Electric Cars
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It's one of the most radical cars ever to be built in this country, the first all-electric vehicle to go on sale in many decades. So you'd expect that when the Nissan Leaf enters production in Smyrna, Tennessee, late in 2012, it would have its very own production line, right? Nope. Not at all. Far from it, in fact. It turns out that Nissan plans to build 2013 Leaf models on the same production line it now uses for the Altima and Maxima sedans, both of which come with gasoline engines. (There's also a low-volume Altima Hybrid model.) This intermingling of different models is increasingly...
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Tesla Shows Open Road To More Losses In Q3
Tesla has announced its third quarter results. They show that revenues are down 31 percent from a year ago and that the car maker is losing nearly eight times as much money compared to the previous year. This quarter, Tesla lost $34.9 million, up 7.6 times from the $4.6 million from a year earlier...
VentureBeat's GreenBeat -
Building a Better Battery Charger For Electric Cars: GridBot
Starting a venture-funded company is hard. Starting a venture-funded car company is probably a lot harder, as Tesla, Fisker, and Coda have likely found out. But one area that may make sense for venture funding is the electric-vehicle charging station business. A number of companies, including...
John Voelcker -
First Ride: 2013 VW Golf Blue-E-Motion Prototype
It’s a little-known fact that between the late 1970s and mid 1990s Volkswagen made a series of limited-run electric cars based on the VW Golf platform. Thirty years later, VW’s latest offering, the 2013 Golf Blue-e-motion made its first appearance in the U.K, winning an eco-driving...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
Coda Electric Car Management Turnover Continues With CEO Loss
In a continuing run of managerial musical chairs and corporate re-structuring at CODA Automotive, CEO Kevin Czinger has resigned. CODA automotive’s first car, the 2011 Coda Sedan is due to launch before the end of 2010. Priced at $44,900, it costs $12,000 more than its closest rival, the 2011...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
Tesla's Nemesis - Electric Lotus-Based Sports Car From U.K.
Tesla knew what they were doing when they selected the chassis from the British Lotus Elise sports car as the basis for their Roadster. The bonded aluminum chassis is spectacularly light by modern standards and also incredibly strong and rigid despite being a roofless design. It also has a large...
Antony Ingram -
Earlier this year we were all excited to hear about Volvo’s offering to the world of electric vehicles - the Volvo C30 EV. Debuted at the Detroit Auto Show in January, the S40-based car offered a eight hour recharging time using a 240V, 16A supply, a 24-kilowatt-hour lithium-ion battery and a range of up to 90 miles per charge. But just as we were admiring the C30’s curves and wondering just how soon the Swedish C Segment car would take to reach the marketplace, Volvo announced it had no plans to bring the C30 to the U.S. Blaming European Union regulations, Volvo said at the time...
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Imagine! GM Is Building Electric Cars Again, Just Not For U.S.
For the next few years, the 2011 Chevrolet Volt range-extended electric car will be the sole focus of GM's advanced powertrain efforts for U.S. car buyers. But that hasn't stopped it from putting battery electric cars into production elsewhere in the world. Electric minicars in China Last week, in...
John Voelcker -
NY Marathon: 2011 Nissan Leaf Acts As Zero-Emission Pace Car
A single zero-emissions 2011 Nissan Leaf electric car served as pace car for the world renowned New York City Marathon, held this morning in crisp, sunny autumn weather. Its presence slightly reduced the exhaust that surrounded the lead racers as they covered the 26.2-mile, five-borough course amid...
John Voelcker -
Top 10 Cities For Commuting By Electric Car
We've taken a look recently at the five EVs we're most looking forward to driving, and another look at the five EVs you should do your best to see at the upcoming 2010 Los Angeles Auto Show. We're clearly at the beginning of something big for personal transportation, an age where electric travel is...
Antony Ingram -
Michael Jackson Beats It From Coda. Is He Gone Too Soon?
Parting is never easy. In a shock move a few days ago, Michael A Jackson, the Senior Vice President of Global Sales, Marketing and Distribution at CODA Automotive, has resigned - long before the first all-electric 2011 Coda Sedans hit the roads of the U.S. On Tuesday, CODA made a short press...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
BMW Green: Plug-In Hybrid Sports Coupe, MegaCity Plant OKed
BMW is moving full steam ahead with its plans to offer new, radically more fuel efficient vehicles in the next decade. Today, the company said it would put its striking Vision EfficientDynamics concept car into production, to be offered for sale starting in October 2013. And, it signed off on an...
John Voelcker -
Deliveries of the 2012 Nissan Leaf is about to start in just over a month but attention is already turning to what Nissan has in store for us next in the area of electric vehicles. The automaker recently showed off a new concept vehicle dubbed the New Mobility Concept, essentially a rebadged version of the Renault Twizy that we know is headed to production, but according to a new report there are several other electric vehicles being worked on at Nissan. Speaking with Automotive News, Nissan’s European chief of electric vehicle planning, Pierre Loing, revealed that the Japanese...
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EVs All The Way Down: EV Tractors At Ford's Michigan Plant
Car assembly will never be the cleanest of processes, despite the efforts of people like Gordon Murray whose i-Stream production method for his T25 and T27 microcars is said to reduce the energy of car production by as much as 80 percent. Still, some companies do make the effort to bring down the...
Antony Ingram -
2011 Nissan Leaf Gets Manga Makeover For Monocle Magazine
We’ve said it before, but Nissan makes unmistakably Japanese-looking cars. From the eye-like large headlamps, smiling grille and bulbous nose of the Nissan Townpod concept to the soft curves of the 2011 Nissan Leaf, Nissan’s cars look as if they belong in the pages of a manga. Someone...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
Panasonic To Join Parade of Tesla Investors With Toyota, Daimler
As these things often happen, it was rumored in the Japanese press and then confirmed hours later. Panasonic, the huge Japanese consumer electronics conglomerate, is investing in Tesla Motors, building on a previous agreement to work together on large-format lithium-ion cells for electric car...
John Voelcker -
Tesla Gets Jolt Of Power As Panasonic Buys $30 Million Stake
We have to hand it to Tesla Motors. Over the past year the Californian-based automaker responsible for the fast, sexy 2011 Tesla Roadster 2.5 and 2011 Tesla Roadster Sport 2.5 has experienced a pretty good year. Not only has the Palo Alto firm survived its initial public offering, generating over...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
Report: Tesla Model X Electric SUV Coming In 2014
Electric car start-up Tesla Motors currently only sells one model, the high-performance--and high-pricetag--Roadster, but the company is currently working on a new sedan model dubbed the Model S that’s due to hit the streets in mid-2012 with a base price around the $57,400 mark. However, to...
Viknesh Vijayenthiran -
Imagine what a city totally switched onto electric cars would be like. Discount parking, HOV lane access and perhaps even free charging is what might come to mind. But just how many chargers should you expect in a city switching on to the benefits of all-electric motoring? 200? 600? 1000? Washington state may soon become the model state for any area wishing to support electric vehicles, with the largest roll-out of electric vehicle charging stations the U.S. has seen. If you live in the greater Seattle and Olympia metro areas you’ll soon find over 1,200, thanks to a joint project...
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If EVs Kill Japan's Autopart Shops, Is The U.S. Far Behind?
Shop owners in the sprawling Japanese industrial town of Hamamatsu are worried: They see a future where their day jobs are under threat, and even worse, by the very companies they are in business to support. What is this great thread? Globalisation? Copyright infringement? Neither - their business...
Antony Ingram -
After The 2011 Nissan Leaf and 2011 Chevy Volt, What’s Next?
As we rapidly approach the end of 2010 there are really only two mainstream plug-in cars stealing the limelight - the 2011 Nissan Leaf and the 2011 Chevrolet Volt. But while there will only be a few choices for those wishing to go electric at the end of 2010 in a few years’ time there will be...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
Five New Electric Cars We'll See At The 2010 L.A. Auto Show
One of the biggest motoring events of the year is just around the corner - the 2010 Los Angeles Auto Show. Manufacturers will be out in force with the best of their product lineup and a combination of glitzy stands and glitzy girls to make the metal seem that little bit more appealing. What we're...
Antony Ingram -
AMP Electric Thinks Soccer Moms Want Electric Equinoxes; Do They?
Attending a conference in Detroit a couple of weeks ago, we had the chance to drive a converted "Amp'd Chevrolet Equinox" crossover, offered by AMP Electric Vehicles. Based in Cleveland, the company hopes to sell electric conversions of "best of class" vehicles in several segments to early adopting...
John Voelcker -
Is It Vaporware? Tow-along Solution Offers To Volt Your Leaf
If you listen to the ad executives trying to sell the 2011 Chevrolet Volt there’s one big problem with electric cars: they don’t go as far on a charge as a gas car can on a tank of fuel. While it’s true that electric cars like the 2011 Nissan Leaf and 2011 Coda Sedan may provide...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield