plug-in cars

Tesla's announcement last month of its new service program sounded almost too good to be true. If anything went wrong with my 2013 Tesla Model S, promised CEO Elon Musk, instead of schlepping to the nearest service center, I would simply await the arrival in my driveway of the Tesla service tech...

European buyers waiting for an electric Toyota may have quite some time to wait--until the electric grid cleans up, basically. That's the word from Toyota Europe, which says it wants to see cleaner electricity generation before it commits to electric vehicles. According to Responding to Climate...

Last month, the Nissan Leaf passed the Chevrolet Volt to take this year's top spot among plug-in electric cars for sale. Now Chevy is fighting back. It announced that it will offer $5,000 cash back on remaining 2012 Volt range-extended electric cars, and $4,000 on 2013 models, according to...

Well, chalk one up for basic economic theory: If you lower the price of a good, more people will want to own it. In the case of the 2013 Honda Fit EV, the low-volume battery-electric version of the Honda Fit subcompact hatchback, a cut in the monthly lease price did the trick. Through the end of...

Reporters interview CEOs all the time, but it's rare for those CEOs to end interviews abruptly. Which is what makes an article in Barron's about Tesla Motors [NSDQ:TSLA] and its current high stock price so entertaining. In "Recharge Now!", author Bill Alpert opens with a comparison between Tesla...

Plug-In Hybrids like the Ford Fusion Energi and Ford C-Max Energi—or the Toyota Prius Plug-In, among others—encourage those with regular commutes to plug in daily and do some (or all) of their commute in electric-only mode, without the gasoline engine ever firing up. But it appears that...

You see it all over: the meme that "electric cars are a sales failure." Yet California is experiencing shortages of electric cars, with many dealers saying they've entirely sold out of plug-in electric cars. Some Nissan dealers in Portland, Oregon, even say the Leaf electric car is now their...

Paul Scott may be one of the most dedicated electric-car advocates around. He sells Nissan Leafs for a living, and helped found advocacy group Plug-In America. A few weeks ago, he had a brilliant idea. Scott used a significant chunk of his life savings for a ticket to a pricey Barack Obama...

Plug-in car sales continued at a steady pace in May, with early estimates of perhaps 6,500 to 7,000 sold overall. As always, precise figures are impossible because Tesla Motors [NSDQ:TSLA] does not report monthly sales as every other carmaker does. We'll refine our totals as more reports come in...

Among the 100,000 or so U.S. drivers with plug-in electric cars, it's widely noted that a lot of them charge their cars using photovoltaic solar arrays. But which comes first, using solar power or buying an electric car? Remember that environmental concerns are just one of several reasons to buy an...

If you live in California right now, it's a great time to buy a plug-in electric car. Elsewhere in the country, your choices will be more limited. Three small battery-electric cars are competing on lease pricing in the Golden State, with the default monthly price seemingly $199 or close to it...

Forgive the cynicism, but color us not all that surprised at the news that startup automaker Detroit Electric is postponing production of its SP:01 electric sports car by "at least a month." Launched in a flurry of media attention in early April, the plug-in electric SP:01 sports coupe is...

Does the supposedly clean, green Tesla Model S really pollute more than a gas-guzzling Jeep Grand Cherokee sport-utility vehicle? That's what one analyst has claimed. In an exhaustive 6,500-word article on the financial website Seeking Alpha, analyst Nathan Weiss lays out a case that the Model S...

Tesla Motors has accomplished many remarkable things in its short life as a startup maker of electric cars. But, to clear up a common misperception, its supporters should understand that it has not--yet--made a profit in its core business: designing, building, and selling the Model S all-electric...

If you’re still smitten with the design and styling of the Smart Fortwo, you’re probably going to be happier with the version that never needs a gas station. That’s the conclusion we emerged even more confident about, after the hour earlier this month we spent with the Smart...

It's official: Cars really are getting more efficient. Not that there isn't a long way still to go, but virtually every month statistics emerge to suggest the average fuel efficiency of vehicles in the U.S. has gone up another few fractions of a percent. There are still winners and losers though...

We've been thinking a lot about natural-gas fueled vehicles, for reasons that will become clear in due course. Writing about green cars can occasionally be awkward, because there are different audiences for diesels versus hybrids, for plug-in electric cars, and for other types of alternative fuels...

Two companies that make apps to let electric-car drivers locate nearby charging stations will merge, they announced today. Recargo and Xatori will combine their communities and unify their apps, creating a single directory of more than 20,000 charging points across the country. Recargo currently...

It may be that short sellers and naysayers aren't the only ones a bit surprised these days at the positive press received by electric-car maker Tesla. Yesterday, Germany luxury-car maker Audi issued a rather unusual press release in which it pointed out that it sells more cars than Tesla Motors...

Today marks my first anniversary driving a Better Place Renault Fluence ZE battery-electric car. So it seemed appropriate to summarize my experience to date with the Better Place service, which has had some challenges but is still very much in operation. I paid around $45,000 upfront for my car and...