Tesla Model 3 net reservations clarified after 16 months: 455,000

Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk at Tesla Store opening in Westfield Mall, London, Oct 2013Sometimes, if you ask a question often enough for long enough, an answer will eventually be forthcoming. In the case of the net number of $1,000 reservations for the Tesla Model 3 electric car, it took 16 months for the company to cough up the latest data. It came, not surprisingly, from CEO Elon Musk, speaking on a conference call for financial...

RIP Mitsubishi i-MiEV: lowest-range, slowest electric car departs U.S. market

2016 Mitsubishi i-MiEV Quick Drive  -  Portland OR  -  July 2015   [photo: Doug Berger]The Mitsubishi i-MiEV electric car deserves a place in history. It was arguably the first mass-produced modern electric car put on sale, well before the Nissan Leaf arrived in December 2010. Pre-production i-MiEVs were operating in test fleets in Japan as early as 2007, and it was on sale in that country even as Tesla struggled to get its Roadster...

Mazda exec: engines can get cleaner, EVs will die without subsidies

2017 Mazda CX-5 Grand TouringSmall Japanese automaker Mazda is in a tough spot. It's been on its own for most of a decade now, after Ford sold its shares in the company, and now Mazda must fund numerous new models all by itself. With global sales of just 1.5 million vehicles, it's one-seventh the size of Toyota or Volkswagen. DON'T MISS: Mazda to launch homogeneous-charge...

Decline of oil: Bloomberg suggests what it could look like

Oil well (photo by John Hill)Predictions on the future of global energy vary greatly, but many analysts largely believe that peak demand for the oil industry is coming relatively soon. The world's largest oil companies, however, see it differently: they say their business will only continue to grow through the year 2040. Exxon and OPEC each believe more than 100 million...

New propaganda video on electric-car tax credits: time to debunk!

Nissan Leaf at West Coast Electric Highway charging station (Photo by Pine Mountain Sports)The U.S. federal income-tax credit for purchase of an electric car has seen its share of attacks over the years. Now a new video seeks to twist the facts to paint those subsidies in a bad light. While facts don't lie, it's easy to create a new narrative by taking carefully chosen facts out of context and presenting only a small part of a broader...

Startup Amber’s self-driving cars to hit Dutch streets in 2018?

Amber OneWhile Uber, Tesla, and Google are fighting over who will be first to deploy self-driving cars on a large scale, the Dutch underdogs at mobility startup Amber are planning a surprise move to overtake them all. If all goes according to plan, Amber’s self-driving cars will hit the streets of Dutch cities by mid-2018. Amber CEO Steven Nelemans...