handle a plug-in car charging station? Do we have a webinar for you! This Thursday, May 24, electric-car advocates Plug-In America are holding a free webinar titled, "Everything You...

They’re large, hardly pretty, and serve just one function, but Nissan Australia has managed to turn the humble gas pump into art in order to promote its all-electric 2012 Leaf. Unlike its U.S. ad from last year, which asked us to imagine a world where everything was powered by gasoline...