The town of Namie, in eastern Japan, was devastated by the earthquake and tsunami of 2011, and has struggled to recover from the devastation of that day. Almost seven years later, the first new plant in town is set to open, one contributing to clean energy and zero-emission vehicles to boot. Carmaker Nissan and an arm of the giant trading company... Nissan, Sumitomo open electric-car battery recycling plant in Japan
The town of Namie, in eastern Japan, was devastated by the earthquake and tsunami of 2011, and has struggled to recover from the devastation of that day. Almost seven years later, the first new plant in town is set to open, one contributing to clean energy and zero-emission vehicles to boot. Carmaker Nissan and an arm of the giant trading company... 
“Electric cars are disasters. They are evil." Not something you'd hear every day, certainly not from a powerful executive in the auto industry. Yet those are the words of Ha Bu-young, head of the Hyundai motor union, both the largest and the most powerful union in South Korea. DON'T MISS: UAW wakes up to job threat posed by electric cars, as... 
Electric vehicles are not only zero-emission and quieter and more pleasant to drive, they also clearly lower emissions of the carbon dioxide linked to climate change under most circumstances. For fleet operators who recharge large fleets of electric vehicles overnight, however, the load on electric grids and consequent demand charges pose a... 
Think back, if you can, to early 2008. In the real world, that's just 10 years ago, but in electric-car time, it's several millennia. The Tesla Roadster had been announced, but hadn't yet struggled into production. The Nissan Leaf and Chevy Volt were still deep in development, and the plan for a Tesla Model S hadn't been announced beyond a vague... 
BMW sold more than 100,000 cars with plugs last year, adding together its battery-electric and plug-in hybrid models. That's roughly on a par with Tesla, and ahead of both General Motors and Nissan, two other pioneers in modern electric cars. The company has put far more plug-in cars on the road to date than its German counterparts, both Daimler... 
Drivers in the parts of North America that get winter weather are deeply familiar with snow-clogged wheel wells, iced-in wipers, and weak batteries, to list just a few. Our counterparts in Norway have exactly the same challenges in winter—but they’re far further along in adopting plug-in electric cars, to slash the carbon footprint of the…
![BMW i Vision Dynamics concept, 2017 Frankfurt Motor Show [photo: Tom Moloughney]](https://images.hgmsites.net/tmb/bmw_100622408_t.gif)
Very few automakers these days build concept cars just for fun, and only occasionally are they pure styling concepts intended to showcase future design language. So when the BMW i Vision Dynamics Concept emerged onto the auto-show circuit last fall, it seemed obvious it previewed a future production model. Especially since, as many observers... 
Could a specific vehicle give electric cars the breakthrough they need to reach the mass market? So far, neither the world's highest-selling battery-electric model—the Nissan Leaf—nor the Tesla Model S, starting at $75,000, has sold in mainstream U.S. volumes. You might ballpark that figure at, say, 100,000 units a year, since the most... 
As U.S. car buyers increasingly opt for crossover utility vehicles of all sizes over passenger sedans and hatchbacks, that shift has come to pose a problem for electric cars. The bulk of battery-electric models on offer today are compact five-door hatchbacks without available all-wheel drive. Think BMW i3, Ford Focus Electric, Hyundai Ioniq, Kia... 
Auto journalists often relish interviews and roundtable sessions with German executives and engineers. They usually haven't been beaten into submission and forced to stick to scripted talking points, as have too many of their U.S. counterparts. Most German auto executives also speak excellent English, so fewer translators are involved, removing a...