plug-in cars
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The Holidays are over, the New Year celebrated, which means it’s the time of year when the auto-world descends on Detroit for the North American International Motor Show. Held over the coming two weeks, it will showcase the very latest in automotive design, innovation and technology. Last year, the ‘Electric Avenue’ hosted some of the competitors in the Automotive X-Prize, as well as the 2011 Mitsubishi i-Miev, 2011 Nissan LEAF and BYD e6. Many other automakers chose to display their plug-in vehicles outside of the cliched Electric Avenue. Among them, concepts from Audi...
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BMW Launches ActiveE Electric Car Forum, Mobile App, Extends MINI E Leases
BMW made a step towards its electric car future today by launching its ActiveE electric car forums. In its final Plugged-In newsletter to all its current MINI E Lease participants, BMW announced that the new website will form the backbone of BMW’s next electric car program. In addition, BMW...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
2011 Nissan LEAF: Deliveries Now More Than a Trickle
Last month, Nissan became the first major automaker to deliver an all-electric car to a U.S. customer. In the month of December however, only 10 LEAFs were actually delivered to customers, whilst Chevrolet delivered somewhere between 250 and 350 2011 Volts to customers. Now it looks as if Nissan is...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
Electric Cars Financially Viable by 2020, Study Reports
Buying an electric car today is hardly cheap. With lithium-ion battery prices at around $450 per kilowatt-hour of storage, the 24 kilowatt-hour battery pack found in the 2011 Nissan LEAF weighs in at a jaw-dropping $10,800, and that's before complex battery management electronics are added. That...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
Who Killed the Electric Car? Subaru To Slay Plug-In Stella EV
Back in July 2009, two Japanese automakers launched electric cars within weeks of each other. (And neither one was Nissan.) One was Mitsubishi, which put its i-MiEV five-door hatchback microcar on sale after several years of consumer tests. That car is now the best-selling electric car in the...
John Voelcker -
Ford Releases Focus Electric Teaser Ahead of CES Launch
Does the future of electric cars lie in the gadget world? Ford thinks so. So much so, it will launch an electric car at the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on Friday. How did it announce this? By posting some teaser photos on social networking site Facebook, of course. From the photos...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
Back in 2009 we were approached by a press representative for Racing Green Endurance, a team of 20-something post-graduate engineers from Imperial College London. We didn't hear from them again until June this year, when we met up with them in London. Their goal? To drive the 16,000 miles from Alaska to Argentina in an electric car. We had to be honest: we doubted their ability to complete the trip. But as a new eight-part documentary due to air on BBC World News from January 1 2011 shows, the team’s adventure had a very happy ending. Long-distance trips by car are hardly new...
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Our Popular Stories of 2010: LEAF, Recharging, Myth Busting
We’re just two days away from 2011, the year many industry experts are terming the year of the electric car, but 2010 hasn’t been a slow year for electric cars. We’ve seen new models launched, records broken and even the Pope show an interest in going electric. But over the course...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
Forget Angry Birds - 2011 Nissan LEAF Launches New Addictive App
Ten years ago the concept of social media was in its infancy. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s geeky founder, wasn’t even at university and the best chance you had of playing at being a farmer was to head down to your local city farm. So what happens when you combine the always-connected...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
Five Tips to Save Money on Your Home Electric Car Charge Point
Let’s face it: the end of the holiday season is financially tough. After spending what may seem like a small fortune on gifts for your family and friends the last thing you want to do is spend money on a costly electric charging point for your plug-in car. Of course, it is technically...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
BMW's Plug-In Hybrid Supercar May Be Named i8, Cost $200,000
BMW is pressing forward with its plans to build a production version of the striking plug-in hybrid concept car it called Vision Efficient Dynamics, unveiled at the Frankfurt Motor Show in September 2009. According to reports filtering out of Germany, the model that goes on sale in October 2013 may...
John Voelcker -
CA Electric Car Rebate Will Run Out Mid 2011, Advocate Warns
California has always been kind to drivers of alternative fuelled vehicles with special privileges in High-Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lanes, reduced parking and even additional purchase tax credits. However, the $5,000 Californian state rebate for those purchasing electric vehicles may soon run out...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
History has a way of repeating itself. Just as the many tearful original EV1 lease drivers bade farewell to the electric car in the mock funeral that started Chris Paine’s docufilm Who Killed The Electric Car, a select group of electric car lease drivers in the U.K. gave a suitably British farewell to their car of the past year: a 2010 Mitsubishi i-Miev. Among the regular car drivers and electric vehicle advocates who stumped up the £350 ($540) -a-month lease fee to take part in the trial two owners attracted more attention than most: Actor and EV advocate Robert Llewellyn and...
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Chevy's Got the Volt; Will Cadillac Be GM's Hybrid Leader?
Among car buyers, none of the four surviving General Motors brands are really associated with hybrid vehicles. Now that customer deliveries have started for the 2011 Chevrolet Volt extended-range electric car, GM's other brands will need some green cred too. What's the future of GM's Two-Mode...
John Voelcker -
U.S. Gasoline Usage Peaked In 2006, Will Plummet In Future
Even if you may not have heard of the Peak Oil theory, everyone knows that we'll continue to use more and more gasoline in years to come. Right? Well, errrrr, no. Maybe not. At least, that's the conclusion of both industry analysts and the oil companies themselves. The peak year for U.S. gasoline...
John Voelcker -
2011 Think City Becomes 2+2 in Europe, Still Overpriced
We can’t think of many times when an automaker suddenly doubles the number of seats in a car without making the car bigger. But that’s just what the Norwegian car maker Think has done with its diminutive city car. Originally designed as a 2 seat city car, the all-electric A segment car...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
Electronics Stores: The Future Electric Car Showroom?
Are electric cars appliances? They plug in, use electricity and certainly have more computers in them than most consumers have in their entire home. But should they be sold in conventional car dealerships or somewhere else? Japanese retail chain Yamada Denki has tried to answer both questions, by...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
1985 Electric Volkswagen Golf To Return To Factory of its Birth
When I met last month with Volkswagen to ride inside a prototype 2012 Golf Blue e-motion, I was eager to experience this all-electric version of its popular 2011 Golf hatchback. It will go into production as a 2013 model. But I also knew something the VW public relations corps didn't: the location...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
If you were to draw up a listof places least in need of encouraging towards the use of electric cars, California would probably be right up there. As well as being the home of companies such as Tesla Motors and Coda Automotive, many EV manufacturers usually pick at least one city in the State to launch their vehicles in. Indeed, the first two 2011 Nissan LEAFs delivered to customers have been in San Francisco and San Diego, respectively. Still, perhaps as one of the places most suited to EV ownership, California also needs the most assistance to keep everything running smoothly. This is one...
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Latest BYD Update: We're Still Coming Next Year, Really
Who needs soap operas when you’ve got the auto industry? One Chinese automaker is providing enough gossip, misdirection and sneaky dealings to keep script writers happy for years. Despite officially killing off its F3e electric car last week, Chinese battery firm turned electric vehicle...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
Fisker To Skip Detroit Auto Show, 2011 Karma Next In Geneva
For next month's Detroit Auto Show, we're making our list and checking it twice. But it turns out that one notable name in green cars is giving the country's largest auto show a miss. Fisker Automotive confirmed to GreenCarReports yesterday that it won't be present at the 2011 Detroit Auto Show...
John Voelcker -
As 2011 Chevrolet Volt Nears Dealers, Ghostly EV1 Gets Enthusiasts Excited
Just as the excitement is growing over the first dealer deliveries of the 2011 Chevrolet Volt and 2011 Nissan Leaf, eagle-eyed EV enthusiasts have spotted General Motor’s previous electric car on Google’s Street View. Is it serendipity or a more carefully timed disclosure to coincide...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
Nissan’s Kid-Friendly 2011 Leaf Electric Car Site: Pestering Propaganda?
If you’re a parent you’ll know how eager companies are to convince your kids how important their product is. Be it the latest toy, a new film release or even a holiday location, advertising companies know that pester power is one of the most effective ways to get a parent to make a...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
First 2011 Nissan Leaf To Be Delivered To Customer on Dec 11
Just days after Nissan confirmed that customer deliveries of the 2011 Leaf would commence in Japan on December 20, Nissan USA has confirmed that the very first customer vehicle will be delivered in a few days’ time, on December 11. The delivery will be to an unnamed Northern Californian...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield