plug-in cars

According to the ninth annual Avoider study published yesterday by J.D. Power and Associates, many car-buyers avoid green cars because they’re too small, look strange, or cost too much. As we’ve previously found from other recent surveys, gas mileage proved to be the number one...

Technology market research firm Gartner announced yesterday that it forecasts plug-in car sales in the U.S. will top 100,000 vehicles during 2012. But with 2011 sales figures much totaling just over 17,000 fully electric and plug-in hybrids, is it conceivable that total plug-in car sales will more...

At the end of 2011, Tesla released its final specification, options and price list for the 2012 Model S sedan. Depending on the choice of battery pack, the 2012 Tesla Model S should travel 160, 230, or 300 miles per charge. For Tesla Model S owners who have purchased cars with the 230 or 300-mile...

Electric car battery swapping stations became reality yesterday as Better Place started delivering all-electric Renault Fluence Z.E. cars to customers in Israel. Unlike regular electric cars, Renault was commissioned to build the Fluence Z.E. with a battery pack that could be removed by automated...

Think about the names given to electric cars and electric motorcycles on the market today. Most, if not all, are a play on the concept of all-electric, zero tailpipe emissions travel. So when we heard about a team of engineers in Henderson, Nevada who were developing a new electric motorcycle...

To say there's lots of political posturing and wrangling around electric cars, plug-in vehicles, and the industry and infrastructure that supports them would be a gross understatement. We get more than our share of it here at Green Car Reports. And there are valid debates to be had over whether the...

Want to boldly go where few have gone before? If so, you might just have what it takes to become an "Electronaut", BMW's term for the select few who'll be piloting the 2012 BMW ActiveE for the next few years. BMW has started the recruitment process to find 700 potential ActiveE drivers. BMW's...

Often, timing is everything. So Rep. Darryl Issa (R-CA) and his plans for Wednesday likely aren't helped by the NHTSA's decision last Friday to close its Volt battery-safety inquiry after GM developed upgrades for the Volt battery crash structure and coolant filler, and offered them to all existing...

This is a perfectly serious question. A basic 2012 Chevrolet Silverado 1500 full-size pickup truck starts around $23,000, and the rear-wheel drive XFE model is rated by the EPA at 18 mpg combined. The Silverado Hybrid model, a 1500 twin-cab, starts at around $40,000, and the RWD model is rated at...

Think of Presidential state cars, and you’ll probably think of the Cadillac-badged limousine the President Obama uses, a car that many of us know as The Beast. Now an Italian coach-builder has come up with its own take on the Presidential limousine, in the form of an all-electric stretch...

Nissan might have ended 2011 a with sales of its all-electric Leaf a few hundred cars short of its 10,000 unit target for the year, but there are now over 10,000 Leafs on the roads of the U.S. According to Autobloggreen, the happy event occurred last week during the 2012 Detroit Auto Show, which is...

In the aftermath of the last year’s devastating Japanese earthquake and tsunami, more impetus has been given to the idea of turning electric cars -- and their battery packs -- into emergency backup power systems. But now a new project has been set up to take the idea of using electric car...

Yesterday we reviewed the BMW ActiveE electric car after spending an afternoon in the first ActiveE delivered in the U.S. Now, we have a brief video clip to take you inside the car, hitting some of the high points of the driving experience. The clip starts with the car at rest in the remarkably...

When General Motors launched the Chevrolet Volt in 2010, the state of California decided that it didn’t meet the required emissions standards needed to classify it as an Electric Advanced Technology Partial Zero-Emissions Vehicle (e-AT-PZEV). At Launch, No HOV Lane Access As a consequence...

The first BMW ActiveE electric car in North America was just delivered last Friday. Now, with only 600 miles on that car, we've driven it. Our first impressions of BMW's final electric test car, converted from a standard BMW 1-Series two-door sedan, are favorable. It's solid, comfortable, performs...

As anyone who has lived in the Pacific Northwest will tell you, cities like Seattle, Washington and Portland, Oregon are known for their damp, dreary winter months. This winter, as with many other parts of the U.S., heavy snowfall is taking the place of rain, turning the usually temperate Northwest...

At last year’s Frankfurt Auto Show, Mercedes-Benz displayed the B-Class E-Cell Plus, a range-extended concept electric car. In a little over ten weeks at the 2012 New York Auto Show, we’ll see it again -- but this time it will be a production version destined to go on sale exclusively...

Regular readers may recognize the name of Tom Moloughney, who has written several stories on his experiences living with a Mini E electric car for two years. Now Moloughney has moved up in the electric-car world. On Friday, he was the first U.S. customer to take delivery of a BMW ActiveE, the first...

Californian automaker Tesla Motors [NSDQ:TSLA] suffered a 19.33 percent drop in share price on Friday last week after it announced two of its key engineers had departed the company months before its 2012 Model S was due to go on sale. Peter Rawlinson, Tesla’s vice president and chief...

With production of its ground-breaking electric Roadster now complete--despite a recent offering of some 2012 models--Tesla Motors is fully focused on bringing its Model S electric sport sedan to market and delivering the first cars to paying customers. At this year's Detroit Auto Show, the company...