Next 2018 Nissan Leaf teaser sketch; electric car debuts Sep 5

Teaser for 2018 Nissan Leaf debuting on September 6, 2017The global debut of the 2018 Nissan Leaf electric car is just a month away, and now another teaser image has been released. This one's a design sketch showing a drawing of the car's side profile, suitably shaded to obscure some of the details. You can compare it to a shot of the actual vehicle, captured last week in Norway while a 2018 Leaf was...

Toyota, Mazda plan joint plant in U.S., electric-car cooperation: report

2017 Mazda CX-5 First DriveToyota is one of the largest global automakers, while Mazda is one of the smallest. A new report suggests that the two Japanese makers are close to finalizing a capital-investment deal under which Toyota would take 5 percent of Mazda, and the smaller maker would invest in Toyota as well, and the two would set up a joint U.S. assembly plant...

Autocrossing a Fiat 500e electric car for first, maybe last, time

Andrea Kerr driving Fiat 500e electric car in autocross, Great Park, Irvine, Califronia, July 2017When we published an article on one owner's experience using his Chevrolet Bolt EV electric car to compete in a local autocross, it contained a comment that riled up our reader Doug Kerr. That comment—"Outside of one high-performance electric vehicle, casual electric cars are hardly the racer’s choice"—prompted Kerr to take the...

Tesla Model 3 net reservations clarified after 16 months: 455,000

Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk at Tesla Store opening in Westfield Mall, London, Oct 2013Sometimes, if you ask a question often enough for long enough, an answer will eventually be forthcoming. In the case of the net number of $1,000 reservations for the Tesla Model 3 electric car, it took 16 months for the company to cough up the latest data. It came, not surprisingly, from CEO Elon Musk, speaking on a conference call for financial...

RIP Mitsubishi i-MiEV: lowest-range, slowest electric car departs U.S. market

2016 Mitsubishi i-MiEV Quick Drive  -  Portland OR  -  July 2015   [photo: Doug Berger]The Mitsubishi i-MiEV electric car deserves a place in history. It was arguably the first mass-produced modern electric car put on sale, well before the Nissan Leaf arrived in December 2010. Pre-production i-MiEVs were operating in test fleets in Japan as early as 2007, and it was on sale in that country even as Tesla struggled to get its Roadster...

Mazda exec: engines can get cleaner, EVs will die without subsidies

2017 Mazda CX-5 Grand TouringSmall Japanese automaker Mazda is in a tough spot. It's been on its own for most of a decade now, after Ford sold its shares in the company, and now Mazda must fund numerous new models all by itself. With global sales of just 1.5 million vehicles, it's one-seventh the size of Toyota or Volkswagen. DON'T MISS: Mazda to launch homogeneous-charge...