Tesla trucks: semi to be shown in Sept, pickup in 18-24 months

2012 Tesla Model S beta vehicle, Fremont, CA, October 2011Relative few companies regularly make major announcements via their CEO's Twitter account, but electric-car maker Tesla is different. From software updates to dates for new product lines, tweets from Tesla's CEO Elon Musk routinely make news. And so it was this week, when Musk announced the months in which the company plans to reveal designs for...

Volkswagen teases electric crossover for Shanghai auto show

Teaser for Volkswagen ID SUV Concept debuting at 2017 Shanghai auto showVolkswagen appears to be quite clearly committed to an ambitious program of electric cars following its diesel emission scandal. But aside from two adapted models launched a few years ago—the VW e-Golf and e-Up hatchbacks—and a few low-range plug-in hybrids, it doesn't yet have much to put in showrooms. Instead, it's launching a series...

Tesla Model 3 caught on video during daylight testing

Tesla Model 3 test car, Los Altos, CA, Apr 8, 2017  [clip from YouTube video by OMG_Tesla}The emergence of spy photos, and more recently video, has always been one of the standard indicators of a car nearing production. With production still said to start this July, pre-production versions of the Tesla Model 3 electric car should have been popping up in spy photos by now. Two weeks ago, Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted brief footage of what...

Did Mercedes turn its back on hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles?

Mercedes-Benz GLC F-Cell prototypeLarge global automakers customarily pursue research into multiple types of technologies and future powertrains at the same time. Sometimes they pan out, sometimes they don't. German automakers have only really come around to devoting their efforts to plug-in electric cars in the last five or six years. DON'T MISS: Mercedes-Benz electric cars to...

Mercedes-Benz electric cars to arrive sooner as urgency increases

Mercedes-Benz EQ electric car concept  [photo: Axel Harries]Mercedes-Benz parent company Daimler is speeding up its shift towards electrification. The auto-maker remains on track to bolster its portfolio with 10 electric vehicles, but they’ll arrive three full years sooner than expected. The battery-powered cars are now scheduled to debut by 2022 instead of by 2025, company officials have confirmed...

2018 Nissan Leaf: more spy shots of electric car’s second generation

Section of 2018 Nissan Leaf spy shot  [image via S. Baldauf/SB-Medien, as used on Motor Authority]The more camouflaged spy shots that emerge of a car being tested on public roads, the closer it likely is to being introduced. After seven years of the first-generation Nissan Leaf electric car, a redesign is due—some might say overdue. Now we have a second set of spy shots of the 2018 Leaf being tested, indicating a likely unveiling this...

Aston Martin Rapide luxury sedan to go all-electric; cheerio, V-12!

Aston Martin RapidE conceptMany luxury automakers are planning new electric cars, both to meet future emissions standards and as a response to the success of Tesla. So far, though, no established automaker has discussed directly replacing an internal-combustion model with an all-electric one. But that may be exactly what Aston Martin is planning to do with its sleek...

Lexus UX small crossover may get hybrid version that Toyota C-HR won’t

Lexus UX concept, 2016 Paris auto showFor better or worse, many Toyota models ultimately donate their underpinnings to the Japanese automaker's Lexus luxury brand. That may not give certain Lexus models the pedigree some purists desire, but it's a fact of life in the modern auto industry—and an effective way for Toyota to amortize development costs into higher-profit luxury...

After Audi e-tron, next electric car to be compact BMW i3 competitor

2016 Audi A3 e-Tron Sportback, San Francisco Bay Area, Oct 2015Next year, the Audi e-tron luxury electric crossover is expected to arrive at U.S. dealers, bringing Audi into direct competition with the Tesla Model X roughly three years after the world's first all-electric utility vehicle went into production. But with a pledge to sell 25 percent of its cars with plug-in electric capabilities by 2025, VW...

Volvo plans a long-range electric car for 2019, details to come

2018 Volvo XC60The electric car that Volvo has long planned for 2019 could join a growing group of long-range, mass-market models like the Chevrolet Bolt EV, the upcoming Tesla Model 3, and the second-generation Nissan Leaf. The Swedish automaker has concentrated on plug-in hybrids for the most part thus far, but plans to launch a production electric car within...

Hyundai FE Fuel Cell Concept previews hydrogen-powered SUV coming in 2018

Hyundai FE Fuel Cell concept, 2017 Geneva auto showThe Hyundai Tucson Fuel Cell was actually the first hydrogen fuel-cell vehicle offered to U.S. drivers in recent years. The 2016 Toyota Mirai that followed it has now outsold Hyundai's hydrogen-powered SUV, but it's been known for a couple of years that the Korean maker will replace that model. At this week's Geneva auto show, the company unveiled...

Volvo’s next plug-in hybrids: 3-cylinder engine, smaller cars

Volvo 40.1 conceptVolvo currently offers plug-in hybrid powertrains in its top models—the XC90 SUV, S90 sedan, and V90. As the Swedish automaker redesigns its lower-level models, it will add plug-in hybrid options to them as well. But whereas the current T8 "Twin Engine" powertrain uses a 4-cylinder engine and all-wheel drive, other models will use a...

Six new electric cars coming for 2018 and 2019

Porsche Mission E concept electric carThe next couple of years promise to be quite interesting for electric cars. A minimum of six new models are expected in that time period, all promising ranges of 200 miles or more—which until a few months ago had been the exclusive province of Tesla Motors. The list includes two affordable 200-mile electric cars: the second-generation Nissan...