Like a common reptile, traditional EVs (is that even something we can say yet?) are wildly influenced by the temperature. Too hot? Well that's no good battery life and range will suffer. Too cold? That's not good, either. So rather than...
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found about 20 hours ago by Chuck Squatriglia on
Autopia
Small but interesting nugget of news out of Ford, which says it will use a liquid-cooled and heated battery in the Ford Focus Electric we’ll see late next year. Ford is still developing the car, but the prototype we drove had a 23 kilowatt-hour...
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found about 22 hours ago by Keith Barry on
Autopia
We’re jealous of the folks who get to drive the Zerotracer. It’s a sporty two-seat enclosed motorcycle that weighs less than 1,400 lbs, can do 0-100 km/hr (62 mph) in less than 4.5 seconds and has a top speed of 150 mph. The Oerlikon Solar...
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found about 45 hours ago by Chuck Squatriglia on
Autopia
Matt Dieckmann believed the future is electric, and he died hoping to prove it. Dieckmann, the 29-year-old founder of Electric Race Bikes, was killed Monday following a collision with a car in his hometown of Santa Rosa, California. He reportedly...
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In the former millennium, if you had a fantasy in overdrive and writing skills, you wrote books. These days, you join a management consulting company, and you author future scenarios. Easier and far more lucrative than coming up with “The Hunt For...
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Karl-Thomas Neumann, Volkswagen’s new Emperor of China, took over his job today. He replaces Winfried Vahland, who now runs Volkswagen’s Skoda division. Neumann has a problem many would like to have. “We can’t build enough cars to meet the...
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Nissan has been taking "reservations" for the 2011 Leaf for several months, but now the automaker says it's just about ready to start taking orders from U.S. customers. If you have a reservation for a Nissan Leaf, this will involve...
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found 2 days ago by Chuck Squatriglia on
Autopia
General Motors has sought a trademark for the term “range anxiety,” providing a glimpse into how it might market the Chevrolet Volt. “Range anxiety” refers to the nagging concern you’ll be stuck miles from home with a dead battery, and it...
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With the Mitsubishi i-miev electric car about to hit the British market, the BBC decided to break down the Pounds and tuppence behind the EV hype. And though it found that the i-miev comes out looking quite well thanks to Britain’s EV consumer...
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found 3 days ago by Keith Barry on
Autopia
When Doug Small started drawing up plans for a homebrew electric car, he wanted to start with something lightweight, easy to work on and stylish. Naturally, he decided on an MG TD. Purists needn’t worry, however, as no British roadsters were...
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found 4 days ago by Keith Barry on
Autopia
What’s the most exciting part of setting a land speed record in an electric vehicle? Roger Schroer, who drove the student-built Buckeye Bullet to a record-breaking 307.7 mph, says the true thrill comes from witnessing the teamwork involved in...
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Nature abhors a vacuum, and so does journalism. GM has been trumpeting the Volt’s 40 mile target AER (all electric range) since it was first announced on January 7, 2007. From that very day three years and eight months ago, journalists and...
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Sure, electric cars are neat, but what if we could take the level of green-ness to an all-time high? Alberta-based Motive Industries...(exhale)...recently announced that it has created an electric vehicle called the Kestrel which has a...
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found 7 days ago by Keith Barry on
Autopia
Topping 307 mph is an amazing feat in any vehicle. It’s even more so when the vehicle in question is a student-built electric vehicle. The Venturi Buckeye Bullet built by students at Ohio State University achieved an average speed of 307.7 mph...
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In the mood for some spicy Italian? In another bold bid to increase its share of the American market, Korean carmaker Hyundai plans on introducing seven new or redesigned models in the next 24 months. Even after that more surprises are in store,...
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We’ve all been wondering about the upcoming 2011 Chevrolet Volt. We’ve speculated about how it would drive, its features, recharging capabilities and performance but up until now we’ve never actually seen a really clean demonstration video....
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found 9 days ago by Keith Barry on
Autopia
Students from the University of British Columbia left Vancouver last week on an attempt to set a record for the fastest coast-to-coast drive across Canada in a solely electric vehicle. Range anxiety be damned, this is nearly a 4,000 mile trip ....
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News on the green car front is often about small startup companies touting breakthrough cars, like the Coda, whose future is at best problematic. The real breakthroughs are going to occur in labs and R&D facilities engaged in “what the energy...
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Think GM has a tough sell for its coming IPO? Chinese battery/automaker BYD is preparing its own $420m stock offering, likely to be floated on the Shenzhen A-Shares exchange, in the midst of a Chinese-market downturn, and an ongoing lawsuit with...
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In Europe, governments are ramping up their electric car programmes in order to usher in a new era of alternative propulsion vehicles. Some more successfully than others. And just as the countries are doing their part, the automakers are doing...
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According to a new report by the Consumer Electronics Association, about half of the people who said they're interested in buying an EV say they're still concerned about range. That's a not insignificant chunk of the electric car buying...
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TTAC has a long, proud tradition of tearing into puffy automotive journalism, so it was not without a little trepidation that I wrote in the comments section of Michael Karesh’s excellent review of Zero To Sixty that Toothless reporters put execs...
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The core consumers would be interested in technology and kind of early adopters Coda Automotive senior VP for sales and distribution Mike Jackson (yes, the former GM marketing whiz) describes the market for his firm’s forthcoming electric car. So...
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found 10 days ago by Keith Barry on
Autopia
Last week our colleagues over at Wired UK posted about a student-built electric vehicle that just might be the world’s most efficient car, achieving the equivalent of 300 mpg. The feat itself was worthy of a mention, but the work that went into...
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Like many one-wheeled bikes, Ryno Motors, a US based company, has built a one wheeled electric scooter, dubbed the Ryno. The electric scooter uses a gyroscope to keep itself upright like a Segway. To accelerate the scooter, the rider has to lean...
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The 2011 Chevy Volt has been a long time coming, but Chevrolet has been taking pre-orders for its new electric for the better part of a month now. Though there have been reports of dealer gouging, the Volt is offered at the official site for $350 a...
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found 10 days ago by Chuck Squatriglia on
Autopia
Renault is testing a pair of prototype EVs with Better Place in Israel and plans to begin selling the car there next year. The French automaker is pushing the two Fluence Z.E. — for “zero emissions” — sedans hard to see how they perform in...
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Yet another electric (or hybrid) supercar has been announced, this time by Spanish Izaro Motors. The car, conceptualized above, would ride on a basalt fiber / magnesium / aluminum chassis and is called the GT-E; of course it is, because E is for...
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found 13 days ago by Chuck Squatriglia on
Autopia
Martin Eberhard, who knows a thing or two about electric vehicles, says we’ll see batteries with 500 miles of range within 10 years. Whether anyone will need that kind of range is beside the point, because of course most people won’t. But...
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Thanks to one of the most popular Top Gear segments ever, the Peel P50 is now well-established in the minds and imaginations of the world’s automotive cognoscenti. After all, how often does Clarkson say that “if [car X] had a reverse gear, I...
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