Electric Cars

Officials at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration have said they are happy with the proposed safety enhancements for the 2011 and 2012 Chevrolet Volt designed to minimize the risk of battery pack fire following a major impact. In an interview yesterday at the 2012 Detroit Auto Show...

While the bulk of our green car coverage from the 2012 Detroit Auto Show will concentrate on production models, concept cars can be just as exciting. With wild styling, untested powertrains and flashy colors they might not seem too relevant, but many of the cars we cover today began as concepts and...

Just before the holidays at the end of last year, Google welcomed the first 2012 Ford Focus Electric to roll off the production lines into its ever-expanding G Fleet of plug-in and hybrid cars. Google’s G Fleet now includes the 2012 Nissan Leaf, 2012 Chevrolet Volt, and various Toyota Prius...

An animation released by General Motors depicts the modifications to Chevy Volt that will be performed by dealers to strengthen the battery compartment.

If you’re of a certain age, the word Emo evokes images of sulking, depressed teenagers with jet-black hair metaphorically drowning in a world of sorrow, complex poetry and dark, emotional music. So you can understand our amusement when Indian automaker Tata decided to name its latest electric...

For some time now, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has said its new vehicle, the upcoming Model X crossover electric car, would be unveiled int he first quarter of 2012. We just didn't know when, until now. In an interview with In an interview with Gigaom’s Katie Fehrenbacher, Musk confirmed that the...

What comes first, the electric car or the solar panels to charge it from? And can you use the money you save from one to pay for the other? We’ve already told you about the benefits you can get from owning both an electric car and installing a photovoltaic solar array on the roof of your...

GM announced today that it would offer a "customer satisfaction" initiative that provides modifications to roughly 12,400 Chevrolet Volt range-extended electric cars to reduce the chance that the battery pack could catch fire days or weeks after a severe accident. The safety "enhancement" is meant...

If you’re already drive a plug-in hybrid or electric car then the chances are you’ve spent at least some time standing in a parking lot somewhere answering questions from a curious passer-by about your car. Or perhaps you've experienced a curious neighbor asking questions like the...

Via Motors, the extended-range electric truck conversion company with GM legend Bob Lutz on its board, announced today that it would use lithium-ion cells from A123 Systems in its battery packs. The startup company will show its full lineup of electric-drive pickup trucks at next week's Detroit...

Last year, the electric-car revolution became real. After a late-Nineties false start, much gnashing of teeth, and years of promises, carmakers delivered more than 17,000 plug-in vehicles in the U.S. market during 2011. December sales numbers are being announced today. The relevant figures: Nissan...

If you own a 2012 Nissan Leaf alongside a regular gasoline car, the chances are you’ve already taken to driving your electric car as much as possible, using it for everything from the daily commute to weekend trips to the dump. But while Nissan’s mass production electric car beats a...

Volvo might have already started production on its first plug-in hybrid wagon -- the 2012 V60 Diesel Plug-in Hybrid -- but as we’ve told you before, the Swedish automaker doesn’t think the U.S. is ready for a diesel plug-in hybrid yet. But at next week’s 2012 Detroit Auto Show...

We’re less than a week away from the 2012 North American International Auto Show in Detroit, and that means automakers are eagerly dropping hints about what we’ll be seeing next week. For BMW, that means posting six screenshots from its unreleased iOS smartphone application for the 2013...

So often in the world of Industrial design, form follows function. Then once in a while, a design comes along that turns a mundane object like an electric car charging station into something a little more artistic. Enter the leaf-shaped Lotus solar-powered electric car charging station. Designed by...

If you mention internet giant Google and "electric car" in the same sentence, it wouldn't be unreasonable to assume that the company was working on a car of its own. After all, the company is well-known for its work on autonomous vehicles, with a technology-heavy Prius that's now driven thousands...

The long-awaited Coda electric sedan finally has its first confirmed dealership, located in San Diego, California. Marvin K. Brown Auto Center in the heart of San Diego is expected to be the first retailer to sell the 2012 Coda Sedan, when deliveries commence this year. According to Automotive...

Earlier this year, the public reputation of the 2012 Chevrolet Volt was changed forever after a crash-tested Volt caught fire in wrecking yard belonging to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). It didn’t matter either that the battery fire started two weeks after the...

Finding out about battery defects was something of a nightmare before Christmas for luxury automaker Fisker, who suddenly had to deal with news that its Karma might be liable to catch fire. Fisker and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) have now officially announced a recall...

We all know that most electric cars are more energy efficient than their gasoline counterparts, but just how do you improve on the limited range most electric cars have? For some automakers like BMW, the answer lies in making an electric car as lightweight as possible. For others, the answer is to...