GM confirms Chevy Volt to be sold as Buick Velite 5 in China

Buick Velite 5 to be sold in China (Chevrolet Volt in North America)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...

China to replace 70,000 gasoline cabs with electric cars

BYD e6 electric taxi in service in Shenzhen, ChinaChina's latest effort to promote electric cars focuses on taxis in its capital city of Beijing. The country that is now the world's largest new-car market already offers generous purchase incentives for electric cars bought by individuals. Now the city also plans to replace its entire fleet of gasoline taxis with electric cars. DON'T MISS...

Electric-car winds in China shift again: goals to be cut after sales fall?

BYD Yuan. Photo by Indian Autos Blog.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...

China’s BYD built more plug-in cars than any other maker last year

2016 BYD Tang plug-in hybrid SUV, made in ChinaTime 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...

Bowing to inevitable, Faraday Future scales back plant plans

Faraday Future FF 91During 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...

China happy to become world’s climate-change leader if U.S. lags

ChinaUnder 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...

NEVS gets production nod for electric-car plant in China

Saab 9-3 EV electric prototype shown by NEVS, 2014Since 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...