Electric Cars

Audi is demonstrating the use of solar energy for future mobility by converting the roof of one of its factories in Ingolstadt, Germany to solar panels. Here, Audi e-tron models will in future have their batteries charged with current obtained directly from the photovoltaic equipment installed on...

If like us, you were waiting with baited breath for the official EPA rating for the 2011 Chevrolet Volt you’ll have heard that the day before Thanksgiving Chevrolet announced the official figures were back for its first plug-in range-extended electric car. But unlike the 2011 Nissan...

The main thing to understand about the Toyota Prius Plug-In Hybrid is that it's not an "electric car" as many people use the term. Yes, it plugs in to any electric socket to recharge the 5.2-kilowatt-hour lithium-ion battery pack. And, yes, its Hybrid Synergy Drive system uses electric torque...

A few months ago we reported that the diminutive Think City had snatched the top spot as the world’s best-selling city EV with over 2,500 vehicles now on the road. But that claim is now dwarfed by Mitsubishi, which last week celebrated the 5,000th i-Miev electric car to roll off its Japanese...

Our sister site GreenCarReports voted it the Best Car to Buy for environmental conscious customers and it looks like the judges in the European Car of the Year panel agree, awarding the 2011 Nissan Leaf this year’s winner in the prestigious awards. The all-electric hatch beat out the likes of...

Depending on your demographic, the new PlayStation 3 Gran Turismo 5 (GT5) video game is either your single most essential purchase this year, or a completely baffling piece of technology that you'll probably never buy. Ironically, the same could be said for the current wave of electric cars we've...

Psh. Plugs. They’re, like, so 2008. There’s been a surge of attention over the last year towards products that that can charge your smartphone wirelessly, like the devices PowerMat makes. Just set it down on the charging mat and let your phone juice up. But according to a new report...

How do you go from selling clothes to electric cars? George Blankenship, Tesla’s Vice President of Design and Store Development knows. A 20-year veteran of global clothing store GAP and the man responsible for Apple’s successful retail stores, Blankenship jokes that these previous jobs...

We've discussed before the issue of how clean electric cars really are when you take into consideration the source of the electricity you use to charge them - they're only as clean as the grid powering them. It's usually one of the first things EV dissenters bring up... "Yeah, but where does the...

Last week at the 2010 Los Angeles Auto Show, we announced that the 2011 Nissan Leaf electric car was the winner of the GreenCarReports 2011 Best Car To Buy award. That same week, a flurry of other media outlets almost uniformly gave their "car of year" awards to the 2011 Chevrolet Volt...

In 2011 a crack task force was sent to the United States by a Japanese manufacturer for a car that's making headlines. These men were promptly trained to be experts in their field. Today, wanted by thousands of owners, they survive as a rapid response unit. If you have a problem, if no one else can...

Let’s face it: Google loves its green cars. Its also home to some of the best tech-savvy engineers in the world. Engineers who love their tech and love to innovate. So what better way to put a new electric car through its paces than make it part of Google’s GFleet - a pool of cars the...

I just spoke to electric car startup Coda’s interim CEO Steven “Mac” Heller, who is stepping in since former chief executive Kevin Czinger stepped down. Heller talked to us from Los Angeles Auto Show, where Coda is showing off its all-electric sedan — and where automotive...

Just how fuel efficient is an electric car? That’s been the question facing the EPA for months as it has battled the ratings system to give consumers a realistic and useful way of comparing electric cars against gasoline counterparts. Now we know. The EPA has decreed that the 2011 Nissan Leaf...

After several years of taunting and many months of speculation, the 2010 Los Angeles Auto Show is finally the venue chosen for Mitsubishi to show off their U.S.-specification 'i' electric car to an expecting public. We've featured the Japanese-spec 'i' several times, as the company has shipped...

It was the first electric car sold in volume anywhere in the world, starting more than a year ago, and now the 2012 Mitsubishi "i" is officially coming to the U.S. market. The U.S. version was unveiled on Thursday at the 2010 Los Angeles Auto Show, though Mitsubishi provided few new details on how...

We took a look a few weeks ago at the five electric cars we reckoned you should do your best to see at the 2010 Los Angeles Auto Show. Our list included the 2011 Nissan Leaf, 2011 Chevrolet Volt, 2011 Coda Sedan, the 2012 Toyota RAV4 EV and the 2012 Mitsubishi i-MiEV. Our opinion hasn't changed -...

With all the talk of purchase price, charging costs, tax incentives, congestion charging exemptions and maintenance costs for EVs, there's one financial area which often gets overlooked - insuring them. With so few EVs on the road it's been difficult to gauge whether they'll cost more or less than...

We often get asked by readers just how much it will cost to run an EV. And while we’re able to say that an EV costs less to run once purchased than a gasoline car we’ve had to guess refer them to their local utility company for exact pricing. So what if you could enter into a monthly...

A team of intrepid engineers turned explorers have just finished an epic road-trip from Chena Hot Springs Alaska to Ushuaia, Argentina. Built in 9 months by a team of graduates from Imperial College London, the two-seat modified racing car drove over the finish line 135 days after it began its...