Chevy Volt

Chevy Volt

Cost-cutting plans include a weight reduction of the 3,700-pound car and a switch to a dedicated platform, rather than the use of the gasoline-powered Cruze platform.[read more]

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When it comes to consumer products, environmentalists generally don’t encourage people to buy new and buy now. But that’s what we're about to do because electric cars are significantly cleaner than gasoline vehicles, and driving one can save you serious cash at the pump.[read more]

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Several states are proposing a gas tax on vehicles produced in 2015 or later that get 55 miles per gallon or more. Cars like the Chevy Volt, Nissan Leaf will incur this per-mile fee.[read more]

Chevy Volt

After a difficult first year in 2011, sales of the Chevy Volt shot up to a respectable 23,461 car sales for 2012 — driven largely by consumer demand reacting to high gas prices.[read more]

electric vehicle

For those of you who always wanted an electric vehicle but the near $36,000 price tag was a deal-breaker: your time has come. Nissan took the first step, announcing last month an 18 percent price cut.[read more]

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This article presents an analysis of alternatives to reduce CO2 emissions, including annual operating costs, annual CO2 emissions, and CO2 emission reduction cost per ton.[read more]

In March, sales of hybrid, plug-in, and clean diesel cars grew significantly in the United States, casting a positive light on the emerging low emission transportation industry.According to statistics compiled by HybridCars.com and Baum & Associates, a Michigan-based market research firm focusing on automotive issues, hybrids sales...[read more]

A recent story in the New York Times says it takes 26 years to break even if you buy a Chevy Volt rather than a Chevy Cruze. But a closer look at the math reveals that figure is questionable.[read more]

Photo by Maarten Takens via Flickr

In short, while some recent news has been discouraging, the energy challenges of the world have not changed and the smart money, or at least a good bit of it, is still betting on batteries. After what was certainly some irrational exuberance in the last few years about the short term prospects of full electric drive, we may yet look back at 2012 as the time when the real deals were done, and the real foundations were laid, in a technology that will still one day power much of the world.[read more]

The bright side of the Volt fire is that it may just show the way for American companies and American technology to get a leg up in the advanced battery race. Let’s see product safety as an opportunity, not as a threat. Let’s encourage the NHTSA and other agencies of state and federal government to require the highest levels of safety possible in EV batteries. Safety is something we do very well as a country (relatively speaking). Let’s use that advantage to put American workers and American technology to work building safe advanced batteries for EV’s.[read more]

Electric vehicle sales disappointed their manufacturers in 2011, but don’t get discouraged about this technology just yet.[read more]

As initial safety problems go, these initial problems with electric vehicles have gone as well as anyone could have hoped. No one was killed or injured. No serious property damage has occurred. The right questions are being asked and better post-accident procedures put in place. Most importantly, we are starting down the necessary path of educating consumers and first responders about how to operate electric vehicles safely. As that education continues and public familiarity increases, so will public comfort with the technology.[read more]

Last week I had the pleasure to drive the Chevy Volt for the first time (and let me tell you, it’s fun to drive). The owner was an early adopter, but doesn’t have the psychographic profile that you would assume: he’s not an environmentalist, he’s not particularly concerned with escalating gas prices, and he’s not typically an early...[read more]

If someone says, “electric car” to you, what image pops into your head? For most folks I have spoken to, images like the tiny Smart Car or a two-door roadster usually come to mind first. But yesterday at the first day of Plug In 2011 that image changed in my mind when I saw first-hand that the electric car has grown up and grown bigger....[read more]

Nissan Leaf is losing ground to its hybrid competitor the Chevy Volt. In fact, some report that Volt has been kicking Leaf's butt -- or at least blowing Leafs off of the lawn? So Nissan has decided to take on Volt the old-fashioned way: with a TV spot that CNET featured this morning and that will air on June 12 during the NBA Finals....[read more]