GM’s Detroit-Hamtramck plant will get a $35 million investment to build the Cadillac ELR, a luxury coupe that uses the Chevrolet Volt’s gasoline-electric drivetrain.
Find Editorials by Category:
Category: Electric Vehicles
A presentation held Monday saw Fisker announce a delay for their smaller sedan, dubbed the Atlantic. The Atlantic will hit the market in late 2014 or 2015.
Automakers looking for a bit of a break with CAFE compliance can now get a 2 for 1 special on EVs.
Viewers of last night’s Presidential debate may have caught Mitt Romney bad-mouthing Tesla and Fisker during his remarks. Meanwhile, Tesla’s new prospectus shows that they’re hardly out of the woods yet, financially speaking.
Shai Aggasi, the visionary behind the Better Place EV battery swap network, has been ousted, with Better Place Australia’s CEO replacing Agassi as global CEO.
From Autoblog via Edmunds to Slashgear, the automotive blogosphere is buzzing about an INSECT from Toyota. INSECT is an acronym for “Information Network Social Electric City Transporter,” and, says Edmunds (along with pretty much everybody else who copied the press release,) the vehicle carrying the creepy name “is a single-seater that features facial-recognition technology and behavior prediction, marking the dawn of the car as mind-reader.” The INSECT officially hatched today, 1 ½ subway hours from where I currently live.
As an eye-witness, I can certify that a gullible media has been had. Read More >
In 1873, it took Phileas Fogg and his valet Passepartout eighty days to get around the world, mostly by slow trains and steamships. 150 years later, that trip can take eight months\ when you do it by EV. One of the drawbacks when you have to stop every 60 miles to wait for yo r car to recharge. Read More >
The latest from USA Today suggests now is a good time to buy a Chevy Volt, if that’s what you really want. I checked in with former(?) TTAC scribe Captain Mike Solo, currently helping someone lease a Volt, and he says about the same: lease for $270 a month, with $1500 down. Which includes the government tax credit built into the residual…probably. So what does this all mean? Read More >
Washington’s campaign to put you in an EV will cost the taxpayer $7.5 billion through 2019, and it’s all for nothing, says a report by the Congressional Budget Office. Read More >
Earlier this year, Nissan Leaf owners in Arizona started to observe bars missing from the charge state display of their cars. Instead of the 12 bars that signal a full battery, some saw only 10 or less. This spread like the Arizona wildfires through the EV community. As of today, the discussion at the Mynissanleaf forum has swelled to 373 pages. Nissan looked at the affected cars, and so far has not rendered a verdict. Or maybe it did. 12 Leaf owners did assemble one night to prove Nissan wrong. Read More >
Venture capitalist extraordinaire Tim Draper says Tesla has the resources to beat the Detroit Three. Detroit already has lost the electric war, Draper says, and it should pick a different battle to win. Like making flying cars. Read More >
GM loses around $49,000 on each Volt it builds says Reuters. GM sold a record 2,831 Volts in August, but that may “have pushed that loss even higher. There are some Americans paying just $5,050 to drive around for two years in a vehicle that cost as much as $89,000 to produce,” says Reuters after a deep data dive into the elusive profitability of GM’s green halo car. Read More >
Electric cars haven’t taken the market by storm, despite a hurricane of propaganda, and despite of tsunamis of government subsidies. Now, India is joining the fray. India will spend some money to entice its citizens to go electric. Like the U.S. and China, India expects them to do so by the droves. Read More >
You can see this ad. Television viewers in the UK can’t. The Chevrolet Volt is sold in the UK as the Vauxhall Ampera, and its ad has been banned by the UK Advertising Standards Authority. It says the ad is misleading. The ad claims a 360-mile range. GM is a serial offender when it comes to alternate realities, and this ad is the latest installment. Read More >
What good is a twenty-minute test drive?
Well, when most sources are getting a ten minute test drive, a twenty-minute one is twice as good. The problem, of course, is that range is as critical to an electric car as tensile strength is to parachutes; it’s the difference between a safe arrival and a harrowing trip. Without a genuine understanding of the Tesla’s range, we can’t say for sure whether it’s a great car or not.
That doesn’t mean we can’t pass along what we did learn during those twenty minutes.
Recent Comments