plug-in cars

Mitsubishi has picked this year's Geneva Motor Show in March to launch its new Outlander SUV. The all-new Outlander takes cues from the PX-MiEV concept seen at recent shows, and Mitsubishi says its fuel efficiency and greenhouse gas figures are among the best in its class. Better still should be...

Morgan Motor Company is now the largest UK-owned car company in Britain. Its Plus 4 "classic" model, the latest evolution of a 1930s roadster design, is still built with ash body framing and the century-old "sliding pillar" front suspension. Nonetheless, the quirky family-owned British maker of...

Imagine the horror. There you are, driving your electric car through the Lincoln Tunnel to Manhattan from New Jersey. Your battery pack gives up its last few electrons, so your car slows to a halt in the narrow tube, blocking traffic, causing a cacophony of curses and horn-honking. That's the...

“We’ve got a rocketship next door, and you know as Governor Moonbeam that I like rocketships,” quipped California Governor Jerry Brown, at the introduction of the upcoming 2014 Tesla Model S, gesturing toward the big SpaceX facility next door to Tesla’s Southern California...

Is the Chevrolet Volt being outshone by its own little brother? The Wall Street Journal suggests that - just like millions of Americans - the Volt is a victim of some good, old-fashioned sibling rivalry - at the hands of the Chevrolet Cruze. On the face of it, there's not a lot of reason that the...

There are many reasons to choose an electric vehicle - saving money on gas, to reduce dependency on foreign oil, or maybe simply because you like the way they drive - but one of the main reasons has to be green appeal. To prove the theory, the Mitsubishi i electric car has just topped the American...

When you buy any new car, it comes with a warranty which guarantees the automaker will replace or fix any defects in the car for a set period of time. Generally, warranty repairs are carried out when the car’s buyer notices something wrong with their car, but for one Tesla Roadster owner, his...

When California-based electric automaker Coda Automotive announced it would be opening showrooms in shopping malls, you might have assumed each showroom would have some way of helping customers order its all-electric 2012 Sedan. You’d be wrong. They won’t, according to Coda CEO Phil...

For many years, Arizona was considered an electric-car friendly state, thanks to California-style tailpipe emissions and mandates which required automakers to sell a certain percentage of zero-emissions cars in order to sell in the state. But less than a month after the Arizona Governor’s...

Over the past few months, we’ve started to hear more and more about Tesla’s 2014 Model X -- the all-electric crossover SUV that will follow the 2012 Model S into production in year’s time. So far, everything has been positively enigmatic, but now clean tech specialist Theo...

With last month's sales of the 2012 Chevy Volt less than half what they were in December, Chevrolet has stepped up its efforts to sell its innovative but pricey range-extended electric car. And it's doing it the old-fashioned way, by "putting money on the hood," as salespeople say. According to...

They say that every cloud has a silver lining - in other words, there's a bright side to even the darkest of situations. That being the case, what's the opposite? What's the disadvantage to the bright, air-conditioning friendly, heat-reflecting, inviting interior of the 2012 Nissan Leaf electric...

Range extenders, small gasoline engines that produce electricity to run electric cars after their battery packs discharge, will likely see huge innovation in the coming years. While the Chevy Volt and Fisker Karma both use off-the-shelf GM engines as range extenders, many companies are working on...

Last year, U.S. car buyers drove home in roughly 17,000 plug-in cars, the bulk of them Nissan Leafs and Chevrolet Volts. As several more plug-in cars enter the market this year, analysts will watch sales carefully to see whether retail and fleet buyers are willing to pay the significant surcharge...

Depending on which websites you visit and which news channels you watch, electric cars are either portrayed as the poster children of green revolution, or an example of catastrophic government failure. But while it’s relatively easy to find examples of extreme pro- and anti-electric car...

In case you hadn’t heard, smartphone apps are the number one accessory for any plug-in car owner. In fact, nearly every mainstream electric car on the market today has its own dedicated iOS, Android and Windows Mobile applications, designed to help you monitor your car’s charge level...

You may recall that a few years ago, there was a flurry of interest in compressed-air cars. In the end, it didn't pan out. Compressed air just isn't a dense enough form of energy storage to make it practical for vehicle use--even in very lightweight cars--and no such passenger car is sold anywhere...

Normally, automakers unveil their latest model in one of two ways: on the main stage of an big automotive show, or at an exclusive, invite-only evening event. Tesla, in keeping with the method preferred by most boutique and luxury automakers, tends to unveil its cars to exclusive audiences at a...

A few weeks ago, we told you that all new 2012 Chevrolet Volts manufactured after February 8 and destined for Californian dealers will feature a redesigned exhaust system that will enable them to qualify as Enhanced Advanced Technology Partial Zero-Emissions Vehicles (e-AT-PZEVs). As a consequence...

With the last Tesla Roadsters making their way towards owners in Europe, Asia and Australia, the world of electric cars will soon be lacking a sports car figurehead. Since 2008 the Roadster has been pivotal in changing the image of electric cars, but while Tesla Motors readies the 2012 Tesla Model...