EVs could get more expensive as US trade war heats up

2019 Chevrolet Bolt EVAs the U.S. government's trade war with China heats up, it looks like it soon might spill over into electric cars. Chinese state-run media outlets have begun threatening that the government will impose new tariffs on rare-earth metals used in the permanent magnet motors in electric cars as well as capacitive touch screens and electronic capacitors...

EVs could get more expensive as US trade war heats up

2019 Chevrolet Bolt EVAs the U.S. government's trade war with China heats up, it looks like it soon might spill over into electric cars. Chinese state-run media outlets have begun threatening that the government will impose new tariffs on rare-earth metals used in the permanent magnet motors in electric cars as well as capacitive touch screens and electronic capacitors...

Volvo’s US Polestar electric-car plans are in flux over China tariffs

Polestar 2Higher tariffs placed on cars made in China won't impact Polestar's future plans for the U.S. but could affect the price of its cars, the brand said Wednesday. Responding to reports that its CEO suggested that the nascent electric carmaker, which is owned by Volvo, might pull the plug on cars in the U.S., a Polestar spokesman confirmed that their...

Tesla Model 3 production target reached but did automaker cut corners?

Tesla Model 3 all-wheel drive Performance rolls off a new assembly line in a temporary structureTesla pulled out all the stops to get 5,000 Model 3s built by July 1 including pulling workers from other assembly lines, halting Model S and X production to paint nothing but Model 3's, but also critically eliminating an industry standard brake test designed to ensure quality, according to a Reuters report. One factory insider said the company...

Tesla Model Y coming in 2020; Roadster and Semi still on the way, says Musk

Teaser for Tesla Model Y electric SUV due for reveal in 2019Tesla CEO Elon Musk told shareholders Tuesday that the last few months have been "hellacious" for building the Tesla Model 3, but that the automaker expects by the end of this month to build 5,000 of the mid-size luxury sedan each week and beyond. "It's insanely hard to stay alive," Musk added. The Model 3 may be critical for the automaker to stay...

Volvo ditches diesel, but will half its cars be electric by 2024?

2017 Volvo S60 and V60 PolestarVolvo says it is going all-in on electric cars in an effort to turn the company into something of a Tesla alternative. To that end, the company has announced that half its cars will be battery electric models by 2024, according to a report in Road & Track earlier this year. It has also dedicated its high-performance Polestar brand to selling...

Tesla Model 3 production crossed 2,000 last week; is it sustainable?

2017 Tesla Model 3 Tesla reported Tuesday that it built 34,494 electric cars in the first quarter of 2018, by far its largest quarterly production total ever. But all eyes were on one number: the production of Model 3 sedans, which was 9,766 vehicles out of that total. Of the rest, 11,730 were Model S hatchback sedans and 10,070 were Model X crossover utility...

BMW: we won’t mass-produce electric cars until 2020, with cheaper cells

2018 BMW i3sBMW sold more than 100,000 cars with plugs last year, adding together its battery-electric and plug-in hybrid models. That's roughly on a par with Tesla, and ahead of both General Motors and Nissan, two other pioneers in modern electric cars. The company has put far more plug-in cars on the road to date than its German counterparts, both Daimler...

Tesla now makes almost 1,000 Model 3s a week, Bloomberg tracker estimates

2018 Tesla Model 3Production numbers for Tesla electric cars have always been slightly murky. The company announces deliveries only quarterly and refuses to break them down by country, meaning there are no sales figures that directly compare with those routinely issued by other makers. The Tesla Model 3 has endured a long, painful, and somewhat public "production...

Tesla Model 3 variants delayed; will some buyers lose $7,500 tax credit?

2017 Tesla Model 3 "Overall, I think, while there were challenges associated with Model 3 ramp, we were in a deeper level of hell than we expected, so a few levels deeper than we'd like to be, but swiftly exiting, I think." Those chastened but seemingly optimistic words came from the CEO of Tesla, Elon Musk, during a conference call discussing the company's...

How many Model 3s will Tesla deliver by Dec 31? Twitter poll results, again

2017 Tesla Model 3, 2017 Los Angeles Auto ShowWhat a difference a few months makes. In June, one month before the delivery of the first 30 Tesla Model 3, we polled our Twitter followers on how many of the lower-priced electric cars Tesla would deliver by the end of this year. The view then was pretty rosy, with more than half the respondents saying the company would have sold more than 10,000...

Electric Hyundai Kona, Kia Niro production to rise again: report

2018 Hyundai KonaBoth Hyundai and Kia planned to approach the electric and plug-in car market aggressively, but now the Korean siblings plan to boost production even over totals announced earlier this year. This past summer, both brands said they would increase their electrified car production to 50,000 units next year. Now, according to a report earlier this...