2017 Chevy Bolt EV: here’s what can go wrong for electric-car pioneer

2017 Chevrolet Bolt EV, road test, California coastline, Sep 2016The 2017 Chevrolet Bolt EV will be on dealership floors within several weeks, cementing its position as the first affordable 200-mile electric car. It will beat planned 200-mile electric cars from BMW, Nissan, Tesla, Volkswagen, and other makers, and that's all to the good for plug-in car advocates. But the Bolt faces numerous hurdles to success...

U.S., China peer-reviewed reports lay out huge subsidies for fossil fuels

Oil well (photo by John Hill)Critics of the renewable-energy industry argue that it's unfair that energy sources such as wind and solar often benefit from government subsidies. But the volumes and amounts of subsidies received by the fossil-fuel industry are substantial, as new analysis shows. In December 2013, the U.S. and China announced plans to undertake a reciprocal peer...

Apple offers $2.5B for McLaren Technology Group

Less than a fortnight after reports that Apple had laid off a large number of employees from it's Titan Automotive project, the Financial Times reports Apple has been linked with a £1.5bn (AUD$2.5bn) deal to buy McLaren Technology Group, the Formula One team owner and supercar maker, citing three unnamed sources.

Apple has been attempting to develop its own car for a while now with the car team said to boast upwards of 800 members before the recent layoffs took effect, so this would appear to be a huge change of direction.

As far as electric vehicle IP is concerned, McLaren have good form. Not only have they built and raced their own A123 based KERS system in Formula One since 2009, and manufactured the McLaren P1 hybrid hyper car since 2013 but McLaren are also the official powertrain (motor, gearbox & power electronics) supplier for Formula E. On the embedded electronics side they also supply a control ECU to several motorsport championships including Formula One and NASCAR.

So far both companies have denied the story but there are obvious similarities between this potential tie-up between Apple & McLaren and the route Tesla Motors followed to get it's first car into production, working with another Formula One team with a sports car business, Lotus.

BMW will electrify its regular cars; what happens to ‘i’ models?

2017 BMW i3When the BMW i3 went on sale in the U.S. back in May 2014, it marked not only the debut of the German automaker's first mass-market electric car, but also a new sub-brand. BMW originally planned to group all its electric cars under the "i" sub-brand, which currently includes all-electric and range-extended REx versions of the i3, as well as the...