plug-in cars

There are many types of plug-in cars; some makers go for battery electrics, others for plug-in hybrids or range-extended electric vehicles. At the Geneva Motor Show yesterday, Hyundai unveiled a concept coupe showing how it might package an electric car offering a 75-mile range with a...

When the automotive world descends on Switzerland for its annual motor show, there’s one thing that we can be certain of: another imaginative automotive creation from Swiss firm Rinspeed. Unlike previous creations, like the world’s first underwater electric car or its...

Retail car buyers have to juggle a lot of factors in choosing a car, including image, family approval, and maybe-one-day-I'll-drive-across-the-country dreams. That may preclude a battery electric vehicle like a Nissan Leaf, with its 73-mile range. Commercial fleet buyers, on the other hand, look at...

The 2012 Chevrolet Volt -- along with its European twin -- have just been chosen as 2012 European Car Of The Year. Beating the Volkswagen Up, Toyota Yaris, Fiat Panda, Range Rover Evoque, Ford Focus and Citroën DS5, the plug-in range extended electric vehicle becomes the second plug-in car to...

Late Friday afternoon, Chevrolet announced it would idle production of its Volt range-extended electric car for five weeks, from March 19 to April 23. The story was first reported by the Detroit Free Press; GM informed the 1,300 assembly-line workers at the Detroit-Hamtramck plant of the shutdown...

Last month, Toyota said that it had 2,100 pre-orders for the 2012 Prius Plug-In Hybrid. Now, with first sales of that car being logged this week and dozens of them delivered to dealers, we have a third viable, high-volume plug-in car available to U.S. buyers. Consumers can now buy a pure battery...

It's only a matter of days now before the 2012 Geneva Motor Show opens to the press on March 6, and we'll be there to cover all the greenest new metal from the show floor. In the meantime, we've compiled a list of some new faces and more familiar shapes, all of which have one thing in common - a...

After a flurry of press events last October that included rides in 2012 Tesla Model S prototypes, Tesla Motors went mostly silent until it unveiled its Model X crossover last month. But the electric crossover won't generate any cash for the Silicon Valley startup carmaker over the next year or two...

U.S. vehicle sales soared in February, and so did sales of plug-in cars. A drop in the number of all-electric Nissan Leaf sales was more than offset by a rise in sales of the range-extended electric Chevrolet Volt. At least 1,500 plug-in cars were sold last month, with totals for the Mitsubishi 'i'...

The all-electric Nissan Leaf may have been on sale in some parts of the U.S. for 14 months -- but for residents in 21 states, today is the day Nissan will email them saying they can start the ordering process for the $35,200 hatchback. When the 2011 Nissan Leaf launched, Nissan restricted rollout...

In the world of plug-in cars, the Nissan Leaf and Chevy Volt may get all the attention, but a new arrival will make it very much a three-car race. The 2012 Toyota Prius Plug-In Hybrid is just now arriving at Toyota dealers in California plus a dozen or so other states. While it may look just like a...

Once every four years -- with a few odd exceptions -- February gets an extra day. That’s probably a good thing, because Californian automaker Coda promised earlier this year that it would deliver its first all-electric 2012 Sedan by the end of this month. Even with an extra day, Coda looks to...

Unless you don’t drive a gasoline-powered car, the chances are you’ve noticed the spike in gasoline prices lately. But according to the U.S. Secretary of Energy Dr. Steven Chu, the U.S. Department of Energy isn’t about to intervene with a knee-jerk reaction designed to immediately...

Startup plug-in vehicle maker Bright Automotive announced today that it is closing down. While General Motors had invested $5 million in the company, Bright had relied on the hope that the U.S. Department of Energy would grant it low-interest loans under the advanced-technology vehicle...

Back in the mid 1990s, a motorcycle seat salesman by the name of Mike Corbin turned up at the San Francisco Auto Show with a single seat, three wheeled electric car that resembled a boot on wheels. But while Corbin experienced an initial spike of interest from curious consumers and international...

If the proverbial Chinese curse is true, Fisker Automotive has truly been living in interesting times. Its Karma range-extended electric luxury sport sedan struggled into the market in December, months late, and in January the DoE froze $336 million in untapped loans to the company. Now Fisker has...

Last week, Volkswagen officially started its latest all-electric test program in the U.S., with the delivery of the first eGolf to its Californian test facility. Yesterday at the annual TED conference, sister company Audi followed suit with the announcement that it too would be testing limited...

On Friday last week, Volkswagen officially marked the start of its U.S. electric car test program by shipping an all-electric Golf to its Electronic Research Laboratory in Belmont, California. Called the eGolf in the U.S. the all-electric hatchback is essentially the same as the Volkswagen Golf...

Now that Fisker has managed to launch its 2012 Karma and start delivering cars to customers, the company is looking ahead toward expanding its model range. Reports today in the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf indicate that it will unveil the production version of its 2013 Fisker Surf 'shooting brake'...

BMW’s 2014 i8 plug-in hybrid sports car might have been spotted wearing standard-issue "carmoflague" while cold-weather testing in Sweden, but now the German automaker wants to remind us how it really looks. The reminder comes courtesy of BMW’s latest teaser video, showing the i8 and...