You may not have heard it happen, but the global automotive industry changed forever on Thursday. China released its plan to require substantial sales of plug-in electric cars by all makers who want to sell in the world's largest car market, and they start in little more than a year. The levels far exceed those required by California, whose... China electric-car rules to start in 2019; aggressive totals are world’s highest
You may not have heard it happen, but the global automotive industry changed forever on Thursday. China released its plan to require substantial sales of plug-in electric cars by all makers who want to sell in the world's largest car market, and they start in little more than a year. The levels far exceed those required by California, whose...
Every one of the modern electric cars on the market for almost seven years requires plugging in a cord to recharge the battery using grid electricity. Inserting the cord into the socket takes just a few seconds, and most cars today are charged overnight. But soon there will be another option: wireless charging, in which the car is positioned over...
Dyson, the British appliance company best known for its bagless vacuum cleaners, has cleared up speculation that has persisted for nearly 10 years. Founder and chief engineer James Dyson officially confirmed his company is developing an electric car and is planning for a 2020 launch. Not only has Dyson had 400 employees working on an electric car...
Very little is known for sure about the long-range electric car Toyota will launch around 2020. Over the last two years, the company—by far the industry's strongest proponent of hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles—has concluded it must field a battery-electric vehicle to stay competitive. Toyota is likely unhappy about it, but regulations in...
Trying to beat luxury competitors who've been at the plug-in hybrid SUV game for a couple of years, the 2018 Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV will be aggressively priced, according to an announcement on Wednesday. Before any federal or state incentives, the base Outlander PHEV starts at just $35,535, with the top-of-the-line GT S-AWC model coming in at...
In late July, we published an article describing one electric-car driver's experience in adding solar panels to his home to help with charging his family's five electric cars. That reader, who'd like to be known just as Shiva, has now owned a 2016 Tesla Model S for a year. He recently outlined for us how that experience has gone, and how it's...
With China mulling an eventual ban on sales of cars with gasoline or diesel engines, the world's largest car market made it clear earlier this month that it intends to force a conversion to zero-emission vehicles. Now California, which has led the U.S. in environmental awareness and emission reduction for decades, is doing the same. Governor Jerry...
Next year is shaping up to be a banner year for electric cars globally. The new, longer-range second-generation Nissan Leaf will be in production at three factories around the world, the Tesla Model 3 should hit volume production, and the Chevy Bolt EV will be fully available in North America, Europe, and South Korea. And then there's China, where...
The market for electric cars continues to grow, but vehicles powered by fossil fuels remain dominant across the globe. Many analysts believe electric cars will reach price parity with vehicles powered by internal-combustion engines sometime within the next decade. Indian maker Mahindra, however, says its own small, limited-range electric cars are...
In the rarified but still high-volume world of global luxury auto brands, Jaguar is still a tiny player. The British brand sold fewer than 150,000 cars globally last year, one-third of the number of Land Rover and Range Rover SUVs from its alsister brands within Jaguar Land Rover. Audi sold 1.9 million, BMW sold 2 million, Mercedes-Benz sold 2.1...
The long, strange, sad saga of the now-defunct Volkswagen Phaeton will likely go down as an asterisk in VW's long history. The pet project of now-departed VW Group chairman Ferdinand Piech, a member of the Porsche family that controls the carmaker, it was a $70,000-and-up luxury sedan from the German makers of the People's Car. It shared...
It has taken several years for European luxury makers to sort out what to do about the unexpected arrival of Tesla and its electric cars into a market they've dominated for decades. Sure, Lexus and a host of lesser Asian makes have competitive products somewhere between premium and luxury, but they're now a known quantity. The Tesla Model S...
This year's National Drive Electric Week was expected to be the biggest to date after organizers announced 175 events had been planned as of July. The seventh annual event to promote electric cars grew even larger than anticipated, with 278 separate local meets, presentations, and drive events registered when it kicked off on September 22. After...
The 2017 Chevy Bolt EV went on sale last December, but only became available nationwide in August. Meanwhile, electric-car shoppers waited eagerly for details of the 2018 Nissan Leaf, the second-generation car that finally premiered in early September. We've now driven both cars, and can take a high-level look at how they stack up against each...
While the United States federal government threatens to backslide on renewable energy, California and China continue to move at an aggressive pace to lead the world in zero-emission vehicles. However, there's another piece to the electric-car puzzle that China seems poised to lead as well: battery production. As the global market for electric and...