Electric car range anxiety evaporates after 3 months
“Range anxiety” for pure battery-powered electric car owners wears off quickly as a driver begins to understand the capabilities and charging patterns of their car, according to a new study by the Technology Strategy Board.
Around 35 percent of electric car owners were concerned about reaching a destination before running out of juice three months after buying a car, compared to 100 percent of car owners when they first bought the electric car, according to … Continue Reading
Extended-range hybrids pick up steam
A clear trend is emerging among electric car manufacturers: Plug-in hybrids are a better near-term bet than purely battery-powered cars.
Ford today unveiled the latest in its series of electric cars, a plug-in hybrid electric car called the Evos. The car has a battery-powered engine that can travel between 30 and 40 miles before switching over to an engine powered by gasoline. (Drivers can also choose whether they want to power the car solely off … Continue Reading
Meet the Cadillac ELR, General Motors’ luxury extended-range electric car
General Motors today unveiled its first luxury extended-range electric vehicle, the Cadillac ELR Coupe. It’s the company’s second extended-range electric car and the third extended-range car unveiled in the past 30 days.
The new high-end vehicle features an electric motor that will travel for about 35 miles when the car’s battery is fully charged. When the battery runs out, the car uses gasoline to power a generator that recharges the battery, extending the distance the … Continue Reading
Nissan Leaf trounces Chevy Volt in July sales, but will it last?
The Nissan Leaf once again outsold General Motors’ Chevy Volt in July after GM slowed production of its electric car last month, giving Nissan a nearly 2,000-car edge in total sales.
Nissan sold 931 all-electric battery-powered Leafs in July, bringing the total number of electric cars the company has sold to 4,806. General Motors only sold 125 Volts after shutting down its Detroit-based plant to retool it, bringing its total vehicles shipped to 2,870. General … Continue Reading
Volt cruises into North Carolina and South Carolina
General Motors today announced that it is ramping up sales of its plug-in hybrid electric car, the Chevy Volt, in two new states: North Carolina and South Carolina.
Like other new electric cars, the Volt is only available in a few states. Before today’s announcement, it was available in New York, New Jersey, Virginia, Connecticut, California, Michigan and Texas, a representative of the company said. The Leaf initially rolled out in California, Washington, Oregon, Arizona … Continue Reading
Nissan Leaf stomps Chevy Volt in June sales
Nissan’s all-electric Leaf is now the clear leader in low-end electric car sales.
Nissan sold 1,708 Leaf cars in June. That puts it well ahead of General Motors, which sold 561 of its hybrid electric Volt cars in the same month. Nissan has now sold 3,875 Leafs compared to General Motors’ 2,745 Volts sold in the first half of the year.
It’s the first indication that Nissan has taken an early lead in the fiercely … Continue Reading
California electric car rebate program runs dry
A California program that gives hybrid and pure-electric car buyers a rebate between $1,500 and $5,000 has run out of funding for the remainder of the state’s fiscal year ending June 30.
The state of California allocated $7 million last year for rebates to qualified electric car buyers. The popularity of the federally-mandated Cash for Clunkers program sent car buyers out in droves. Spurred on by high gas prices, early adopters were eager to go … Continue Reading
Japan earthquake could delay U.S. production of Nissan Leaf
A 9.0-magnitude earthquake that rocked Japan in March could delay the start of U.S. production of the Nissan Leaf electric vehicle until late 2012, according to Automotive News.
The costs of getting production back up and running in Japan after the massive earthquake and tsunami forced Nissan to take its Japanese production plant offline. The company was slated to build a production plant for the Nissan Leaf in Smyrna, Tenn., that will produce up to … Continue Reading
GM slashes Volt price tag
General Motors has cut the price of next year’s model of its plug-in hybrid electric car, the Chevy Volt, by around $1,000 to $39,995 — bringing the car’s price closer to its now rival, the pure plug-in electric Nissan Leaf.
Nissan recently went on the offensive by taking a shot at the Volt in a television advertisement. Sales of both electric cars have also been neck-and-neck for the past five months and only differ by … Continue Reading
Nissan doubles Leaf sales, Volt stays steady: some perspective, please
Sigh. Here we go again.
It’s the first of the month, which means that auto journalists are scrambling to put together their monthly sales reports. Sales in May weren’t great, for a variety of reasons: higher prices and shortages of some Japanese models, among others.
Unusual scrutiny
But the most dismal part of the monthly process is watching the inordinate attention paid to sales of the two plug-in electric cars now available at U.S. dealerships. … Continue Reading
Oregon dots interstate with electric car charging stations
Oregon is the next state that will distribute electric car charging stations to alleviate some of the crippling range concerns that pure electric cars face when trying to attract mainstream car buyers.
The chargers are designed to be “fast-chargers,” which use a 480-volt direct electrical current to charge an electric vehicle fully in around a half hour. NRG Energy recently began deploying fast chargers in Texas as part of its eVgo project between Houston and … Continue Reading
Nissan takes a crack at Volt hybrid electric car
Nissan has taken a potshot at General Motors by mocking its plug-in electric hybrid Chevy Volt in an ad for its pure plug-in electric car, the Nissan Leaf.
The ad mocks cars that use internal combustion engines and gasoline by showing a world where any electronic gadget is powered by gasoline and an internal combustion engine. The results are comically outlandish — the commercial even features an iPod-esque music device powered by an internal combustion … Continue Reading
U.S. government scores a discount on home-grown Chevy Volt
The U.S. government is purchasing 116 plug-in electric and hybrid electric vehicles for its vehicle fleet — and it is picking up a nice discount on General Motors’ Chevy Volt, the same company it made a significant investment in to prevent the car manufacturer from failing.
The government is purchasing more than 100 Chevy Volts and is paying $38,500 for each one, which is under the car’s manufacturer’s suggested retail price of $41,000. Individual car … Continue Reading
Six in 10 Americans say no to electric cars (poll)
Nearly 60 percent of Americans will not buy pure plug-in electric cars — no matter what the cost — because they do not have the same range as a traditional car powered by an internal combustion engine, according to a USA Today/Gallup poll.
The new poll indicated that American respondents said they would not want to own “an electric car that you could only drive for a limited number of miles at one time.” The … Continue Reading
Fast Charging Electric Cars: How Much is it Worth?
Ask any electric car owner to name the benefits of owning an electric car and the ability to leave your house every morning with a ‘full tank’ is likely to be at the top of their list, followed closely by the fact that most electric cars can provide enough range to last more than a day’s worth of driving.
But what happens when you need to charge up more than once in a day? And … Continue Reading
Toyota bets big on hybrids, no pure electric car in sight
Toyota has unveiled a new line-up of hybrid electric Prius cars designed to attract more mainstream buyers to the fuel-efficient cars. The new models include a hatchback Prius v and a cheaper compact hybrid-electric car called the Prius c.
But nowhere in that line-up is an electric car that is only powered by a battery. Other car companies like Tesla Motors and Nissan have made bets that environmentally conscious car buyers will want to abandon … Continue Reading
General Motors ups 2011 production targets for Volt, Ampera electric hybrids
General Motors said it now expects to sell 16,000 Chevy Volt and Opel Ampera (a German model of the Chevy Volt) vehicles, a jump from its previous sales targets for the first full year of its plug-in electric hybrid.
That’s despite GM’s plan to ship more cars to dealerships as demonstration models to bring in new electric car buyers. General Motors has shipped around 1,700 Volts since the vehicle went on sale last year. There … Continue Reading
Report suggests cost of electric cars matters little to buyers
Less than a fifth of electric car buyers listed the price tag of an electric car as the most important factor when deciding to make the purchase, according to a new report by management consulting firm Accenture.
Most of the concerns for electric car buyers center around how long it takes to charge the car and how far it is able to drive, according to the report. Electric cars are typically limited in how far … Continue Reading
Germany readies $1.4B in aid for electric cars
The German government has allotted an additional €1 billion ($1.4 billion) in research and development aid for electric cars on top of its existing aid in the form of tax credits and dedicated parking spots to meet its goal of having one million electric cars on the road by 2020.
That will put Germany in a neck-and-neck race with the United States to deploy as many electric cars as possible. The U.S. government has promoted … Continue Reading
Luxury hybrid-electric car maker Fisker Automotive raises an extra $100M
Fisker Automotive, which manufactures luxury plug-in electric hybrid cars, has raised an extra $100 million in its third round of funding to help fund production of its luxury sedan and a second, cheaper electric car that is geared toward more mainstream hybrid electric car buyers.
The Karma sedan is actually a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle, similar to the Chevy Volt manufactured by General Motors. It carries around a 20 kilowatt lithium-ion battery that will extend … Continue Reading
