China is the biggest new-car market in the world, and has been since 2010. The world's largest country also has some of the smoggiest cities on the planet, and that's a source of increasing public agitation. So at national, state, and local levels, a variety of Chinese government entities are using carrots and sticks to encourage the sale of more... How likely is it China will outpace the U.S. in electric-car adoption? Poll results
China is the biggest new-car market in the world, and has been since 2010. The world's largest country also has some of the smoggiest cities on the planet, and that's a source of increasing public agitation. So at national, state, and local levels, a variety of Chinese government entities are using carrots and sticks to encourage the sale of more...
China is hugely important to General Motors, as it is to virtually any global automaker. It's the largest market in the country and, recently, it has put in place an increasing set of requirements that more vehicles sold there be fully or partially electric. It also happens to be by far the largest market for Buicks in the world, to the...
While corporate average fuel-economy standards through 2021 remain in place in the U.S., automakers are preparing their case to argue for delays in further tightening. Meanwhile, China is turning the policy screws on automakers operating in the country, telling them they must sell more electric cars. In the U.S., only the state of California now...
Large auto companies are likely aircraft carriers: it takes a long time for them to change direction, and far longer yet to get them aligned on a new course. To various degrees, the world's carmakers have started to produce and sell vehicles that plug-in, whether for some or all of their travels. Except Toyota. The Japanese company that's not only...
After being teased last week, the Chevrolet FNR-X Concept crossover made its debut yesterday at the Shanghai auto show. The new shape, which sports a plug-in hybrid powertrain, is intended to showcase the design talents of Chevy's Pan Asia Technical Automotive Center in Shanghai It's the second concept to be named FNR—for "Find New Roads,"...
Ford has aggressive electrification plans for China. In a recent announcement, the U.S. automaker said that 70 percent of the vehicles it sells in the country by 2025 will be hybrids—either plug-in or conventional—or fully electric. Ford builds vehicles in China through a joint venture with Chongqing Changan Automobile Company, and the...
It's a single teaser shot, obviously of a Chevy front end, with unmistakable design nods to the Camaro muscle car. But the image of the Chevrolet FNR-X concept, to be unveiled at the Shanghai auto show less than two weeks hence, may be the first clue to some new GM plug-in hybrid offerings in the future. Along with a plug-in hybrid version of the...
Government officials in Hong Kong have eliminated a popular tax exemption that made electric vehicles much cheaper to buy than comparable gasoline-powered models. Now Tesla worries it could take the brunt of the blowback. The loophole helped make Hong Kong one of the biggest overseas markets for the Silicon Valley carmaker's luxury electric cars...
In the 20 years since General Motors and its Chinese partner SAIC reintroduced the Buick brand to China, more than 8 million Buicks have been sold in what is now the world's largest car market. That's because the last Chinese emperor drove a Buick in the 1930s, and the brand retained a huge cachet through the upheavals that followed. The...
As it tries to put the ongoing diesel-emissions scandal behind it, VW Group is focusing its future on electric cars. The Volkswagen brand within the sprawling German company has developed an electric-car specific platform called MEB, and has shown multiple concepts based on it. Those include the ID hatchback, and the ID Buzz and Budd-e, both...
Several Chinese or Chinese-backed automotive startups are currently trying to replicate the success of Tesla by designing and selling their own luxury electric cars. But Hybrid Kinetic likely predates most of them. Started by the founder of Chinese automaker Brilliance, the company made headlines in 2010, when it announced plans to build hybrid...
Chinese startup NextEV is the latest company attempting to replicate the success of Tesla with a long-range electric car. NextEV launched its Nio brand last year in dramatic fashion with the EP9—a 1,360-horsepower electric supercar. At the time, the company noted it was developing a model that would be at least a bit more relevant to the...
Eight weeks ago, China seemed to be preparing to loosen its famously strict car-manufacturing rules for foreign makers. The government leaders who direct economic policy had seemingly concluded that Chinese makers could not succeed in selling cars in Europe and North America. So the country proposed to relax joint-venture rules for so-called New...
Time for a quick quiz: which carmaker sold more plug-in electric vehicles last year—both battery electrics and plug-in hybrids—than any other? If you're a reader in North America or Europe who managed to miss our headline, odds are you may answer "Tesla" or "Nissan," based on media coverage of those two companies' achievements. You...
During a press conference at the 2016 Consumer Electronics Show, Faraday Future announced plans to build its first electric car within two years. Later in 2016, it selected a site for what it claimed would be a $1 billion electric-car factory to be built in North Las Vegas, Nevada. But work at the site stopped late last year, and a new report...
Under the administration of President Barack Obama, the U.S. joined the rest of the world and took a leading role in global efforts to avert irreversible climate change. But that seems unlikely to continue under the Trump administration, which has nominated climate-science deniers to numerous key positions. Just yesterday, the head of Trump's EPA...
Since it bought the assets of bankrupt automaker Saab in 2012, Chinese-backed consortium National Electric Vehicle Sweden (NEVS) has been working toward mass production of electric cars. But despite ambitious plans for a multi-model lineup of electric cars, the company has made relatively little apparent progress toward that goal. While it is...
During negotiations for the Paris Climate Treaty signed last fall, a major concern among critics was whether the carbon emissions of China's sprawling and inefficient energy sector could be reined in. With China, the U.S., and dozens of other countries signing the agreement, the world's most populous country committed itself to decarbonizing its...
The harsh reality of high costs and the inexorable heft of the auto industry have claimed another electric-car startup. GreenTech Automotive opened a plant in Mississippi in 2014, first saying it would manufacture a small, two-seat electric vehicle called the MyCar there. It later struck a deal with Chinese automaker JAC Motors to develop an...