Electric-car road trip: lessons learned in Chevy Bolt EV over 1,300 miles

2017 Chevrolet Bolt EV electric car, June 2017 road trip from VA to KY and back  [Jay Lucas]Launched in December, the 2017 Chevrolet Bolt EV is the first mass-priced electric car to go on sale with a rated range of more than 200 miles: 238 miles combined, according to the EPA. Most owners use their Bolt EVs for daily commuting and trips, just like any other car. But road trips are an American tradition. We've done several stories about...

Lucid Air electric luxury sedan: a Tesla Model S owner’s take

Lucid Air electric luxury sedan prototype  [photo: David Noland]It’s a cool spring morning in Menlo Park, California, in the heart of Silicon Valley. In a two-story concrete-and-glass building on Constitution Avenue, just down the block from Facebook’s vast fortress, a group of automotive engineers and designers is working to create the next-generation luxury high-performance all-electric sedan. A...

VW says it needs ’40 gigafactories’ for electric-car batteries by 2025

Tesla Gigafactory battery plant in NevadaVW Group remains one of the world's three largest carmakers, along with Toyota and General Motors, but the German automaker foresees challenges ahead. Specifically, VVolkswagen believes the industry will face a shortage of lithium-ion batteries if new investment is not made soon for additional cell fabrication factories, often referred to using...

If 2018 Nissan Leaf has 200-mile range, what will it cost? Poll results

Teaser for 2018 Nissan Leaf debuting in 2017At the moment, the Tesla Model 3 is getting lots of media attention and electric-car buzz now that the company says its first production car has rolled out of the factory—even if features, specs, and pricing isn't yet known. Meanwhile, the 238-mile Chevrolet Bolt EV is at roughly 9,000 cars sold in North America over the past six months...

Life with Tesla Model S: the challenges of selling her at last

2013 Tesla Model S, in July 2017   [photo: David Noland]It was time to let her go. She is my 2013 Tesla Model S, serial number 003662, in dark green, now with 76,000 memorable miles. The best car I’ve ever owned, by far. She had taken me to 33 states and roughly 100 Superchargers, through deserts, mountains, and tropics, with total reliability, and always with style and flair. DON'T MISS: Life...

Bolt EV electric car sales after 6 months: how do they compare?

2017 Chevrolet Bolt EV, road test, California coastline, Sep 2016Last month, 1,642 Chevrolet Bolt EV 238-mile battery-electric hatchbacks found buyers, enough to take the Bolt's six-month aggregate to 7,592 deliveries all told. It was the latest and highest in a string of rising monthly delivery totals for the 238-mile battery electric hatchback, and it marked half a year (plus a couple of weeks) that the Bolt...

2017 Tesla Model 3 in pilot production: Musk tweets photos of first car

2017 Tesla Model 3, in photo tweeted by Elon Musk on July 9, 2017It now appears that the 2017 Tesla Model 3 has entered pilot production, following a pair of photos tweeted by Tesla CEO Elon Musk. The caption on the first of the two photos, this one black-and-white, says simply, "First production Model 3." The second photo, tweeted 40 minutes later, is in full color but bears no caption. DON'T MISS: Tesla Model...

Driving a Chevy Bolt EV electric car across Canada, all the way

2017 Chevrolet Bolt EV electric car on Coquilhalla Highway, BC, Canada, May 2017 [Boyd/Hetherington]To celebrate Canada's 150th birthday, Barb Hetherington and Buddy Boyd embarked on their maiden voyage to prove electric car travel is feasible in a very large country with some very sparsely populated areas. With a 2017 Chevrolet Bolt EV as their chariot, and their dog Piper for company, the couple left Victoria, British Columbia. They don't plan...

Plug-in electric car sales in Canada, June 2017: Prime time

2017 Toyota Prius Prime, Catskill Mountains, NY, Nov 2016Toyota made a strong return to the Canadian plug-in electric vehicle market in June, selling 144 Prius Prime plug-in hybrids. The tally is all the more remarkable as the vehicle has so far launched only in Quebec. Why? That province is the home of Canada’s sole zero-emission vehicle mandate, patterned on California’s. Depending on the...

CA bill would make up for federal electric-car incentives as they expire

California state capitol, SacramentoThe state of California has a long track record of supporting electric cars and doing everything possible to ensure plug-in vehicles can be obtained by the largest number of drivers. Aside from the Federal income-tax credits available nationally, the state of California has its own purchase rebates. Local utilities have also begun to incentivize...

Chevy Bolt EV electric car does many things: autocrossing is one

2017 Chevrolet Bolt EV autocrossing, Photo: Brian RoThe idea of performance and electric cars normally don't go hand in hand, unless the topic is a Tesla Model S P90 D. Outside of that one high-performance electric vehicle, casual electric cars are hardly the racer's choice, but one owner felt otherwise. Brian Ro, the owner of a 2017 Chevrolet Bolt EV, recently decided his electric car was in need...

Tesla’s Q2 2017 deliveries fall slightly due to 100-kwh battery shortage

2017 Tesla Model STesla delivered slightly more than 22,000 electric cars during the second quarter of the year, split between roughly 12,000 Model S hatchback sedans and about 10,000 Model X crossover utility vehicles. That total is more than 50 percent higher than the comparable April-June number for 2016, but down from the 25,000 cars it delivered in the first...

Better electric motors can boost electric-car efficiency

Electric motor, shown in 'How Does an Electric Car Work?' video by PatreonOne of the greatest challenges faced by modern electric cars is the vehicle's range, which is largely proportional to the energy capacity of the battery. Range anxiety often keeps buyers out of electric cars and in their fossil-fuel powered counterparts. Most of the attention given to solving the range dilemma has focused on the battery, but one...

Tesla Model 3 production to start Friday, deliveries July 28

Tesla Model 3 Driving on a Public RoadAs he had promised he would late one evening last week, Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk has tweeted out some updates on the upcoming Model 3. He expects first production Model 3 electric car, with serial number 001 ("SN1"), to be completed this Friday, July 7. The first 30 customers to buy Model 3s should receive them, he followed up, at a "handover...