Electric Cars

Less than a month ago, electric car infrastructure firm and battery swap specialist Better Place started deliveries of all-electric Renault Fluence Z.E. cars to customers in Israel. In the past, Better Place has explained the basics of how its rapid battery swap stations work, but what’s it...

It’s now been well over a year since the first 2011 Nissan Leafs were delivered to customers in California, Oregon, Washington and Arizona. But after one year, how are early Nissan Leafs performing? Are their battery packs still healthy, or have they started to show signs of wear already?...

This is the week when driving impressions of the 2012 Fisker Karma have started to appear, as Fisker invites in waves of automotive journalists for a half-day of driving in and around Los Angeles. (We'll have our report early next week, but we had a brief drive a few weeks ago, and another with...

Sixteen months ago, General Electric announced it would place the "largest order in history" for electric cars, to be used by its employees who are issued company cars. Now, those cars are starting to arrive and be placed with employees. And where changes are made, personnel policies are sure to...

We already know that appropriately-equipped electric cars can be used to provide emergency backup power to homes cut off from the electricity grid in a natural disaster, but can they also be used to help a city run as normal? Could they, for example, be used to power stop lights? It’s a...

To say the Chevrolet Volt range-extended electric car has become a political punching bag would be to understate the obvious. Now, GM is slowly, carefully trying to get the facts about the Volt out to the public at large, hoping to win hearts and minds in a larger battle involving electric cars...

Less than a week after Tesla Motors [NASDAQ:TSLA] unveiled the prototype of its 2014 Model X Crossover SUV at an exclusive event in Los Angeles, the Californian electric automaker has called it the fastest selling Tesla ever. According to a press release posted on Tesla’s website yesterday...

Two days ago, President Barack Obama released his proposed U.S. government budget for the fiscal year starting in October. And in it, he followed through on a promise from his State of the Union address last month, by proposing to cut up to $4 billion in subsidies to the oil and gas industry. The...

Back in November, we reported that Ford was planning on starting deliveries of its 2012 Ford Focus Electric to customers in New York and California before the end of 2011, with sales in other areas due to follow some time this year. In reality, while Ford technically did get all-electric Focuses to...

First deliveries for Tesla’s all-electric Model X crossover are still a couple of years away, but the Silicon Valley-based automaker was already hard at work selling it to potential buyers at last week’s party-style premiere, held at the automaker’s design studios in Hawthorne...

We all know that electric cars charged from renewable sources of energy are much cleaner than gasoline-powered cars, but what about electric cars charged from electricity produced by a dirty coal-fired power plant? For some time, those against the uptake of electric cars have claimed driving an...

When the Nissan Leaf launched in 2010, it came with an optional Chademo direct current (DC) quick charging port that could enable its 24 kilowatt-hour battery pack to recharge to 80 percent in under 30 minutes at compatible quick charge stations. So far, there are only a handful of DC quick...

Tesla's upcoming product plans seem designed for maximum stability, so don't expect to see a new Roadster until after the launch of Tesla's affordable Gen 3 car.

It’s no secret that the NYPD has a fleet of twenty 2011 Chevrolet Volts which help civilian traffic enforcement agents carry out duties throughout the city of New York, but now the Chevrolet Volt’s European sibling is proving popular with law enforcement agencies in the U.K. In a recent...

Nissan North America has announced its second voluntary service campaign for the all-electric Leaf since it went on sale in December 2010. Offered for free to all existing owners of the 11,000 Nissan Leafs that have been sold in the U.S. and Canada so far, the software update is designed to improve...

If you think that the Chevrolet Volt Bullfrog Power Edition sounds like a rather odd limited edition model, we can understand the confusion. It's nothing to do with the green, hopping creature though, nor is Bullfrog Power an aesthetically-challenged superhero. Instead, it's a 100 percent green...

Less than twenty-four hours ago, Tesla Motors unveiled its enigmatic 2014 Model X Crossover SUV to the world, becoming the first automaker to promise a crossover utility with doors you’d normally find on a sports car. But while its ostentatious falcon doors might gain it some design kudos, it...

Back in the 1980s, Volkswagen worked on producing both fully-electric and plug-in hybrid versions of its Mk II Rabbit -- also known as the Mk II VW Golf. It’s been no secret that Volkswagen has been working on resurrecting an all-electric Golf in the form of its 2013 VW Blue E-Motion, but now...

Morgan Motor Company is now the largest UK-owned car company in Britain. Its Plus 4 "classic" model, the latest evolution of a 1930s roadster design, is still built with ash body framing and the century-old "sliding pillar" front suspension. Nonetheless, the quirky family-owned British maker of...

Imagine the horror. There you are, driving your electric car through the Lincoln Tunnel to Manhattan from New Jersey. Your battery pack gives up its last few electrons, so your car slows to a halt in the narrow tube, blocking traffic, causing a cacophony of curses and horn-honking. That's the...