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ou’ll probably never read a road test review by me of the Nissan Leaf, or the Chevy Spark, or the Toyota RAV4 electric. And that may tell you every thing you need to know about these vehicles.I can’t review them because they can’t make it down here for me to review. “Down here” being about 220 miles and five hours’ driving time from the hubs where the car companies keep their fleets of new cars, which ordinarily get sent out for hundreds of miles in every direction to guys like me for week-long evaluations.

President Barack Obama says he wants to buy a Chevy Volt when he’s out of office in five years. If getting into a General Motors electric automobile means so much to him, he’d better hope he loses in November. What the president dubbed the “car of the future” in a visit to a Volt plant may not make it to January 2017. The partially government-owned General Motors has suspended production of its government-approved miracle car and temporarily laid off 1,300 workers at a Detroit plant. The halt is the result of a piddling detail lost in the gushers of praise...

The Fisker Karma is a plug-in hybrid car that seems to have everything the rich and famous — and environmentally correct — look for in a set of wheels. Sleek silhouette? Check. Green cred? Check. Six-figure price tag? Check. Reliable battery? Not so fast. In a test conducted Wednesday by Consumer Reports magazine, the niche-market $107,850 sports car conked out completely, after a short ride at 65 miles per hour on a Connecticut test track. “Our Fisker Karma … is super sleek, high-tech — and now it’s broken,” Consumer Reports wrote on its website late Thursday. “We have owned our...

Electric cars, which wouldn’t even be an option if taxpayers’ money wasn’t propping them up, don’t ultimately save money or cut down pollution. They aren’t reliable to get from here to there. But they can look nice, like the Fisker Karma. Speaking of which, we have this shall we say not entirely unexpected news, courtesy Reuters:...

A $100,000-plus Fisker Automotive luxury sports car died during Consumer Reports speed testing this week for reasons that are still unknown, leaving the struggling electric car startup with another blow to its image. "It is a little disconcerting that you pay that amount of money for a car and it lasts basically 180 miles before going wrong," David Champion, senior director for the magazine's automotive test center, told Reuters, on Thursday. In a statement, Fisker said it was assessing the source of the problem that caused its Karma plug-in hybrid to fail. Fisker dispatched two engineers Wednesday night to...

GM has just announced it will be idling the plant (and the 1,300 workers at that plant) where the "game changing" Chevy Volt electric car is -- uh, was -- built. GM says it's only temporary -- until they figure out how to "align production with demand." It could be a long wait for those workers. GM projected production of 45,000 Volts this year. That may have been just a little bright-sided. Last year, 7,621 of them found buyers (about 2,400 fewer than the 10,000 GM had hoped for). This past month, just over 1,000 of the $40,000 sort-of electric...

We’ve noted many times how those costly electric cars (even after factoring in taxpayer subsidies for manufacturers, sellers and buyers) are hugely reliant on cheap fossil fuel. How else do you think they get the electricity they run on? Windmills? And this cartoon pretty much sums up the absurdity of that predicament: . . .

Proof electric cars DO cause more pollution than normal ones: Study shows impact is worse than petrol-powered vehicles Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2100936/Study-shows-impact-electric-cars-worse-petrol-powered-vehicles.html#ixzz1mNkAhlSk

On a winter day of pounding rain, quite uncharacteristic for Israel, a convoy of 80 completely electric, battery-powered cars drove from Rosh Ha’ayin on Israel’s eastern border through Tel Aviv. On the outside, the autos are perfectly normal Renault sedans built in Turkey. Yet they don’t require a drop of gasoline pumped by countries that hate the Jewish state. The cars run on an air-cooled 230 kilogram (500 pound) lithium ion battery, an electric motor, and a sophisticated electronic control system. Where Israeli ingenuity comes in: these “Better Place” cars differ from electric vehicles like the Chevy Volt or Nissan...

For the first time in a few years, electric cars are mostly an afterthought at the auto show in Detroit. To be sure, electric cars and hybrid electric models are on the show floor and still being promoted at various intensity levels by Detroit's automakers as well as Japanese companies and upstarts building — but not selling many — high-priced, electric sports cars. But the niche vehicles are not as prominent this year as in past years. That's a good thing. Electric vehicles aren't the answer to curbing America's dependence on foreign oil or putting a dent in climate change....

Pennsylvania Congressman, Mike Kelly, wants to end the $7,500 tax credit that affluent purchasers of electric vehicles are currently taking advantage of. The most hyped of these vehicles has been General Motors' Chevy Volt, but other plug-in cars, like Fiskers and Teslas, sell for close to $100,000 and make a strong case for Rep. Kelly's argument. Let's look past the recent Chevy Volt fires. The value of a vehicle will be determined by the consumer. It does not matter if Jay Leno and other rich purchasers say they love their Volts. The real questions are, should taxpayers be paying...

If Tolkien was right, that the burned hand teaches best, then a question arises: Will President Obama ever learn? In a recent appearance on "60 Minutes," Obama traded in his old analogy about the car in the ditch for a new one, about a ship in rough seas. No matter how well the captain — Obama — steers it, if the ship is being tossed about with violent abandon, then the passengers will not enjoy the ride. The implication is that Obama is doing a fine job, so don't blame him. The president is right, in part: The voters should...

WASHINGTON -- A tiny car company backed by former Vice President Al Gore has just gotten a $529 million U.S. government loan to help build a hybrid sports car in Finland that will sell for about $89,000. The award this week to California startup Fisker Automotive Inc. follows a $465 million government loan to Tesla Motors Inc., purveyors of a $109,000 British-built electric Roadster. Tesla is a California startup focusing on all-electric vehicles, with a number of celebrity endorsements that is backed by investors that have contributed to Democratic campaigns The awards to Fisker and Tesla have prompted concern from...

The Fisker Karma electric car, developed mainly with your tax money so that a bunch of rich VC’s wouldn’t have to risk any real money, has rolled out with an nominal EPA MPGe of 52. Not bad? Unfortunately, it’s a sham. This figure is calculated using the grossly flawed EPA process that substantially underestimates the amount of fossil fuels required to power the electric car, as I showed in great depth in an earlier Forbes.com article. In short, the EPA methodology leaves out, among other things, the conversion efficiency in generating the electricity from fossil fuels in the first place....

"Marty, you've got to come back with me! Back to the future!" It is one of those great bits from film history -- Doc Brown, the mad genius inventor from 1985's "Back to the Future," builds a time machine out of that iconic-but-failed sports car of the early 1980s, the DeLorean DMC-12. There is still a DeLorean Motor Co. of Humble, Texas, which supplies parts and occasionally builds new cars for DeLorean lovers, and it has now announced a new version -- a DeLorean powered entirely by electricity. "The car of the future has really become the car of the...

A group of gear heads from Croatia has produced a car designed to show that “electric vehicle” doesn’t have to mean “something my granola-eating neighbor drives.” Rimac Automobil, named for its founder, Mate Rimac, unveiled the Concept_One at the International Auto Show in Frankfurt. Designed as a sleek sports car it is powered entirely by batteries, and can, the company says, hit 62 miles per hour in 2.8 seconds, and reach a limit of 190 mph. The batteries carry 92 kilowatt-hours, or enough to power an average American home for three days -- or drive the car 372 miles, enough...

China's first foray into the American auto-market, the all-electric Coda, is now being sold at a dealership in Los Angeles, but it's not the vehicle some imagined. With a base price of $44,900, the Coda is $5k more than the Chevy Volt, almost $10k more than the Nissan Leaf, and is far from the cheap model competitors feared would kill their profits. In fact, much of the car is not even made in China. According to USA Today the Coda's innovative lithium ion phosphate that gets about 100-miles more per charge than competitors is made by a contractor in China,...

Wouldn’t you love to have an electric car? They’re clean, green and righteous. And once we make the switch, we can pull the plug on fossil fuels, air pollution, imported oil and Middle Eastern autocrats, and create millions of green jobs into the bargain. No wonder progressive governments are so eager to plow money into electric cars. This week, Ontario’s McGuinty government (which likes to brag that Ontario is Canada’s greenest province) showered Magna International with nearly $50-million to develop new electric vehicle technologies. Magna, which is rolling in dough, admits it doesn’t need the money. But in a world...

Saw this today when I stopped at a Goodwill on my route. (half price day for kids stuff. well worth it) It's right next to the handicap spots right up at the front. I parked there. My car, while gas powered, also requires it's electrical system to operate. What is even crazier. Most people who shop at goodwill can NOT afford a plug in electric. You can't even BUY a plug in electric in Minnesota right now. The manager was at the check out counter so I asked "hey, where is the free gas pump??" she looked at me funny...

So, I receive these emails that advertise what is on GovDeals and today I get an email pushing this wonderful electric car up for auction by the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. Usually the stuff at this site is well used and ready for selling. Not this one, it has less than 1900 miles. The car is a 2009 all electric vehicle that goes a top speed of 35 mph. Really burning up the road, here. This is probably why none of the staff wanted to drive it except as a novelty. I figure that this vehicle is exactly what...

Tampa Bay's first electric car station Updated: Thursday, 30 Jun 2011, 7:14 AM EDT Published : Thursday, 30 Jun 2011, 7:14 AM EDT TAMPA - Call it one small step toward making gas pumps a thing of the past. On Thursday, AAA Club South unveiled the first of 100 electric car charging stations at its offices in Palm Harbor and Westshore. The station was installed at the Westshore office, where FOX 13’s Jen Epstein spoke with AAA official Jessica Brady, and another is set to open in Palm Harbor in July. "You pull up, plug it in, push a button...

To speed along the success of the electric car, improvements in battery chemistry will matter as much as the price of oil. Batteries are now "part of the clean-tech boom, with all the dewy and righteous credibility of thin-film solar and offshore windmills," Seth Fletcher asserts in Bottled Lightning: Superbatteries, Electric Cars, and the New Lithium Economy. Righteous? Surely. Credible? Maybe. As Mr. Fletcher tells it, the history of batteries over the past 100 years is basically a series of failed efforts to power automobiles, with a recent fruitful detour into electronic gear. For a century we have been trying,...

PLAINVILLE, Conn. -- Gov. Dannel Malloy joined General Electric officials and employees Thursday in the unveiling of GE's electric vehicle solar carport in Plainville. The 216-by-40-foot, carport includes four hook-ups for plugging in electric cars, and all the power will come from the solar panels. Company officials said it's one of the largest solar carport projects in North America. They said it can provide clean energy alternatives to oil and biofuels and will last at least 25 years. "Living in an area where you drive less than 100 miles a day, which is really what most people do here, the...

Contact Information: Media Contact: Mary Simms, (415) 947-4270, simms.mary@epa.gov High Bay Area Gas Prices, Environmental Concerns Spur Greener Vehicles SAN FRANCISCO – U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Regional Administrator Jared Blumenfeld will hold a press conference to discuss a major fuel economy announcement at 12:45 p.m. on Wednesday, May 25 at Tesla Headquarters in Palo Alto. WHO: EPA Regional Administrator Jared Blumenfeld and Diarmuid O’Connell – Tesla’s VP of Corporate Development WHAT: Fuel Economy Announcement WHEN: Wednesday, May 25, 2011 at 12::45 p.m. WHERE: Tesla Motors, 3500 Deer Creek Road, Palo Alto, CA 94022 Enter into the main parking lot. Visitor...

It couldn't happen to a more pertinent person - and this is the moment TV motor mouth Jeremy Clarkson's car broke down in the middle of Lincoln city centre. Jeremy Clarkson and co-presenter James May were caught on camera pushing an electric vehicle they were testing for BBC's Top Gear. The pair were filming an episode of the show's forthcoming 17th season and had been challenged to road-test two of the latest electric cars. ...SNIP... But disaster struck at about 1pm when Clarkson's car ran out of power and broke down outside the local paper, the Lincolnshire Echo...

Makers of batteries for plug-in vehicles are in something of a tight spot. They are under considerable pressure to improve their products so that electric vehicles will be attractive to more drivers. But if they actually manage to come up with a radically improved battery, their breakthrough is likely to be met with skepticism — perhaps dealing a permanent blow to their reputation. Which brings us to DBM Energy, Lekker Energie and their converted Audi A2, powered by a Kolibri battery, which — according to DBM — traveled 375 miles without a recharge last fall. If such exceptional range didn’t...

Sure, you might get a carpool sticker and a tax break. But if you buy an electric car, will it make much environmental difference? Experts say that depends on three factors: What were you driving before? How is your electricity generated? And how many other electric cars are going to be sold? In many cases, people who trade gasoline-powered cars for electric ones won't be dramatically lessening the smog they emit. But when it comes to global warming, even when emissions from generating the electricity are taken into account, electric vehicles have a much smaller carbon footprint than gas-powered vehicles...

Peruse Chevrolet's February sales release, and you'll notice one number that's blatantly missing: the number of Chevy Volts sold. The number – a very modest 281 – is available in the company's detailed data (PDF), but it certainly isn't something that GM wants to highlight, apparently. Keeping the number quiet is a bit understandable, since it's lower than the 321 that Chevy sold in January. Nissan doesn't have anything to brag about here, either (and it didn't avoiding any mention of the Leaf sales in its press release). Why? Well, back in January, the company sold 87 Leafs. In February?...

In an effort to put 1 million electric cars on the road by 2015, the Obama administration has proposed a plan that would put up to $7,500 directly in the hands of car buyers without having them jump through any tax hoops. Plug-in car advocates love the idea but dealers aren't so sure about it. A tax credit for plug-in vehicles already exists but, as it stands now, car buyers have to wait until tax time to get any money back. [Snip] J.D. Power estimates that only about 20,000 EVs will be sold this year. If the rebate boosts that...

RUSH: I have here two stories on electric cars. If you are an electric car proponent, I just want to warn: You're not gonna enjoy this. You're not. These are news stories in the Washington Post. We have a news story at the American Spectator. The Washington Post story, the guy speculates. There were people stuck in the snow for six hours in their internal combustion cars. They ran outta gasoline in that big blizzard. This guy started calculating: What woulda happened had he been in an electric car? He mighta died, might have suffered freezing. He said the battery...

Further evidence that General Motors (GM) has made significant gains in rebuilding its business emerged Monday: Its long-anticipated Chevrolet Volt plug-in electric hybrid hatchback was named North American Car of the Year at the Detroit auto show. The Volt was joined by Ford Motor's (F) Explorer midsize sports-utility vehicle, which took the North American Truck of the Year honor. After about a 20-year run largely unchanged, the Explorer was redesigned for the 2011 model year, making it more car-like and fuel-efficient. Both vehicles went on sale in December. The Volt's selection for the Car of the Year award wasn't much...

Environmentalism: Sales of those planet-killing SUVs and trucks are rising while sales of "all-electric" vehicles are slower than expected. Saving the planet takes a back seat to safety and comfort. Ever since the first Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards were enacted, Americans have consistently rejected efforts by government and environmentalists to force them to drive what many deride as "clown cars." They've opted instead for full-size cars, SUVs and trucks that can actually carry a family and all its stuff in comfort and safety. The auto industry was particularly hard hit during this recession, so it's interesting to learn...

DETROIT (AP) -- This was the year General Motors Co. and Nissan made good on their promise to bring mass-produced electric cars to the market. But don't count on seeing one in traffic soon.

Saw this article today from a link a friend sent me. He thought it was cool. Apparently, the University of Stuttgart has designed a house that generates enough power that you can charge your electric vehicle without plugging into the power grid.

For almost 40 years, the world’s population has faced an indisputable fact: our energy needs are outpacing our supply. And now, the need for new energy technologies is more urgent than ever. When GE Global Research’s Bob King built his first electric car in 1972, he didn’t have the barest inkling of the energy problems yet to come — he just thought it was a cool idea. As an undergraduate at Pennsylvania’s Grove City College, King wrote a paper that claimed we would be driving electric vehicles within his lifetime. “After I graduated, suddenly I had some extra time, so...

BERLIN, Oct. 26 (UPI) -- An electric car developed by a German company Tuesday set what organizers said is a world record when it drove 375 miles without recharging its battery. GALLERY: Nissan launches new Fuga Hybrid Mirko Hannemann, 27, drove the yellow and purple all-electric Audi A2 in seven hours from Munich to Berlin, where he arrived Tuesday morning. German Economy Minister Rainer Bruederle, who jumped inside for a quick drive in the courtyard of his ministry, called Hannemann's trip a technological quantum leap. "No other electric car has gone to such a distance," he said. Japanese scientists drove...

A leading British academic has been killed after her tiny electric car was involved in a crash. Dr Judit Nadal, 47, died after her blue G-Wiz collided with a Skoda Octavia.

Green Technology: Government Motors' all-electric car isn't all-electric and doesn't get near the touted hundreds of miles per gallon. Like "shovel-ready" jobs, maybe there's no such thing as "plug-ready" cars either. The Chevy Volt, hailed by the Obama administration as the electric savior of the auto industry and the planet, makes its debut in showrooms next month, but it's already being rolled out for test drives by journalists. It appears we're all being taken for a ride. When President Obama visited a GM plant in Hamtramck near Detroit a few months ago to drive a Chevy Volt 10 feet off...

Smoke and “possible fire” behind a headlamp led Tesla Motors to recall a third of the 1,300 electric sportscars it has sold so far... So far, Tesla has sold about 1,300 of the expensive Roadsters, which cost $109,000 a piece. This recall affects 439 cars.

EPA fines Tesla Electric Motors $275,000 for non-compliance Posted on August 31, 2010 by Anthony Watts In bureaucracy, truth is often stranger than fiction. A non polluting electric car company gets slammed with fine for “non compliance” for a car that can’t produce any emissions. That’s weird enough by itself, but even weirder is what else is in the company’s Securities and Exchange Commission report under what they cite as “risks”. Here’s the relevant page of the report where they talk about risks, including the $275,000 fine from the EPA. Note what is highlighted under that. They headline that with:...

Motorists considering buying an electric car are being warned that they can be more expensive to run than conventional petrol vehicles. Nissan is due to start taking UK orders for what it says will be the world's first mass-produced electric car. It says running costs for the Nissan Leaf will be as low as 1p a mile. But figures given to the BBC by a rival car firm suggest that over three years, electric cars could be more expensive to run than their petrol equivalents. The figures come from the Japanese car-maker Mitsubishi, which also produces an electric car.

As everyone knows by now, GM’s entry into the electric car market--the Chevy Volt--costs $41,000 before tax breaks. After the tax breaks, you can happily drive one off the lot for $33,000 ... if you can ignore those guilt pangs knowing your fellow Americans have chipped in $8,000 to your new ride. Welfare for the sanctimonious? Meanwhile, back in the real world, there are plenty of great cars you can buy for less than $41,000 or even less than $33,000--and honestly. Here are my picks (in alphabetical order).

Industrial Policy: The administration's electric car represents both the genius of American technology and the stupidity of its government. Imagine Rube Goldberg with $50 billion. Buy now and get a free 40-mile-long extension cord. It wasn't exactly Michael Dukakis riding in a tank wearing a Snoopy helmet, but it was close. President Obama, who reportedly hasn't driven an inch himself since taking office, visited a GM plant in Hamtramck near Detroit on Friday to drive a Chevy Volt 10 feet off an assembly line. It was a perfect image, as the American economy is being driven off a cliff by...

How much is a new Chevy Volt electric car worth?The sticker price is $41,000. However, with federal subsidies, you could pay as little as $33,500. Additional subsidies provided by the state of California could knock it down even lower, for residents of the Golden State. So whatÂ’s the price?$41,000, of course. The subsidies just mean you donÂ’t pay all of it. The utterly bankrupt federal government takes money from other taxpayers, and uses it to discount your purchase. Since California is teetering on the edge of total collapse, and may well require federal bailouts in the near future, taxpayers across...

The long-anticipated Chevrolet Volt, General Motors' electric car, will cost $41,000, the company announced Tuesday, leaving consumers to decide whether its environmental appeal is worth a price far above that of similarly sized conventional autos. Electric-car technology has been around for years, but the high cost to make the vehicles has prevented automakers from producing them for the mass market. The price announcements for the Volt and its electric rival, the Nissan Leaf, have been highly anticipated as a result. Nissan, the only other major manufacturer expected to bring such a vehicle to market this year, said the Leaf will...

DETROIT — The Chevrolet Volt, a plug-in car capable of driving about 40 miles at a time on battery power without using any gasoline, will have a sticker price of $41,000 before a $7,500 federal tax credit, General Motors said Tuesday. G.M. will also lease the Volt for $350 a month in the hopes of attracting consumers who want lower monthly payments or would hesitate to buy the vehicle until they are more comfortable with its technology. The carmaker has begun taking orders for the Volt, using the Web site to direct consumers to a participating dealer. Dealers in selected...

Mark Bush says building his own electric car has been a labor of love. He spent about $ 20,000. His car can reach speeds up to 60 miles per hour.

WASHINGTON – The White House plans to promote its work to develop electric cars this week, dispatching administration officials across the nation to discuss advanced batteries and new vehicles powered by electricity. President Barack Obama will travel to Holland, Mich., on Thursday for the groundbreaking of a Compact Power Inc. factory, which received $151 million from a federal stimulus program to open the $303 million plant. The factory is expected to manufacture lithium ion cells and employ about 450 people by 2013. Pushing clean energy, Obama has vowed to bring 1 million plug-in hybrid vehicles to U.S. highways by 2015...

Ground was broken Wednesday on a $100 million carbon fiber production plant in Moses Lake, Wash., that’s being built by BMW Group and SGL Group. The factory will manufacture carbon fiber for BMW’s proposed energy-efficient “Megacity Vehicle.”

The federal government is rethinking the way to calculate fuel-efficiency ratings for electric vehicles, a move that will likely result in a significant reduction in the miles-per-gallon claims some auto makers have touted for the battery-powered cars they plan to launch later this year. Using a preliminary formula released by the Environmental Protection Agency, General Motors Co. last year announced its Chevy Volt would be rated at 230 miles per gallon in city driving, and Nissan Motor Co. said its Leaf electric car would get the equivalent of 367 mpg. But now the agency is in the midst of finalizing...