plug-in cars

Despite lower-than-predicted sales of its Leaf battery electric hatchback, Nissan is pushing ahead with its aggressive electric-car program. At the Guangzhou Auto Show yesterday, its Chinese partner unveiled its own plug-in electric car, the Venucia E30. And, surprise, surprise, it looks just like...

Oh, those DoE loans. They arose in the recent U.S. presidential debate--not just once or twice, but three times--and continue to generate debate. So here's more fuel for the fire: A company rejected three years ago for loans is now suing the DoE. Its proposed product? An inflatable electric car...

Much of economics is simple: Makers of desirable, popular products can raise their prices--to some degree. One example: Tesla Motors [NSDQ:TSLA] confirmed in a blog post yesterday that it would raise prices on its 2013 Tesla Model S all-electric sport sedan in the next two or three weeks. But...

Score one for startup carmakers trying to do things differently. Last Friday, a judge denied a request by the Massachusetts State Automobile Dealers Association for an injunction that would have shut down the Tesla Store in Natick, which opened on September 28. If the dealers' request had been...

Much publicity, high hopes, and hundreds of millions of dollars have been devoted to the Better Place electric-car service. Now, with an apparent dearth of Israeli customers to sign on the dotted line, the company is turning over its management. Deputy CEO departs The latest defection is deputy CEO...

It happens already: Chevy Volt owners compare their lifetime electric miles, how long they've driven without using gasoline, and their lifetime gas mileage. Now Chevrolet is formalizing the competition, with plans to release a mobile phone app that lets owners register and compete with each other...

As GM's first battery electric car since the EV1 of the 1990s, there's more riding on the 2014 Chevrolet Spark EV electric minicar than its size would indicate. The company maintains the electric Spark is not just a compliance car, but a fully developed product to be sold not only in California...

General Motors has narrowed its portfolio of future technologies, and will focus on plug-in and electric vehicles over the coming years. The company will build on the success of its Chevrolet Volt range-extended electric car, an area where it leads its competitors, while downplaying more...

More than 13,000 people have put down deposits to join the waiting list for the Tesla Model S electric sports sedan. Each of us eagerly awaits delivery of our much-decorated, cutting-edge car. But as 2012 winds down, several hundred of us at the front of the queue are especially antsy. It's not...

Not only is BMW talking about its commitment in its plug-in car plans, it's putting that confidence on display, too. The BMW i 'Born Electric' world tour has just kicked off in New York City, putting the company's electric and plug-in products on display for all to see. Running for a week in...

No, Springo isn't a new scratch-off game. It's apparently the name of a new Chevrolet battery electric vehicle, though we'll never see it in North America. The Chevy Springo electric car will go on sale in China (and possibly other countries) at roughly the same time that the U.S. gets limited...

Every driver of a plug-in hybrid electric car eventually wants to drive more on electricity and less on gasoline. So it's frustrating when the battery charge indicator shows a reasonable level of charge, you're only a few hundred feet from home, and yet the engine kicks on because of that one steep...

Most of the attention paid to plug-in electric cars goes to Nissan, Chevy, and Tesla. But in other countries, the hope of running small cars on grid power--no matter how unreliable that grid may be--lives as well. In India, the large truck maker Mahindra & Mahindra is preparing to launch the...

This seems to be our time for debunking dumb stories about plug-in electric cars. First, we had to educate a Forbes columnist (and oil-industry consultant) about how the auto industry works. Now, it's time to offer some gentle guidance to all those journalists who covered last month's release of a...

Tesla being what it is--a venture-funded startup battery-electric automaker in Silicon Valley--every utterance from its CEO Elon Musk becomes newsworthy. So a generalized hint at future development of its main product, the 2012 Tesla Model S electric sport sedan, becomes fodder for news stories. In...

It's becoming an awkward, unfortunate routine. Somewhere, somehow, a Fisker Karma catches fire, and the company rushes in its inspectors and engineers to analyze the incident. A few days later, Fisker Automotive issues a statement explaining that the battery of the range-extended electric car isn't...

Electric car drivers have long had a little secret: The cars are generally much nicer to drive than gasoline cars. Now a new survey done at London Metropolitan University in England shows that despite initial skepticism, drivers of the plug-in vehicles came to like them better than gasoline cars in...

For many of us, lines at gas stations and homes without power are no more than news, but millions on the U.S. East Coast are still coping with the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. Many areas are still without power, and gasoline is a worryingly rare commodity for a transport system utterly dependent...

The biggest question facing tiny Tesla Motors right now is whether it can ramp up production of its Model S all-electric sport sedan and deliver enough of them to paying customers that it can generate the income it needs to keep going. On the quarterly Tesla Motors [NSDQ:TSLA] earnings call this...

The good news for plug-in electric car sales just keeps on keeping on. In October, Chevy sold 2,961 Volts--the highest-ever single-month total--and Nissan continued a recent resurgence, selling 1,579 Leafs. Those numbers compare with 2,851 Volts sold in September and 984 Leafs the same month. That...