Featured (was)
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One week from today, in a pricey supercar club in Manhattan, journalists, electric-car advocates, and perhaps a few celebrities will gather for the unveiling of a new electric vehicle. It's not another fast, luxurious sedan or crossover utility vehicle. Instead, it's an electric utility truck called the Bollinger B1. DON'T MISS: All-electric Bollinger heavy truck chassis revealed, July 27 debut to follow It's the brainchild of entrepreneur Robert Bollinger, who lives on a farm near the small, fading town of Hobart, New York. Driving into Hobart, you pass a handful of abandoned buildings and...
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How do you service a hydrogen fuel-cell car at a dealer?
Over the past century, gasoline-powered vehicles have gotten simultaneously more complex and more reliable. Service intervals have lengthened, drivers no longer check a car's fluids daily or weekly, and many new-car owners will never once open the hood. Reliability data shows that some of them...
John Voelcker -
Why all electric-car owners should follow Formula E racing
In North America and Europe, the old saying—"Win on Sunday, sell on Monday"—probably no longer applies. That is, winning races over the weekend probably does little if anything to boost sales of passenger cars and light trucks, certainly not the way it did in the U.S. in the 1950s and...
John Voelcker -
11 things you need to know about Formula E electric-car racing
We've just spent a packed, very hot weekend at the New York City ePrix, the first time the FIA Formula E electric-car racing series has come to the country's media capital. It was our first Formula E race, and like many who follow electric cars, we learned a lot. More than that, we got a better...
John Voelcker -
2018 Honda Accord Hybrid: more trunk space, higher fuel economy promised
Over three sporadic model years, the hybrid version of the Honda Accord mid-size sedan has led a peripatetic life. The 2014 and 2015 Accord Hybrid was built in Marysville, Ohio, along with almost all the rest of the Accords sold in North America, its largest market. It skipped 2016 altogether, and...
John Voelcker -
Lucid Air electric luxury sedan: a Tesla Model S owner's take
It’s a cool spring morning in Menlo Park, California, in the heart of Silicon Valley. In a two-story concrete-and-glass building on Constitution Avenue, just down the block from Facebook’s vast fortress, a group of automotive engineers and designers is working to create the...
David Noland -
The 2017 Tesla Model 3 has apparently entered pilot production, following a pair of photos tweeted by Tesla CEO Elon Musk. The caption on the first of the two photos, this one black-and-white, says simply, "First production Model 3." The second photo, tweeted 40 minutes later, is in full color but bears no caption. DON'T MISS: Tesla Model 3 production to start Friday, deliveries July 28 Musk said on July 3 that he anticipated the first production Model 3 electric car, with serial number 001 ("SN1"), would be completed on Friday, July 7. A day and a half later, it's unclear when the car...
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Tesla slams IIHS after 'Acceptable' Model S test, older NHTSA ratings cited in response
Tesla slams IIHS after 'Acceptable' Model S test, cites older NHTSA ratings in response
John Voelcker -
Tesla Model 3 production to start Friday, deliveries July 28
As he had promised he would late one evening last week, Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk has tweeted out some updates on the upcoming Model 3. He expects first production Model 3 electric car, with serial number 001 ("SN1"), to be completed this Friday, July 7. The first 30 customers to buy Model 3s...
John Voelcker -
Fall debut for electric BMW 3-Series to fight Tesla Model 3: report
In August 2016, when the first U.S. ads for the BMW 330e plug-in hybrid sport sedan hit the airwaves, they carried an interesting promise. "You will wait, and wait, and wait some more," the voiceover intoned, "all before that electric-car company's new model ever even arrives." That would be the...
John Voelcker -
New life for old Nissan Leaf electric car: battery replacement and what it took
The 2018 Nissan Leaf will likely be revealed within the next three months, but more than 100,000 older Leaf electric cars are still silently in use on U.S. roads. Some of them, especially the lowest-range cars from the two earliest model years (2011 and 2012), have started to see significant...
John Voelcker -
Electric BMW iX3 to come in 2020, but BMW i5 defunct: what happened, and why?
Over the last two years, Audi and Mercedes-Benz have released several all-electric concept cars that are thinly disguised production models to arrive in 2018 and beyond. But electric-car pioneer BMW's plans are less clear. Its sole recent electric concept car was the iNext luxury sedan shown more...
John Voelcker -
Pretty much everyone knows how to put fuel into a conventional car. You pull up to the pump, open the vehicle's fuel door, put a credit card into the pump, select diesel or one of three grades of gasoline, lift the hose, and pump. (In New Jersey and Oregon, someone else does this for you.) Electric-car charging isn't quite that simple. DON'T MISS: Car buyers have no idea electric-car charging stations even exist There are three types of charging, for starters: 120-volt Level 1, 240-Volt Level 2, and no fewer than three separate DC fast-charging standards. There are several different plugs...
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2018 Toyota Camry Hybrid first drive
The 2018 Toyota Camry Hybrid is the most fuel-efficient version of all-new range of Toyota's popular mid-size sedan, its best-selling vehicle in the U.S. until very recently. The new Camry Hybrid is based on some of the same underpinnings as the 2016 Prius, and uses that car's updated hybrid system...
John Voelcker -
Trump EPA backs away from attacking California emission waiver
Sometime between March 1 and 7, a specific page vanished from the website of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Amidst coverage of the removal of the word "science" from the mission statement of the EPA's Science and Technology Office, it went largely unnoticed. First posted in December...
John Voelcker -
Driving a Chevy Bolt EV electric car halfway across the U.S.: what it takes
How badly do you want a new, affordable, long-range electric car? Badly enough to drive it more than 800 miles without a unified fast-charging infrastructure? That's exactly what Bill Massmann, a professional land surveyor in St. Louis, Missouri, did to become the proud owner of a new 2017...
John Voelcker -
Jaguar I-Pace electric SUV being built now; Europe launch this year, U.S. in 2018?
While Audi and Mercedes-Benz have trumpeted the electric crossover utility vehicles they will offer in 2018 and 2019, a smaller competitor is keeping pace with the German giants. The British brand Jaguar won praise for the design of its I-Pace electric SUV on its debut at last November's Los...
John Voelcker -
2018 Nissan Leaf: rumored timing, steps for U.S. rollout
With the 2017 Chevrolet Bolt EV on the market since December and Tesla Model 3 deliveries said to start within a few months, the upcoming 2018 Nissan Leaf is in danger of getting lost in the noise level. The second generation of Nissan's pioneering electric car will likely be unveiled within the...
John Voelcker -
Tesla held its shareholder meeting Wednesday night, and lots of news emerged in bits and pieces from CEO Elon Musk and the rest of the event. We now know a little more about the Tesla Model Y, the mass-priced electric SUV or crossover utility vehicle that is scheduled to hit the market in 2019, for instance. And Musk offered snippets of information on future battery gigafactories, impending production of the Model 3 sedan, and much more. DON'T MISS: So what happened to Tesla Model X electric SUV sales, anyway? Devout Tesla supporters and fans may want to read the full transcript of Musk's...
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Honda Clarity Electric, Plug-In Hybrid: first drives, impressions
In March, we spent most of a day with the Honda Clarity Fuel Cell, the first of three variants of the Clarity mid-size sedan to go on sale in the U.S. Leases of the hydrogen-powered Clarity will be limited for the foreseeable future to residents of those areas of California near to hydrogen fueling...
John Voelcker -
2017 Cadillac CT6 Plug-In: first drive of hybrid luxury sedan
The 2017 Cadillac CT6 Plug-In will be a rare beast in the U.S.; fewer than 1,000 are likely to be sold each year. In many ways, that's a shame. This version of the CT6 large sedan is a worthy competitor among plug-in hybrid luxury cars, the rest of which will come from BMW, Mercedes-Benz, and...
John Voelcker -
Plug-in electric car sales for May: best Bolt EV, Prime months yet; Leaf, Volt rise too (final update)
Sales of four high-volume plug-in electric cars rose last month, with new monthly record for the Chevy Bolt EV and the Toyota Prius Prime. The 2017 Chevrolet Bolt EV 238-mile battery-electric hatchback logged its highest monthly total since sales began in December. Chevrolet delivered 1,566 Bolt...
John Voelcker -
If BMW i5 is canceled, what does that mean for its electric cars?
When it launched in 2013, the BMW i3 electric car was arguably the most futuristic automobile in mass production anywhere in the world. Its all-electric powertrain could be ordered with an optional range-extending engine, and it rode on an aluminum chassis topped with a strong but lightweight body...
John Voelcker -
2017 Chevy Bolt EV electric car at 6 months: owner's likes, recommendations
The 2017 Chevrolet Bolt EV is the first mass-priced electric car with a range of more than 200 miles, and it's already had a big impact on the California market. While it continues to trickle into dealerships in other states, a few lucky Californians now have six months in the 238-mile electric...
John Voelcker