plug-in cars

The storm clouds continue to darken over electric-car startup Coda Automotive. The day after Christmas, the company announced on its Facebook page that it had closed its Coda Experience Center showroom in the Westfield Mall Century City. Then, last Friday, Coda laid off more staff. That day, the...

In its third year on the market, the updated 2013 Nissan Leaf will have a slightly longer range, a new and lower-priced base model, faster charging, and a more efficient cabin heater. The battery electric car goes into production at Nissan's assembly plant in Smyrna, Tennessee, this week. While the...

For years, spy photographers made a living shooting camouflaged test cars for eager fans. Now the auto companies are doing it themselves. GM today released a photo of the 2014 Cadillac ELR on the road in Southern California, covered in camo, as its second teaser shot for the electric luxury coupe...

U.S. car buyers took home about 17,500 plug-in electric cars in 2011. Last year, the numbers got better. A lot better. In 2012, about 53,000 electric cars were likely sold--essentially triple the prior year's number. Not bad, huh? We know that at least 50,000 sales of plug-in cars will have been...

The 2013 Tesla Model S comes with one feature no other electric car can match: free quick-charging at an expanding network of Supercharger stations, usable only by Tesla owners. Following its October launch between the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles, the network now includes a station along...

Eco-minded shoppers have seen environmental issues take up more space in the news, and they've known that it was simply a matter of time before those concerns began affecting the sorts of vehicles we drive. Now, mainstream consumers are beginning to see the light. The change hasn't come overnight...

We know the official release of the 2014 Cadillac ELR electric car will be on Monday, January 15, at the Detroit Auto Show. Now Cadillac has released a teaser image of the range-extended electric coupe, which is based on a modified version of the Voltec powertrain used in the Chevrolet Volt...

Two years ago tomorrow, Jeff Kaffee took possession of his keys and became the very first person in the U.S. to buy a Chevrolet Volt. Since then, the retired pilot from Parsippany, New Jersey, has put almost 12,000 miles on his range-extended electric car--using just 26.1 gallons of gasoline while...

Just two years after the first Nissan Leaf was sold in the U.S., Nissan said today it has opened a plant in Smyrna, Tennessee, to fabricate lithium-ion cells for electric-car batteries. The first cells built at the plant have completed the necessary aging process, and can now be charged for the...

Two weeks ago, we noted that drivers of the Chevrolet Volt had covered 100 million electric miles. What we neglected to note at the time was that Nissan Leaf drivers are keeping pace, having covered more than 100 million electric miles as well. And it's appropriate to note that total today, just...

You might not know it from general media coverage, but plug-in electric-car sales are actually doing pretty well. Still, people get impatient, and electric-car and environmental advocates want more, faster. So what are the best ways to boost adoption of plug-in cars? Education and awareness are the...

After more than an hour of discussion last night, the town selectmen of Natick, Massachusetts, voted 4-1 to grant a license to sell cars to Tesla Motors Massachusetts. The local company, which the Selectmen concluded was legally separate from Tesla Motors [NSDQ:TSLA], will operate out of a property...

Two years ago, our first-ever Green Car Reports Best Car To Buy award went to the first modern battery-electric car sold in the U.S. How far we've come. This year, our third annual winner is the 2013 Tesla Model S, a car that takes the all-electric vehicle to a new and far more elevated level. But...

Fisker Automotive, often referring to in the media as "struggling," is looking for additional funding and a carmaking partner. According to a story in the Wall Street Journal (subscription required), the company has now hired an investment bank, Evercore Partners, to assist in those quests. Fisker...

Without any fanfare, the EPA has released its range rating for the second version of the Tesla Model S to come to market. The 2013 Tesla Model S fitted with a 60-kilowatt-hour battery pack has a rated range of 208 miles. That compares to 265 miles for the Model S version with the largest 85-kWh...

For our final piece on last week's Los Angeles Auto Show, we put together a video on the five new plug-in electric cars officially unveiled there. Three of them are plug-in hybrids, a pair from Ford and one from Honda, and the other two are small battery-electric conversions by the makers of the...

Well, it looks like there won't be a Tesla Model S under my Christmas tree after all. Even more annoying, that means I'll have to wait until April 15, 2014, to take advantage of my $7,500 electric-car tax credit. As Model S reservation holder P717, I'd hoped to take delivery of my car this month...

Sales of plug-in electric cars fell slightly in November, with continued steady sales of the Nissan Leaf not enough to make up for a decline in Chevy Volt numbers. This month's total may not quite equal last month's plug-in sales of 6,784. The big unknown, however, is deliveries of the Tesla Model...

Friday evening, when perhaps not a lot of people were watching, a virtual odometer ticked over on the Chevy Volt website. At that hour--about 7 pm Eastern--it showed that Volt drivers had covered 100,000,000 miles on electricity in their range-extended electric cars. (The actual total is about 25...

Progressive Prius drivers looking for the next step towards going green aren't just moving into Nissan Leafs and Chevy Volts--Ford is benefitting too. The company reports it expects November to be its best-ever month for hybrid sales, with over 6,000 units--beating July 2009's high of 5,353 cars...