Electric Cars

We've loved the concept of the Audi A1 e-Tron concept since its launch at the 2010 Geneva Motor Show last March. It's a range-extended electric vehicle (like the 2011 Chevy Volt) that uses a tiny Wankel rotary engine to run a generator that produces electricity to power the car once its lithium-ion...

Ever since the early 1980s, Japan has led the world of technology and digital entertainment. In 2010, thanks to cars like the 2011 Mitsubishi i and 2011 Nissan LEAF it also adopted electric cars as a viable private transport solution. But the ultra-fast charging technology which made both cars...

Back in July 2009, two Japanese automakers launched electric cars within weeks of each other. (And neither one was Nissan.) One was Mitsubishi, which put its i-MiEV five-door hatchback microcar on sale after several years of consumer tests. That car is now the best-selling electric car in the...

Does the future of electric cars lie in the gadget world? Ford thinks so. So much so, it will launch an electric car at the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on Friday. How did it announce this? By posting some teaser photos on social networking site Facebook, of course. From the photos...

If you happen to indulge in the twin passions of both electric cars and motorsport, you'll no doubt have heard of series such as the TTX-GP for electric racing motorcycles that holds events all over the world. A similar series has been slow to emerge for electric cars but at the recent United...

At the time of this writing, oil has sprinted above $90 a barrel, silver has jumped 80-plus percent in the last year and China just announced an 11 percent decrease in exports of rare earth metals for 2011. Will these constraints on critical resources, and their inevitable steep rise in costs and...

Right now, six companies are vying to win a contract that would provide 100 electric vehicles to the government’s General Administration services 214,000-strong fleet. One of them is Ford; the other, a relative newcomer called Smith Electric. But the government isn’t looking for...

Back in 2009 we were approached by a press representative for Racing Green Endurance, a team of 20-something post-graduate engineers from Imperial College London. We didn't hear from them again until June this year, when we met up with them in London. Their goal? To drive the 16,000 miles from...

We’re just two days away from 2011, the year many industry experts are terming the year of the electric car, but 2010 hasn’t been a slow year for electric cars. We’ve seen new models launched, records broken and even the Pope show an interest in going electric. But over the course...

If General Motors' EV1 had featured in the Disney Pixar animated film Cars, we can't imagine it would have been the happiest of characters. It might well have spent a little time complaining about its friends all being crushed back in 1999, and who could blame it? And four years ago it might have...

Let’s face it: the end of the holiday season is financially tough. After spending what may seem like a small fortune on gifts for your family and friends the last thing you want to do is spend money on a costly electric charging point for your plug-in car. Of course, it is technically...

California has always been kind to drivers of alternative fuelled vehicles with special privileges in High-Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lanes, reduced parking and even additional purchase tax credits. However, the $5,000 Californian state rebate for those purchasing electric vehicles may soon run out...

Why are many European carmakers now planning to build electric vehicles? Because many European cities are widely expected to ban high-emissions vehicles from their city cores over the next decade--perhaps even vehicles with any emissions at all. Now, Paris may be the first city to experiment with...

As VentureBeat suggested on Thursday, the entry of new shares onto the market today has caused Tesla’s stock to drop. The stock is trading down 16 percent today now that the 180-day post-IPO lockup period has ended and insiders are free to sell their shares. The stock is trading at $25.30...

This year — and next — will be a busy one for arrival of electric cars. The Ford Focus Electric and Coda’s sedan are slated for launch by 2011. The Nissan Leaf is slowly making its way to buyers in the U.S. and Europe, the Wheego Whip and LiFe are on sale in New York, and the...

History has a way of repeating itself. Just as the many tearful original EV1 lease drivers bade farewell to the electric car in the mock funeral that started Chris Paine’s docufilm Who Killed The Electric Car, a select group of electric car lease drivers in the U.K. gave a suitably British...

Uh-ho, Nissan. You’ve come out with one of the best five-seat all-electric production cars we’ve ever seen and your pre-order figures are impressive. But as your rival Chevrolet is eagerly rolling out 2011 Range-Extended Volts we’re starting to hear more and more stories that your...

Whilst the U.S. and Europe get the 2011 Chevrolet Volt and 2012 Opel and Vauxhall Ampera, it seems all the full battery-electric vehicles are going to the Far East, and they're keeping fairly quiet about it. A few months back we revealed GM's plans to test an electric version of the Chevrolet Cruze...

Never one to miss the opportunity for a pithy quote, petrolhead extraordinaire Jay Leno has come up trumps again whilst taking delivery of his new 2011 Chevrolet Volt. "Electricity is like sex. People lie about it," quipped Leno, referring to how owners are occasionally inclined to add a few more...

The General Motors EV1 still exerts a strange fascination for electric-car fans and civilians alike. Its sleek, aerodynamic shape and pioneering all-electric drive (despite an initial range of only about 70 miles) make it an important vehicle in U.S. automotive history. Fascination has only grown...