U.S.-backed electric car maker Fisker misses early goals, delays production

Government-backed electric car company Fisker Automotive is delaying plans for production after missing its early manufacturing goals. According to a report by the Washington Post, the delays are being blamed on regulatory issues, and the company is brushing off any comparisons to Solyndra, another clean-energy company that received half a million in government loans, which filed for bankruptcy in September.

Fisker has already received $529 million in loans from the U.S. Department of Energy to … Continue Reading

TomTom and Coulomb Technologies offer a new Rx for electric vehicle road range anxiety

Sometimes it’s hard enough to find a gas station that has diesel. Imagine driving an electric vehicle (EV) in a new area and not knowing where to find the nearest charging station. Range anxiety is an issue for many EV owners, but today they are getting a bit of relief.

Electric vehicle charging solutions company Coulomb Technologies is announcing its partnership with TomTom to make its ChargePoint Network available to drivers on the road.

ChargePoint … Continue Reading

The “Cash-back car”: Danish EV owners to sell power back to the grid

US company Nuvve will use Denmark as the first test market for a new technology allowing electric vehicle (EV) owners to sell energy stored in their EV batteries back to the grid.

The first pilot will consist of 30 cars. According to Nuvve, individual EV owners could make $10,000 over the lifetime of a vehicle (estimated at 8 years) depending on market price and owner commitment.

The EV owner makes the battery available to Nuvve … Continue Reading

Is your city ready for electrical vehicles?

Ford has identified the 25 most electric vehicle (EV) ready cities in the U.S., based on the company’s latest research. The 25 cities are dotted all over the country from Hartford to Honolulu. A previous Pike research report highlighted 6 cities expected to be early EV adopters: New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, Dallas and Houston.

Ford used measures such as a streamlined permit process, utility rate structures that support nighttime charging, incentives such as … Continue Reading

Ferrari Shows Biggest CO2 Cut Amongst Supercar Brands, But Is There More To The Numbers?

Governments around the world are bowing to public pressure to reduce the levels of greenhouse gases their respective countries produce, and more often than not, the first sector they look at is the auto industry. Here in the U.S. the government has imposed a tough 34.1 mpg fleet-wide fuel economy standard for 2016, while in Europe the government wants to put a limit on CO2 levels — something that could have disastrous effects for niche … Continue Reading

Ultracapacitor maker Ioxus raises $21M

Capacitor maker Ioxus announced today that it has raised $21 million to ramp up development and production of ultracapacitors — a nascent battery space that could more useful than traditional batteries in electric cars.

Ultracapacitors can reach a much higher charge and discharge rate when compared to typical batteries. They also have longer lifetimes that last several hundreds of thousands of charge cycles when compared to normal batteries. But they do not carry as much … Continue Reading

Plug-In Hybrid MPGs: Is Parallel or Range-Extended Better?

These are exciting times to be a car shopper, as the choices in every possible category just keep getting better and more fuel-efficient.

The options for ecologically sensitive  buyers have taken a major step forward with the introduction of the 2011 Chevrolet Volt and the imminent arrival of the 2011 Fisker Karma.

Both of these cars are range-extended electric cars, whose wheels are turned solely by one or more electric motors. (There’s a minor exception … Continue Reading

BMW Hires Lead Electric-Car Engineer From Chevy Volt Team

Not so long ago, the notion of luxury German brand BMW hiring an engineer from General Motors might have been a stretch. The company prefers to promote engineers from within its Munich engineering headquarters.

But reports that Frank Weber, the lead engineer of the 2011 Chevrolet Volt team, has been hired by BMW demonstrate how radically times have changed.

BMW was arguably the automaker of scale least knowledgeable about electric cars as recently as five … Continue Reading

Leaf start-up glitch leaves electric vehicle drivers, Nissan stranded

Nissan is facing yet another setback with its electric-powered vehicle, the Leaf. Today, the carmaker acknowledged reports of the Leaf failing to start due to problems with its air conditioning unit.

The Leaf is an ambitious electric vehicles with a low (by electric vehicle standards) price tag — still a hefty $33,000 — designed to attract more casual drivers to the electric car market. But Nissan has faced significant setbacks in deploying the car in … Continue Reading

Does the future of electric cars lie in capacitors?

Back to the Future may have been right: The cars of tomorrow will be powered by capacitors (they will not, presumably, be able to time-travel).

At least, that’s what Tesla CEO Elon Musk said at yesterday’s Cleantech Forum in San Francisco, unleashing a torrent of speculation that the electric car company may be researching capacitor storage.

Capacitors are electric devices that can store charges temporarily. They can handle a greater number of charge cycles than … Continue Reading

Electric car showdown: Nissan Leaf vs. Chevy Volt, by the man who owns both

Many comments are appearing on the internet taking enthusiastic positions for either the new 2011 Chevy Volt or the Leaf.

It seems most readers are in one “camp” or the other.

In our household, after studying the technical strengths and features of both cars as they moved from concept to production, I ended up ordering…one of each!

We had been driving a Toyota Prius and a 2007 Toyota Camry Hybrid, enjoying the technology and economy … Continue Reading

Nissan ups electric car production: every third car a Leaf

The Leaf may be the first full-scale, all-electric production car from a major automaker to be sold in the U.S., but Nissan hasn’t exactly been quick to get it into the hands of customers.

That should change, however, with the announcement that the Japanese factory responsible for making the five-seat family hatchback is set to double production over the next month.

At the moment, one in every six cars coming off Nissan’s Oppama production line … Continue Reading

Tesla's Model S update: pricing and deliveries

Tesla has just released an update on its  upcoming 2012 Model S all-electric sedan, for which it has received 3,700 reservations (each costing $5,000).

The main points from the update:

The company expects to produce about 5,000 units in 2012 while ramping up for capacity of 20,000 cars per year in 2013.
Deliveries for North America will start in mid-2012
The first 1,000 Model S’s will be part of the “North American Model S Signature

… Continue Reading

On the GreenBeat: Nexterra bags $15M for biomass power, Johnson Controls make $32.3M smart grid buy

Here’s the latest action we’re following today on the GreenBeat:

Nexterra Systems raises $15M for biomass power — The Candian company raised the cash from ARC financial and Tandem Expansion Fund. It makes small-scale biomass gasification systems that generate renewable heat and power systems. The company’s clients include the U.S. Department of Energy and Johnson Controls.  It also has strategic relationships with GE and Johnson Controls. The cash will go towards market expansion.

Johnson Controls … Continue Reading

Amprius raises $25M for breakthrough batteries from Kleiner, Google CEO

Battery startup Amprius has raised $25 million to commercialize what it says will be the next generation of lithium-ion batteries, signing on major new investors like Google CEO Eric Schmidt and venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers.

Amprius is looking to commercialize high energy, silicon-based materials to turbo-charge the next generation of lithium-ion batteries, which are used in everything from laptops to electric cars. The company says battery cells with Amprius technology will … Continue Reading

Electric car startups to square off against Big Auto competition

Competition is heating up in the electric car sector, and the next few years will be a challenging testing ground for startups looking to gain a foothold among consumers as more and more major automakers launch electric and hybrid cars.

Some startups have lofty ambitions. Electric car startup Coda said today it aims to sell 50,000 cars by 2015, or 12,500 cars a year. It will launch its electric sedan (pictured, right) late this year, with … Continue Reading

On the GreenBeat: Solyndra raises $75M credit facility, Reno's wind experiment

Here’s the latest action we’re following on the GreenBeat today:

Solyndra raises $75 million in credit facility – The solar manufacturer’s latest round of financing to shore up its capital needs come in the form of a secured credit facility underwritten by existing investors. The company makes cylindrical solar rooftop systems and is a now-controversial recipient of a $535 million loan guarantee from the Department of Energy. The company’s president and CEO Brian Harrison released … Continue Reading

Think's electric car faces third recall after three months in the U.S.

Dozens, even hundreds, of different models get recalled each year by their makers to address defects or potential problems.

Most pass unnoticed, except to the owners who get letters in the mail asking them to bring their vehicle back to the dealer.

But three recalls in as many months isn’t a particularly stellar way to start selling electric vehicles in the U.S.

Small Norwegian carmaker Think, whose City two-seat electric car is now being assembled … Continue Reading

Watch out, Tesla and Fisker! More luxury carmakers go electric

Electric cars are getting blinged out.

We’ve written before about how major automakers like Nissan, Ford and GM are plowing forth with electric car and hybrid offerings. Nissan, in particular, wants to grab 20 percent of the global electric cars market. But luxury automakers are getting into the game, too. Could it mean competition for luxury electric car startups like Tesla and Fisker?

Big news on this came from BMW recently. First, the company is … Continue Reading

Toyota to launch home electric car charger, jumping into a crowded market

Toyota, maker of the hybrid Prius and the upcoming plug-in version of the Prius, will launch its own home electric car charger, jumping into what is shaping up to be a crowded market.

Major companies and startups alike have surged into the electric car charging segment. GE launched the WattStation last year, and building energy management giant Schneider Electric launched its own residential charger last week as part of an overall move to expand its … Continue Reading