ChargePoint invests in commercial charging for buses, delivery vans, taxis

2014 BMW i3 REx fast-charging at Chargepoint site, June 2016  [photo: Tom Moloughney]After opposing the settlement over diesel emissions cheating that led VW to spend $2 billion building out a nationwide network of fast chargers, and suing one of Electrify America's suppliers for patent infringement, ChargePoint, the last of the original charging-network providers for electric cars, is moving to focus on commercial charging...

Not exactly top fuel: electric cars come to top-level drag racing

Don Garlits sets electric quarter-mile drag racing recordElectric cars have started to dominate racing series from the Pikes Peak hill climb to formula cars to Saturday night grudge matches between Tesla and Dodge Challenger owners at rented local drag-strips. At professional levels, though, racing organizations have been slow to change, and stock cars and drag racing organizations have been the among...

EPA Administrator Pruitt recruited top oil industry executives, emails show

EPA administrator Scott Pruitt  [photo from 2014]EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt left little to chance in trying to make the agency more friendly to the oil industry after he took office last year, according to new emails revealed in a report by Buzzfeed News. The Sierra Club obtained the emails through a Freedom of Information Act request and shared them with Buzzfeed, according to the report...

Tesla battery reignites twice after fatal Florida crash: NTSB report

Tesla Model S crashed in Ft. Lauderdale, at storage yardFollowing a crash in early May that killed two teenagers, the battery in the Tesla Model S the teens were driving reignited twice after firefighters had initially extinguished it, according to the preliminary report released Tuesday by the NTSB. The report notes that the car was traveling 116 mph seconds before it crashed into a wall, which tore...

Spy photographers capture Honda Pilot Plug-in Hybrid

2017 Honda PilotHonda has been something of a laggard in the race for electric cars. It looks like that's about to change, if recent spy photos are anything to go by. A shot by spy photographer Brian Williams in Automotive News (subscription required), shows an updated Pilot with both a reconfigured fuel filler door, and a large, square opening on the front left...

JLR to pump money into electric cars instead of diesel

2019 Jaguar I-Pace SJaguar-Land Rover said in a presentation to investors Monday that weak demand for diesel-fueled cars has prompted it to increase its investment in electric cars by 25 percent—to $18 billion—by 2025. Where the company previously said it would offer an electrified version of each new model it introduced after 2020, it now says that it...

Audi e-tron electric SUV debut delayed in latest diesel backlash

2019 Audi e-tron prototypeIn the wake of its massive diesel emissions scandal, VW and its luxury brand Audi apologized by promising to deliver electric cars. Now that effort has been delayed by the arrest of Audi's CEO, Rupert Stadler, who was scheduled to introduce the brand's first electric car, the 2019 Audi e-tron SUV, at an event in Brussels on August 30. Now Audi has...

Volvo XC40 crossover SUV to be company’s first all-electric car

2019 Volvo XC40The Volvo XC40 is the automaker's first all-electric car hiding in plain sight, according to the automaker. Volvo's chief designer and Polestar head, Thomas Ingenlath, confirmed to British magazine AutoCar last week that the new XC40 will be the first Volvo available with an all-electric powertrain. It will be followed by another electric car...

Battery-electric vehicle versus plug-in hybrid: why having both makes sense

2017 Toyota Prius Prime and 2015 Nissan Leaf belonging to reader John. C. BriggsNot long ago, green car fans had only one choice: a hybrid vehicle like the Prius that gets all its energy from gasoline. Now there is a choice of several pure battery-electric vehicles that get all their energy from grid electricity, several plug-in hybrid electric vehicles that get their energy from a mix of grid electricity and gasoline, and...

Tesla Model 3 gets new features via OTA update

2018 Tesla Model 3Buyers of the Tesla Model 3 never thought they were getting all the luxury features of the Model S or Model X. Now, with the latest over the air update, Model 3 owners will get a few more that will bring them closer to the levels of luxury found in Tesla's more expensive cars. As part of the Tesla's Autopilot 2 update, which CEO Elon Musk...

Volvo’s electrification push expanding to every corner of the market

2019 Volvo S60When it launches its 2019 Volvo S60 T8 Polestar Engineered next year, the Swedish automaker will nearly complete a startling turn toward electrification in less than a decade that began with a small-volume wagon in 2011 and will soon incorporate a full battery electric vehicle and every model in showrooms. Later in 2019, for buyers in the U.S...

Tesla sues saboteur who claims he is a whistleblower

Tesla Gigafactory in Sparks, Nevada [CREDIT - YouTube user California Phantom]On Thursday, Tesla sued former employee Martin Tripp for stealing trade secrets and transferring several gigabytes of data to third parties, including pictures of the company's battery assembly line at the Gigafactory in Nevada, where he worked. The details of the suit point to a testy, high-pressure work environment, where workers put in long...