Next year should be a record year for sales of plug-in electric cars. A new crop of affordable electric cars with 200 miles of range or more will be available, joining this year's Chevrolet Bolt EV, including the next-generation Nissan Leaf and the mass-market Tesla Model 3. So our thoughts inevitably turned to which one is likely to sell best... Which electric car will sell best during 2018? Poll results
Next year should be a record year for sales of plug-in electric cars. A new crop of affordable electric cars with 200 miles of range or more will be available, joining this year's Chevrolet Bolt EV, including the next-generation Nissan Leaf and the mass-market Tesla Model 3. So our thoughts inevitably turned to which one is likely to sell best...
Even with recent efforts to expand it, electric-car charging infrastructure is nowhere near rivaling the ubiquity of gas stations. But what if electric cars didn't need to stop to charge? That's essentially what a new Honda research project aims to investigate. DON'T MISS: Honda Clarity EV electric car to have only 80 miles of range: report At the...
When the updated 2017 Renault Zoe was unveiled last fall at the Paris auto show, it became one of the few electric cars whose range effectively doubled over its model life. Launched in 2012 with a 22-kilowatt-hour lithium-ion battery, the five-door subcompact hatchback had an effective range of 60 to 90 miles. That was essentially on par with that...
In the 20 years since General Motors and its Chinese partner SAIC reintroduced the Buick brand to China, more than 8 million Buicks have been sold in what is now the world's largest car market. That's because the last Chinese emperor drove a Buick in the 1930s, and the brand retained a huge cachet through the upheavals that followed. The...
Many 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...
Among German luxury brands, BMW was the first to show significant interest in electric cars. It launched its "i" sub-brand in Europe in 2013, and its plans have evolved to include adding all-electric powertrains to models within the main BMW brand in future. That is part of an effort to grow sales of electric cars and plug-in hybrids significantly...
Not all electric vehicles have wheels. Electric boats have actually been around for quite awhile, and now a California startup is trying to expand use of electric powertrains to another type of watercraft. Free Form Factory is partnering with Zero Motorcycles to use the motorcycle company's electric-powertrain components in a "stand-up personal...
California is very different from the rest of the United States. All by itself, it's the sixth largest economy in the world. One eighth of all Americans live there. It's home to Silicon Valley, as well as much of the global entertainment industry, and it produces a large proportion of the nation's fruit and vegetables. DON'T MISS: A Brief History...
The news earlier this week that the Tesla Model 3 would skip its usual "beta" development phase came as a shock to the industry and even to Tesla fans. With no reported sitings to date of Model 3 development versions on the roads, that seemed a startling and risky thing for Tesla to do. Especially since the 200-plus-mile Model 3, starting at...
One-pedal driving is rather like the experience of owning an electric car: it can be hard to appreciate until you've spend time doing it. The phrase "one-pedal driving" refers to the ability of some electric cars to be driven almost entirely with the accelerator pedal alone. It's a feature much prized by owners of Teslas, BMW i3s, and most...
New York State is known for a lack of transparency, backroom dealings, and little public input into the deliberations that lead to legislation produced by its state legislature. So it wasn't too surprising that after Governor Andrew Cuomo announced an electric-car incentive program in April 2016, radio silence ensued. Thankfully, the legislation...
One of the challenges of electric cars is persuading potential buyers that they can do virtually everything that most other vehicles can. For those who live in wintry climates, that includes dealing with snow, slush, road salt, ice, and variable traction. Given the recent major snowstorms that hit large swaths of the U.S. this month, we felt an...
It crops up in comments from electric-car advocates and clean-energy users fairly regularly. And it goes something like this: "Big Oil and Gas are on the verge of collapse, as clean energy and electric cars make them obsolete." Occasionally the sentiment is followed by an approving emoji. DON'T MISS: Electric cars pose little threat to oil demand...
Charging infrastructure projects for electric cars have mostly focused on expanding the number of charging sites available to the public over the last six years. But now significant effort is also being put into increasing the power those public charging stations can provide. This is due to anticipated technological improvements to electric-car...
We've had a 2017 Chevrolet Bolt EV electric car in our fleet for a handful of days, and have been thinking about our impressions of the car in everyday use. While a major snowstorm cut half the days out of our test run—with a 7-foot snowdrift blocking the road to my house—we've been using the Bolt in and around the New York City metro...
Few vehicles are as iconic as the London black cab, known the world over for its upright shape and ubiquity (although many of them aren't black any more). But under the stewardship of Chinese automaker Geely, the black cab is about to get a green makeover. The London Taxi Company recently completed a U.K. factory that will build a new version of...
Tesla electric cars have many notable and pioneering qualities. Faultless reliability has not necessarily been one of them. Since the Model S launched in 2012, multiple quality issues have been documented by both owners and media outlets like Consumer Reports. The Model X debuted with a particularly high level of initial-quality issues, likely a...
As it tries to put the ongoing diesel-emissions scandal behind it, VW Group is focusing its future on electric cars. The Volkswagen brand within the sprawling German company has developed an electric-car specific platform called MEB, and has shown multiple concepts based on it. Those include the ID hatchback, and the ID Buzz and Budd-e, both...
With a base price of $37,495 and an EPA-rated range of 238 miles, the 2017 Chevrolet Bolt EV has no real direct competition at the moment. All other electric cars in its price bracket offer substantially lower ranges, while the 200-mile luxury electric cars sold by Tesla now start at $75,000. Just seven states into the Bolt EV's nationwide...
Parking garages often aren't very well-lit, and a video tour of one may not sound like a particularly enjoyable way to spend time. But if you're an electric-car driver or advocate in North America, an 11-minute tour by electric-car advocate (and Tesla fanatic) Bjørn Nyland may be time well spent. That's because his tour of the Vulkan...