Nio is providing a fully charged battery in 3 minutes for free, in China

Nio ES8 high-performance electric SUVThe Chinese electric vehicle maker Nio, in a bid to win over new customers, is waiving the fees for something that could be a real selling point in the increasingly tight Chinese EV market: battery swapping. The company had installed 80 battery swap stations in China in 2018 and now has well over 100 of them. It had planned to install 1,100 of...

Reality check: CHAdeMO fast-charging stations still outnumber CCS ones

Combined Charging Standard (CCS) electric car chargerFive years ago, a frequent matter of debate here at Green Car Reports was whether CCS or ChAdeMO would become the electric-car DC fast-charging standard of choice in the U.S. Soon after that it became quite clear that CCS, with the weight of the European and U.S. auto industry behind it—and then the Korean industry joining later—was...

An electric car can’t fully replace a gas-powered car in my world

2018 Tesla Model 3Three incredibly long days after my nearly 3-year-old son Seth doubled over and screamed his “tummy hurt” we were finally back on the freeway headed home. My mind wandered because there’s not much else on Interstate 380 in Iowa in December. Three days earlier, my wife, kids, and I traveled from Minnesota to Reinbeck...

GM plans its own nationwide charging network with Bechtel

2019 Chevrolet Bolt EV at public charging stationGeneral Motors, the nation's biggest automaker, is teaming up with construction giant Bechtel to build thousands of chargers around the U.S. with the aim of promoting adoption of electric cars. The companies will form a joint venture to build the chargers in which Bechtel will provide its expertise in construction and permitting and GM will...

What matters most when fast-charging on a road trip? Take our Twitter poll

2019 Audi E-tron  -  first drive report  -  Calirornia, May 2019In the rollout of the 2019 E-tron quattro SUV, Audi is making the claim that rated range might not be the most important thing on a road trip. The E-tron is rated at just 204 miles of estimated range, so the German automaker has some steep ground to gain versus Tesla. But it's made a case that consistency of real-world range and fast charging...

EVgo launches first curbside fast chargers

EVgo curbside DC fast chargers at Southside Park, Sacramento, California [CREDIT: EVgo]With wires running along almost every street in America where cars drive, putting EV chargers along the curb would seem a natural enough place to put them. While several other countries such as Britain have begun efforts to put charging stations on light poles, in America, chargers have been sited almost exclusively in parking lots and garages...

Charging network EVgo goes tagless, tests battery buffers at stations

EVgo 350-kw DC fast-charge station, Baker, Calif. EVgo announced earlier this week that it will be the first charging network—other than the Tesla Supercharger network, of course—to enable a feature for its DC fast chargers that doesn't rely on RFID tags or even credit cards to be activated. The charging network will roll out the ISO Plug&Charge standard on its CCS chargers used...