Electric Cars

It used to be that testing prototype and development cars was done in secret, under heavy camouflage, away from photographers. Now it's a public relations ploy, it seems, complete with QR codes on the sides of distinctively marked engineering vehicles and a promotional blog entry. So if you see...

There's a saying that the best way to convince someone he wants an electric car is to let him drive one. In light of lower-than-projected Chevrolet Volt sales and continued media misinformation about the car's capabilities, GM is taking that lesson to heart. In Southern California, members of the...

Last week, we were 90 miles north of the Arctic Circle, putting the Volvo C30 electric through its paces. But we weren’t the only people driving electric cars in the Arctic Circle as our colleagues over at Motor Authority found out earlier today. As our own Viknesh Vijayenthiran reports...

Drivers of hybrid and electric vehicles will be used to the feel of regenerative braking. As you brake, or even lift off the accelerator pedal in some electric vehicles, kinetic energy from the car's motion is captured by the electric motor, which when not being driven turns into a generator. This...

Over the past five years, the Monte Carlo Alternative Energy Rally -- now called the Rallye Monte-Carlo Des Énergies Nouvelles -- has enjoyed increasing popularity as more automakers and private entrants tackle the eco-minded version of the world-famous Rally Monte Carlo. For the past two...

Over the past few days, we've told you about our trip to Kiruna, Sweden, where Volvo allowed us to put its C30 electric car through its paces in a series of cold-weather tests designed to push the car to its limit. Now it's time to tell you about our real-world test drive, along 40 miles of snow...

When Renault launched its Zoe electric car at the 2012 Geneva Motor Show with a starting price of little over $21,000 (after the U.K's plug-in car grant), more than a few jaws hit the floor. After all, that's easily the cheapest proper electric car on sale in Europe, and even looks good in the U.S...

Most drivers who grew up before the era of navigation systems and online mapping will remember TripTiks, the strip maps with highlighted routes that local AAA offices would provide to travelers before they set out on driving vacations. The AAA doesn't give out nearly so many paper maps these days...

Nissan’s all-electric Leaf hatchback has only been on sale in the U.S. for the past 15 months, but Nissan has already confirmed it will get some much-needed upgrades for the 2013 model. Speaking to The Detroit News yesterday, Mark Perry, director of product and advanced planning for Nissan...

Last week, we headed to Kiruna, Northern Sweden, where Volvo showed us just how its C30 electric car coped with harsh winters in the frozen arctic. Thanks to an interview with Volvo C30 Electric program manager Annelie Gustavsson, we’ve already explained the theory of keeping the C30 and its...

What goes around comes around, and you need look no further than the auto industry for proof. Model names can be mothballed for decades before reappearing. Features and styling cues make comebacks, with mixed success--all the marketing in the world can’t make Ventiports modern today. Less...

"We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard" So said President John F. Kennedy in 1962, and only seven years later humankind had set foot on the moon. It's a metaphor for human progress, and...

One month from today, your 2011 Federal and state tax returns will be due. (It would have been a month from yesterday, but April 15 falls on a Sunday this year.) So consider this your friendly reminder to make sure that if you bought a plug-in car during 2011, you remember to apply for the Federal...

As most electric car owners will tell you, electric cars don’t have the same range in winter as they do in summer. Not so, says Swedish automaker Volvo. Thanks to a carefully engineered heating system, its test fleet of C30 Electric cars can still give impressive range when the outside...

You hear both sides of the battery cost question a lot when you cover electric cars. One side says, "Electric-car batteries will be brutally expensive for many years to come, so electric cars will never be practical." The other side believes, "With wonderful new discoveries coming out of labs and...

For the past year, the state of Washington has been examining the possibility of putting a $100 annual surcharge on electric vehicle registrations. A contentious issue, the house bill proposed to help the state recoup tax dollars lost as more people switch from gas-guzzling cars to plug-in and...

Hawaii is a beautiful state with warm tropical weather, but it's also an expensive place to drive despite the limited travel distances on each of its islands. Fuels have to be brought in by ship, and its gas prices ($4.45 a gallon this week) are some of the highest in the U.S. All those factors...

Fisker Automotive has had a torrid time in the months following the launch of the 2012 Fisker Karma. Facing recalls, software upgrades and the news that a car died in the hands of Consumer Reports, an ex-employee of a Fisker retailer has now claimed that Fisker pushed the Karma to the market before...

Over the past year, electric car charging stations have gone from being overpriced products with extortionate installation costs to items you can pick up at your local hardware store and install yourself. But if driving to your local Lowes and installing a pre-built unit seems a little easy or...

It's an assertion that comes up a lot in comments on our stories. It goes, essentially, like this: No one recognizes the horrible pollution problems that will arrive when hybrid and electric cars are junked, and their nickel-metal-hydride and lithium-ion battery packs go into landfills. It's a...