Tesla announced Friday that it has added two independent directors to the company's board: Kathleen Wilson-Thompson and Larry Ellison. Yes, it’s that Larry Ellison—the Oracle founder, and one of the richest men in the world, who made a cameo alongside Musk in Iron Man 2. Ellison lives a jet-setting lifestyle—including a lot of... Iron Man 2 reunion: Musk friend Larry Ellison named to Tesla board
Tesla announced Friday that it has added two independent directors to the company's board: Kathleen Wilson-Thompson and Larry Ellison. Yes, it’s that Larry Ellison—the Oracle founder, and one of the richest men in the world, who made a cameo alongside Musk in Iron Man 2. Ellison lives a jet-setting lifestyle—including a lot of... 
Subaru’s STI performance skunkworks has helped enable some very fast, exciting versions of the Japanese automaker’s vehicles. And with its 2019 Crosstrek Hybrid, Subaru has shown it can engineer a full hybrid—a plug-in with a 17-miles range rating. However, the Forester STI Concept hybrid shown this week for the Tokyo Auto Salon... 
The Porsche Taycan—since way back in its early 2015 Mission E Concept days—has been discussed by Porsche in two distinct ways. On one hand it’s a Tesla rival, capable of meeting higher standards of performance than the Model S or Model 3. And on the other hand it’s at the lead of a big part of Porsche’s future, as it... 
Although Toyota isn’t in any big hurry to develop and push out electric vehicles to its dealerships—especially in the U.S., as recent executive comments have suggested—there might be a different trajectory planned for electrifying Lexus showrooms. In a trademark filing earlier this month, found by AutoGuide, Toyota Motor... 
Pickups in the U.S. are often sold on the bragging rights of numbers—not the Olympic-sprinter acceleration times and top-speed numbers that sell performance cars, but in how high they can tip the scales in strongman-contest pulling and hauling tasks. For that, the electric pickups on the way from Tesla, Rivian, and others, provided they can... 
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Connected home chargers can bring a higher level of convenience to the electric-car ownership experience, allowing more flexibility with remote access, charge scheduling, power-output adjustment, and even data displays. But according to the cybersecurity company Kaspersky Lab, they can also bring a higher level of vulnerability to your home... 
The Michigan-based electric-vehicle hopeful Rivian claims that its upcoming R1T pickup and R1S sport-utility vehicle, both revealed last month around the LA Auto Show, will be able to recharge up to 200 miles of range in just 30 minutes—provided they’re connected to a DC fast charger capable of delivering 160 kw. In the not-too-distant... 
There's quite a list of Chinese automakers that are relatively unknown outside China yet have grand plans to enter the U.S. market. The latest is China’s Qiantu Motor, which is developing an all-electric luxury sports car called the K50, The K50 will be sold through California’s Mullen, which claims to be “the affordable electric... 
Will the Chevrolet Volt get an immediate successor, or will any other model soon carry on with the potential of its brilliant Voltec plug-in hybrid system? Considering what General Motors announced yesterday, both of those possibilities are now looking less likely. GM said that it will cut 50 jobs at the Brownstown facility that assembled battery... 
Former Porsche AG CEO Wendelin Wiedeking, who waged a failed takeover of the Volkswagen Group ten years ago, is reportedly one of the backers of a new venture that, at face value, is making claims that sound very much like those made of what was then the favored tech for VW and Audi: TDI diesel. The idea, belonging to a company called MWI (Micro... 
A newly formed organization called Allow Independent Road-testing (AIR) wants to make impartial emissions ratings available to vehicle shoppers. Using a simple rating from A (best) to H (worst), they would tell you, at a quick glance, how much you’re endangering the health of your family with tailpipe pollutants. Although the idea may seem... 
Daimler, the parent company of Mercedes-Benz, last week revealed that it will be buying $23 billion in battery cells by 2030. What it didn’t fully reveal—its sources for those cells—says as much, if not more about a point of unease among German automakers. Battery packs—and specifically the cells inside—are the single... 
If you happen to be in California, rejoice; the 2019 Hyundai Kona Electric will arrive at dealerships in January, at just $37,495. That brings the effective total to $29,995 for the Kona Electric, provided you have enough taxable income for the federal electric vehicle tax credit. Now for the bad: Although other California-emissions states that... 
The Porsche Taycan, when it arrives toward the end of 2019, will likely have the quickest, highest-power DC fast charging of any production vehicle. But Porsche apparently is already setting its sights higher. Yesterday, as part of a research consortium that includes BMW, it presented a prototype for using CCS-standard charging hardware at up to... 
Side-camera systems, replacing side mirrors, have been one of the de rigueur symbols of the future on auto-show concept cars for, well, pretty much this entire century so far. While we’ve been eagerly anticipating the arrival of such systems for nearly as long—they’re not allowed by U.S. FMVSS standards, though now permitted in... 
Hyundai sees a lot of potential in hydrogen fuel-cell technology. And it may find success with it by looking well past cars and SUVs—to other uses that could, as the company puts it, “transcend the transportation sector.” With this week’s opening of a second plant making fuel-cell systems, in Chungju, South Korea, Hyundai's... 
Audi has recently released several hints that we’ll soon see a first concept tease of its smaller, more affordable electric vehicle, to be built on Volkswagen’s modular electric-vehicle architecture, termed MEB. And secondly, the Volkswagen brand is also soon expected to give a first look of how far upscale it can go with MEB. To the... 
Ford is in the process of applying hybrid technology to a vehicle type that seems like a natural fit for it: police cars. It’s about time. Ford claims to have the industry’s first pursuit-rated hybrid police car with the Police Responder Hybrid Sedan—the police-duty version of the 2019 Ford Fusion Hybrid sedan that will soon be... 
Pricing for hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles, like the upcoming 2019 Hyundai Nexo, hasn’t meant all that much up until now. That’s because both of the other fuel-cell vehicles currently offered—and most of them offered to date—have been leased, under highly subsidized lease programs. But it’s actually not in this case... 
Road-tripping along in the 2019 Audi e-tron, your passenger might not even know (or care) that you’re in an all-electric utility vehicle—rather than just an extraordinarily quiet gasoline one. And as the driver, you might even forget. It gets right to Audi’s point behind the e-tron, which is to make a vehicle that’s an Audi...