plug-in cars
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With Fisker's Karma already on the market and in the hands of customers, all eyes have turned to Fisker's 'Project Nina', a car to slot below the Karma in Fisker's range. And it was bound to happen: Pictures of the next Fisker range-extended electric car have leaked onto the internet, ahead of its tightly-guarded unveiling on Tuesday night. Revealed by CAR, the images also reveal the new Fisker's name: 'Atlantic', inscribed on the rear license plate. Outwardly the Atlantic doesn't look dissimilar to the larger Karma, with the same aggressive front end and scalloped sides, but the new car...
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Electric Cars ARE Coming, But It Will Be Slow: Why Is This So Hard To Grasp?
Major evolutionary change takes a long time. That's as true for electric cars as for opposable thumbs--though it will be measured in decades, not millennia. We frequently have to say that declaring plug-in cars a sales failure after 14 months (as certain commentators have done) is wildly premature...
John Voelcker -
Discontinued 2011 Think City Electric Cars For Sale: $22,300
UPDATES, April 11, 2012: Since this article was published on March 30, we've received the following updates: This morning, Mission Valley Ford received a truckload of 10 Think City vehicles from the Indiana factory, though most are already spoken for; Sales and service are only available in the San...
John Voelcker -
Azure Dynamics Bankrupt, Built Ford Transit Connect Electric
Well, that's not particularly good news: Azure Dynamics, the company that converted a handful of Ford Transit Connect small commercial vans to electric power, filed for bankruptcy on Monday. It laid off about 120 employees at a variety of locations in MIchigan, Massachusetts, Canada, and the United...
John Voelcker -
Romanian Design Team Proposes Car With Detachable Engine
So you got yer gasoline cars, and yer electric cars. And yer extended-range electrics, and yer plug-in hybrids. Sure, old news, been there, done that. How about an electric car with a gasoline engine you can swap in and out as you need it? Think of it as a range-extended electric car (like the...
John Voelcker -
BMW To Develop Future Lithium-Ion Batteries With Toyota
Lithium-ion battery cells are expensive, challenging, and time-consuming to develop. And they can be hard to get right, as the current woes of A123 Systems show. Even the large car companies that develop their own cells--Toyota is the largest among a small number--want to spread their costs. Today...
John Voelcker -
On March 28, 2011, I took delivery of a European-specification 2011 Nissan Leaf. Yesterday, a few days short of our 1-year anniversary with the car, its odometer passed the 15,000 mile mark. But what have we learned about Nissan’s first electric car after living with it daily for a year? Reliability As with most new cars today, our 2011 Nissan leaf has been extremely reliable over the past 15,000 miles. In fact, to date, we’ve not run out of charge or broken down. What we have experienced however, are some minor faults which we’ve had to refer to the dealer. During early...
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A123 Systems To Recall Electric-Car Battery Packs For Fisker, Others
Hundreds of recalls a year get announced for gasoline cars, the vast majority completely under the radar. The high visibility of the electric-car business makes any recalls of batteries different, though. With that in mind, lithium-ion cell maker A123 Systems [NSDQ:AONE] said this morning it will...
John Voelcker -
GM: We’ll Replace Chevrolet Volt 120-Volt Charging Units
General Motors announced yesterday that it would replace the 120-Volt charging unit provided with every Chevrolet Volt, to provide what GM spokesman Randy Fox called a "more consistent charging experience." Back in July, we reported that some of the charging units provided in Volts were...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
BMW: We've Been Making Electric Cars Since The 1972 Olympics
BMW might be more than a year away from bring its first production electric car -- the 2014 BMW i3 -- to production, but the German automaker wants you to know that it isn’t new to electric cars. You may not know it, but BMW’s electric car history spans 40 years. As part of its...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
2012 Fisker Karma Vs. 2012 Tesla Model S: Video Debate
The last U.S. volume carmaker started from scratch by entrepreneurs whose brand is still with us was Chrysler, and that was in 1924. But Tesla Motors and Fisker Automotive are both looking to change that. Tesla started a few years ago with its electric Roadster sports car, and is about to introduce...
Joel Feder -
Infiniti Zero Emission Coupe Concept To Debut At NY Auto Show
Infiniti has been on something of a product blitz lately, launching its 2013 JX seven-seat crossover this month and a host of concept cars over the last year. Now it has confirmed it will show a new concept at the 2012 New York Auto Show two weeks hence: the Infiniti Zero Emission Concept Coupe. We...
John Voelcker -
Orders have been coming in ahead of projections for the European Opel Ampera, but sales prospects may be looking up in the U.S. too for GM's range-extended electric car.
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Elon Musk: Daimler Saved Tesla, DoE Loans A Bad Idea
In the toughest days of Tesla's early years, CEO Elon Musk said on film, he wired $3 million of his personal fortune to the company so it could make payroll. Now the always-quotable CEO is downplaying the effect the $465 million in U.S. Department of Energy low-interest loan guarantees it received...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
Fisker Nina To Be Unveiled Before New York Auto Show
The 2012 New York Auto Show is almost upon us, and last night an unexpected invitation landed in journalist inboxes around the world. The sender was shown as "Fisker Nina Reveal," and the graphic was the simple line drawing above. The message inside was simply that Fisker Automotive would provide...
John Voelcker -
Chevrolet Spark EV Tested In California, Details Unavailable
It used to be that testing prototype and development cars was done in secret, under heavy camouflage, away from photographers. Now it's a public relations ploy, it seems, complete with QR codes on the sides of distinctively marked engineering vehicles and a promotional blog entry. So if you see...
John Voelcker -
Skeptical About The Chevy Volt? In CA, GM May Loan You One
There's a saying that the best way to convince someone he wants an electric car is to let him drive one. In light of lower-than-projected Chevrolet Volt sales and continued media misinformation about the car's capabilities, GM is taking that lesson to heart. In Southern California, members of the...
John Voelcker -
BMW i3 Electric Car Spotted Winter Testing In Northern Europe
Last week, we were 90 miles north of the Arctic Circle, putting the Volvo C30 electric through its paces. But we weren’t the only people driving electric cars in the Arctic Circle as our colleagues over at Motor Authority found out earlier today. As our own Viknesh Vijayenthiran reports...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
Over the past five years, the Monte Carlo Alternative Energy Rally -- now called the Rallye Monte-Carlo Des Énergies Nouvelles -- has enjoyed increasing popularity as more automakers and private entrants tackle the eco-minded version of the world-famous Rally Monte Carlo. For the past two years, Tesla has won the event with its all-electric Roadster, but this year General Motors is taking part for the first time with not one, but six Opel Amperas. Although it looks slightly different, the Opel Ampera is essentially a renamed Chevrolet Volt, wearing slightly different body panels. The...
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First 2012 Coda Sedan Electric Cars Delivered To Paying Customers
You can add one more to the list of electric cars now on sale in the U.S., with deliveries last week of the very first 2012 Coda Sedan models last Friday in northern and southern California. In publicized events at Coda dealers in both Los Angeles and Siicon Valley (south of San Francisco), dealer...
John Voelcker -
Volvo C30 Electric: Winter Drive Report
Over the past few days, we've told you about our trip to Kiruna, Sweden, where Volvo allowed us to put its C30 electric car through its paces in a series of cold-weather tests designed to push the car to its limit. Now it's time to tell you about our real-world test drive, along 40 miles of snow...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
AAA Adds Electric-Car Charging Info To Map Services
Most drivers who grew up before the era of navigation systems and online mapping will remember TripTiks, the strip maps with highlighted routes that local AAA offices would provide to travelers before they set out on driving vacations. The AAA doesn't give out nearly so many paper maps these days...
John Voelcker -
2013 Nissan Leaf: Better Heater, Leather Option, 6.6-kW Charger
Nissan’s all-electric Leaf hatchback has only been on sale in the U.S. for the past 15 months, but Nissan has already confirmed it will get some much-needed upgrades for the 2013 model. Speaking to The Detroit News yesterday, Mark Perry, director of product and advanced planning for Nissan...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
Volvo C30 Electric Car: How Quickly Does It Warm Up In Cold Weather? (Video)
Last week, we headed to Kiruna, Northern Sweden, where Volvo showed us just how its C30 electric car coped with harsh winters in the frozen arctic. Thanks to an interview with Volvo C30 Electric program manager Annelie Gustavsson, we’ve already explained the theory of keeping the C30 and its...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield