When you’re in conversation with a self-described urbanist, it’s usually impossible to avoid numerous references to Amsterdam, that progressive utopia of bikes, tulips, marijuana-smoking tourists, and more bikes.

Well, expect to hear about it even more, now that Dutch parliament has passed a Dutch Labor Party motion to ban the sale of internal combustion vehicles in that country after 2025, according to Auto Express. The bill, which requires senate approval to become the law of the land, would see existing gas and diesel vehicles grandfathered, and the sale of new ones banned. (Read More…)

Ford Motor Company is hitting the brakes in the electric vehicle range war.

While competitors like Tesla and General Motors are busy preparing EVs with ranges of 200 miles or more, Ford is staying put at the 100-mile line, Automotive News has reported.

Though it plays well in the plug-in hybrid game with models like the C-Max and Fusion Energi, the automaker’s only “pure” EV — the Focus Electric — has lingered near the back of the pack in terms of range since debuting in 2012. (Read More…)

Orders of the life changing, marriage-saving Tesla Model 3 are poised to hit 400,000, but Fiat Chrysler Automobiles CEO Sergio Marchionne doesn’t think they’ve got the right stuff.

Diarmuid O’Connell, Tesla’s vice-president of business development, confirmed the number of orders at an electric vehicle conference in Amsterdam yesterday, two weeks after the low-priced model’s glitzy unveiling, Electrek has reported. (Read More…)

Changes to the Tesla lineup have never come at a more rapid pace.

After revealing the new face of the Model S yesterday, and two weeks after unveiling the Model 3, Tesla has kept the news flowing by ditching the 70 kilowatt-hour battery in the base Model X for a 75 kWh juice pack — and bumping up the price to match.

The all-wheel-drive SUV doesn’t get any faster with the upgrade — the 0-60 mph time is still six seconds — but the 75D can now travel 17 miles further on a charge, going from a 220-mile range to 237 miles.

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Grilles are so 20th century.

As we speculated last week, Tesla has put a new face on its Model S, doing away with the faux grille designed to trick people into thinking there was something combusting under the hood.

The new front end is a corporate amalgam of the both the recently unveiled Model 3 sedan and Model X SUV. Tesla apparently thinks that society has progressed enough to accept the disappearance of an air-sucking mouth at the front of a car.

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Like an actor who just can’t cut it, the third-row seats in Tesla’s Model X could fold under pressure, meaning the automaker now has to recall all of the SUVs it has delivered to date.

About 2,700 Model X vehicles sold in the U.S. will be heading back to Tesla for a fix after internal strength tests revealed that a rear seatback could slip. As a result, the company is cautioning owners not to seat anyone in the third row until repairs have been made.

The tests were being conducted prior to the model going on sale in Europe.

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Much to the delight of EV fanatics and sandal enthusiasts around the world, Tesla reported last week that 325,000 people had placed refundable $1,000 deposits on its Model 3 sedan. Even pessimistically projecting a defection rate of 25 percent, that’s still nearly a quarter of a million cars which need to be built and delivered starting late next year.

Industry analysts have nattered at length about the logistics of the mass order and Tesla’s ability to pull it off. However, there is a new obstacle on the horizon, this time involving the core reason many have given for reserving a Model 3: tax credits.

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Suffice it to say the Model 3 has consumed all of the Tesla oxygen in the past few weeks, but that doesn’t mean the Model S is just going to roll over and play dead.

Sources inside the company told CNET that a changes are coming for the ground-breaking electric sedan, possible as early as next week. If true, Tesla founder Elon Musk clearly knows a thing or two about sustaining buzz.

The shadowy source claims the Model S will receive an exterior facelift and a slight move upmarket thanks to more luxurious interior trappings.

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Tesla founder Elon Musk wants to build a new European factory to satisfy growing demand on the continent, and France knows just the place he should do it.

French Energy Minister Segolene Royal reportedly pitched the idea of using the site of a soon-to-be-mothballed reactor to Musk, according to Reuters (via Automotive News Europe).

“He didn’t say no,” said Royal, who plans to follow-up the pitch by meeting with Tesla management.

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Forget all about PSA Peugeot Citroen. It’s dead. Well, the name, anyway.

As part of its five-year corporate strategy, dubbed “Push to Pass,” the French automaker is rebranding itself as Groupe PSA and dropping hints of a tentative return to the U.S. market.

PSA’s sales and profitability are growing again thanks to a new product strategy and a bailout by the French government, but CEO Carlos Tavares wants to see more gains by branching out into new markets.

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The Russian car market is looking grimmer than the last days of the Romanov family, but that’s proving to be a big opportunity for Kia.

That, a delay for Volkswagen’s overseas diesel fix, Porsche employees are rolling in dough, electric rallycross could be on the way, and FCA soars in Europe … after the break!

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The first Ford electric car, 1914

Ford Motor Company recently announced that it will be investing more than $4.5 billion over the next five years into its electric vehicle program and that it will have 13 electric vehicles on sale by 2020. The announcement follows the Ford company’s original investment in EV technology and the first Ford electric cars by 102 years.

Hopefully, the current spending will yield more fruitful results than did Henry Ford’s original look into EVs more than a century ago. (Read More…)

I guess I cover the reverse trike beat here at TTAC.

It started with a post about a Chinese death trap three-wheeler I’d seen advertised. In the comments to that post, one of our readers suggested looking into the Elio project. We’ve done that a few times since then, including an exclusive review of one of their prototypes. Because of our coverage of Elio Motors, a group of Elio deposit holders who have become disenchanted by continued production delays asked us to consider their charges. While it’s true that I’m in what may be a minority of automotive writers that don’t think Elio is a scam, I’m not naive. There are ample reasons for skepticism and we take the word truth in our title seriously, so Mark Stevenson and I looked into the critics’ complaints and we both decided they were adding nothing new to issues raised by Elio’s critics before.

However, I do keep tabs on their Facebook group, which is how I found out about Arcimoto, a Eugene, Oregon company that hopes to put their highway capable electric reverse trike in production by the end of next year with a starting price of $11,900. (Read More…)

Speaking at the Barron’s Investment Conference last week, Tesla CEO Elon Musk predicted EVs would be good for 500 miles per charge by 2025.

According to Green Car Reports, Musk believed such vehicles would be possible in 10 years, but tempered those expectations by cautioning that more assembly and battery production facilities would be needed to realize that future. (Read More…)

Volvo announced Thursday that it would make an all-electric car available by 2019 and offer more plug-in hybrid versions of its cars sooner, starting with the S90. Volvo already sells a plug-in hybrid version of its XC90 SUV.

The automaker’s announced plans follow news that it would make a compact crossover by 2018, likely called the XC40, which would eventually share the same architecture as its V40 and V40 Cross Country.

According to the automaker, Volvo expects 10 percent of its sales by 2020 to be of electric cars. The automaker reported 465,000 sales in 2014.

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