Electric Cars

It’s 11:00 on a sunny Thursday morning at a Toyota dealership in a suburb of Detroit, and it’s eerily quiet. It’s been ten days since Toyota recalled 133,000 Priuses in the United States for a software issue that affects braking, but there aren’t any Priuses waiting for upgrades. In fact...

UPDATE (February 18): The three Tesla Motors employees killed yesterday in the crash of a small airplane at the Palo Alto Airport have now been identified, according to local news reports. They were: Doug Bourn, a senior electric engineer and the presumed pilot of the plane; Andrew Ingram, an...

Teaser images are an amazing method taken by automakers to get interest and discussion rolling.  From just a small glimpse of a vehicle, discussion, speculation, and arguments pursue and the company has successfully generated the hype that they were looking to create.  Something as simple as this...

The Ford Transit Connect EV was unveiled days ago at the Chicago Auto Show.  We posted a recent story detailing the specs of the vehicle that were just release by Ford.  Now it's time for the first drive. Ford allowed brief test drives of the Transit Connect EV outside of the Chicago Auto Show. ...

Right now the automotive industry is changing rapidly.  In the electric vehicle category it really appears to be the case that everyone is in.  Joining the other automakers who have already announced upcoming EVs is Opel.  Opel's recent release of their updated business plan shows that green...

Better Place had made news on many occasions for some outlandish claims and also for demonstrating technology that most people think may never work.  However, the mere fact that they continue to make headlines means that the company is important to the electric vehicle community and should not be...

Memorandums of Understanding are popping up everywhere.  Referred to as a MoU, these agreements set forth the groundwork and lay out guidelines for adoption of electric vehicles.  Nissan is the king of the MoU as they appear to have signed one with virtually everyone, but Mitsubishi is not far...

Sometimes finding out about vehicles that automakers are working on for future release is much more involved then attending an auto show or reading a press release.  Sometimes, journalists go digging through patent filings and turn up the results they are looking for.  Apparently that is just...

With Toyota constantly adding more and more hybrid models each year, the inevitable question has popped up.  When will the Scion brand see its first hybrid model?  The answer for now appears to be never. According to Jack Hollis, vice president of Scion Motor Sales U.S.A, who spokes recently with...

The Ford Transit Connect EV will be one of the company's first electric drive vehicles.  It is expected to come to market near the end of the year.  Up until a few days ago, little was known about specific data of the Transit EV.  Now that has all changed. With the Transit Connect EV scheduled...

The largest car rental agency on the planet, Hertz, has given its approval to the concept of all-electric cars. Hertz announced today that it would make Leaf models available at selected rental locations in the U.S. and Europe, starting next year. With its 100-mile range, the five-seat Leaf would...

 The Nissan Leaf is perhaps the most anticipated electric vehicle ever.  Nissan's approach and promise of providing a reasonably priced, five seat EV for the masses has drawn considerable attention.  The vehicle's expected performance numbers are well within standards of typical expectations for...

Recently we posted findings on this site from a report posted by the National Research Council.  The reports were met with great criticism for many reasons including obvious faults in calculating the future costs of lithium-ion battery.  The NRC reports stated excessively high costs for li-ion...

Yesterday we drove the 2011 Ford Transit Connect Electric, and later today we'll have a drive report for you. But if you'd rather not wait until November or December for to buy Ford's first-ever electric vehicle, perhaps you'd consider a slightly used electric car on eBay? This 1918 Rauch and Lang...

LG Chem. is quickly becoming one of the world's largest suppliers of lithium-ion batteries for advanced vehicles.  Now they can add Changan Automobile to the growing list of automakers that they supply batteries to.  The list includes General Motors and Hyundai right now, but the company is also...

Sometimes automakers issue a press release with only a tidbit of information and an image of a portion of an car.  These releases, referred to as teasers, don't give you much to go on but are interesting nonetheless.  A teaser gives just a glimpse of a vehicle or a speck of information to go by...

According to Edmunds Inside Line, the BMW Vision EfficientDynamics concept that made its debut at the 2009 Frankfurt Auto Show will enter production.  Inside Line cites a senior BMW authority who assured them that this will become a production vehicle. The plug-in hybrid 2+2 concept is dramatic in...

It’s impossible not to eavesdrop on the other parents’ conversations when I pick up my kindergartener from school. It’s a wholly unscientific but usually accurate way to find out what’s top-of-mind with people here in the Midwest — unemployment, strep throat, American Idol, and the auto...

Toyota has been criticized in media reports for their slow response to claims of accelerator pedal troubles that forced the company to recall millions of vehicles, but their response to the potential braking issues with the Toyota Prius can be considered immediate.  Toyota has already contacted...

GM has officially set the launch date for the Chevy Volt.  GM listed November 1, 2010 as the Volt's Job 1 date, making the launch of the Volt imminent and the date of release finally official. There has been considerable speculation as to when the Volt will actually become available to the...