Featured (was)
-
When you want to buy a Tesla electric car, and you've got four kids, there's only one choice on the market. That's the 2016 Tesla Model X six- or seven-seat SUV, and courtesy of an owner in just that situation, we've finally been able to spend a few hours driving the luxury crossover. Unlike other automakers, Tesla Motors almost never makes cars available to the media—so it took until last month for us to get behind the wheel. DON'T MISS: 2016 Tesla Model X - full review Our test vehicle was a black Model X P90D delivered earlier this year to an affluent suburban neighborhood in the...
-
Tesla refutes owner claims of Model X 'sudden acceleration' before crash
It started with a post two days ago on the owners' forum on the Tesla Motors website. In it, an owner with the user name "Puzant" claimed that a five-day-old Tesla Model X electric SUV had accelerated out of control while parking. Yesterday, Tesla denied that claim, and issued a statement saying...
John Voelcker -
Tesla Model X door-control software to be updated, Musk says
Given Elon Musk's habit of revealing snippets of information when he talks, electric-car advocates, owners, and industry analysts pore over any live event at which the Tesla Motors CEO presents. On June 1, the Silicon Valley carmaker held its annual shareholder meeting, which clocked in at a...
John Voelcker -
Tesla Model 3 owners will pay to use Superchargers, cost TBD
In the beginning, the use of Tesla's nascent network of Supercharger DC fast-charging sites wasn't going to be free. Not for owners of the less-expensive Model S 40 and 60 versions, at least: if they wanted to use the Supercharger network, they paid a $2,500 fee up front. But demand for the...
John Voelcker -
2017 Ford Fusion Energi electric range rises to 22 miles
The all-electric range of every type of plug-in car has risen since their introduction in 2011, and will continue to increase with further boosts in battery energy density. This means that not only electric cars will get longer ranges, but so will plug-in hybrids. The latest maker to join the...
John Voelcker -
Secret Tesla software updates simulate new Autopilot abilities on customers' cars
Tesla is secretly testing new Autopilot features on customer cars in the real world.
Stephen Edelstein -
The 2017 Mitsubishi Mirage gets a host of updates, but remains a very basic economy car.
-
Tesla Model 3 targets: 100K in 2017, 400K in 2018, say skeptical suppliers
Tesla Motors' audacious goal of building half a million cars a year by the end of 2018 will require boosting its production by a factor of 10 over just two and a half years. And it will require nothing less than a reorientation of the entire company toward manufacturing, even as vehicle development...
John Voelcker -
BMW i3 REx electric-car lawsuit: range-extender power loss alleged
The BMW i3 is the only electric car in the world sold with an optional range-extending engine to increase driving capability beyond the range provided by the battery. The "REx" option adds a small, 34-horsepower 650cc two-cylinder engine, derived from one used in BMW motorcycles, that powers a...
John Voelcker -
Tesla Model 3 reservations: 373K after duplicates, speculators removed
The hundreds of thousands of $1,000 deposits placed for the Tesla Model 3 electric cars by potential buyers around the world came as an eye-opening shock to the auto industry. More than 100,000 such deposits were placed during the day that preceded the car's unveiling on the evening of March 31...
John Voelcker -
Tesla talks to LG, Samsung about Model 3 battery cell supplies
Since the start of Tesla Model S electric-car production in 2012, the company's lithium-ion cells have been supplied by its Japanese partner Panasonic. That applies to the more recent Tesla Model X crossover SUV as well—and Panasonic was also an early investor in Tesla Motors shares, owning a...
John Voelcker -
Tesla wants to sell electric cars in Michigan; state couldn't care less
You don't see a lot of Teslas in Michigan. It's not because the three U.S. automakers headquartered there aren't interested in the electric cars produced by a Silicon Valley company founded just 12 years ago. It's because state laws bar the company from selling its cars online to state...
John Voelcker -
Following the departure of two top manufacturing executives, electric-car maker Tesla Motors has hired a manufacturing executive from German luxury maker Audi. The company announced the news late Friday in a release sent to news media. The executive, Peter Hocholdinger, will join the Silicon Valley carmaker as its vice present of vehicle production. DON'T MISS: Tesla deadlines aren't meant to be met, Musk says: they just pressure employees According to the company's statement on Friday afternoon: Peter will be responsible for continuing to increase and improve Model S and Model X production...
-
2017 Chevy Bolt EV sales could go as high as 80,000, says analyst
The question of how many electric cars can be sold in a single year remains a topic of hot debate as the U.S. market awaits the launch of the 200-mile Chevy Bolt EV at the end of this year. The world's best-selling electric car, the Nissan Leaf, had its highest-sales year in the U.S. in 2014, when...
John Voelcker -
Tesla says it will build 500K cars a year by end of 2018; can it?
When Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk said two years ago that the electric-car maker planned to be building half a million cars a year by the end of 2020, it seemed an ambitious stretch goal. When he said on last week's quarterly earnings call that the company was pulling that goal two years ahead to...
John Voelcker -
2017 BMW i3, electric-car sales, VW diesel woes, charging-station funds: The Week in Reverse
What electric car will get a 50-percent larger battery capacity for 2017—and a range of over 100 miles as a result? And, which completely non-green cars did we have a blast driving at high rates of speed around a Phoenix race track? This is our look back at the Week In Reverse--right here at...
John Voelcker -
Plug-in electric car sales for April 2016: Volt romps, Leaf stagnates (update)
After the usual winter doldrums at the start of the year, April proved to be a good month for plug-in electric car sales in the U.S. March was a record-breaking month, and as April results come in today and tomorrow, last month's pace seems to be robust as well. As usual, the two highest-volume...
John Voelcker -
2017 BMW i3: up to 114 miles of range from 50-percent battery increase
For its fourth year on the market, the 2017 BMW i3 electric car gets a huge boost in battery capacity and hence its EPA-rated range. The battery capacity rises 50 percent, from 22 to 33 kilowatt-hours, and the company says the rated range for the battery-electric version will be up to 114 miles...
John Voelcker -
Lithium-ion cells and the battery packs that hold them are the single most costly part of modern electric cars. And how fast their costs will fall remains the defining factor in making those cars affordable for the mass market. GM made waves last fall when product chief Mark Reuss said the company will pay $145 per kilowatt-hour for the cells in the battery pack of the 2017 Chevrolet Bolt EV that will roll out at the end of this year. DON'T MISS: Now, finally, the Germans are getting scared of Tesla? Now we have a comparable data point of sorts for electric-car startup Tesla Motors as it...
-
Four new (or updated) electric cars coming for 2017
Among battery electric cars on sale in the U.S., only three vehicles have sold more than 10,000 copies since 2010: the Nissan Leaf, Tesla Model S, and BMW i3. But four new or updated models coming for the 2017 model year may change those equations. The most eagerly awaited new 2017 electric car is...
John Voelcker -
Emission, fuel-economy test issues spread: Mitsubishi, Daimler, others being investigated
Mitsubishi, Daimler, and several other carmakers are under scrutiny for fuel-economy and emissions irregularities.
Stephen Edelstein -
VW diesel agreement: what we know (and don't know) in 5 questions
Yesterday's news that Volkswagen and the U.S. EPA had reached agreement on a deal to address VW's diesel-emission cheating scandal brought as much confusion as clarity. The carmaker and the regulator said they had agreed on the general outline of a deal to offer owners a choice of either...
John Voelcker -
VW settlement with EPA announced over diesel emission scandal (updated)
Volkswagen and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said today that they had reached an agreement on a plan to address hundreds of thousands of diesel vehicles sold over six years deliberately designed to violate U.S. emission laws. The agreement, released at 8 am California time this morning...
John Voelcker -
Volkswagen may buy back 500,000 illegally polluting cars, report says
Volkswagen may buy back more than 500,000 illegally polluting cars in the U.S., Reuters reported Wednesday. The news agency’s report follows one from German newspaper Die Welt that the automaker may offer $5,000 to settle with owners of affected cars. A federal judge in San Francisco is...
Aaron Cole