electric car

Tesla Motors Gains Credibility
Making cars is hard, and Tesla is trying to improve its luck by hiring Mike Donoughe, a former Chrysler executive who has shown in the past that he can get things done. He will become Tesla Motors' Vice President of vehicle engineering and manufacturing. Mr. Donoughe could have got a job at any car company, so it's a good sign that he thinks the future is in electric cars, and it's also a vote of confidence for young Californian electric car company.

Next Step: Model S
And Tesla will need all the smart people it can get if it wants its

Electric Mini Cooper: Glass Half-Full or Half-Empty?
Are you an optimist or a pessimist? Following VW's announcement that it would make a limited number of its 1-Liter 282 MPG car, BMW says that it will build 500 electric Mini Coopers for the Californian market. Now the optimist might say: "That's great! They're more likely to go from limited to full production than from nothing to production!". The pessimist is probably thinking: "Ok, California has a mandate for automakers to make 7,500 zero-emissions cars by 2014. That's probably why we...

Mitsubishi's i MiEV Electric Car is Ahead of Schedule
A couple months ago, we got our hands on Mitsubishi's roadmap for its i MiEV electric car. The plan was to lease a few units to fleet customers first in 2009 and then launch it in 2010 (with a focus on Japan, but also in North-America and Europe), but reality is turning out better than even the optimists thought.

Japanese Launch: Summer 2009
The new plan is to launch the retail version of the i MiEV electric car in Japan in the summer of 2009. The reasons are "...

Tesla Electric Car Factory in the Bay Area
This story is still breaking, but here's what we know so far: The Tesla Motors electric car factory that was supposed to be built in New Mexico will instead be built in California, in the Bay Area, thanks to help from governor Schwarzenegger (a $9 million incentive package is mentioned by TechCrunch).

Whitestar Electric Sedan now "Model S"
From the start, we knew that Tesla's plan was to start at the top of the market with the Electric Roadster, and then progressively move down. The second step is an a...

Evisol makes "integrated solutions" for electric and hybrid vehicles (including boats). Drivetrains, batteries, that kind of stuff. How better to demonstrate their skills than by making an electric car of their own? Meet the Thorr electric roadster, a proud relative of the classic Lotus Super 7 concept.

Simplicity is the name of the game here. Low complexity, low weight. A car stripped of all the bells and whistles, except for the state of the art electric drivetrain. No ABS, power assisted braking, gearbox, power assisted steering, any form of sound absorption, not even a roof and a windshield (okay, that might be a bit overkill, but they'll probably tweak it some mo...

BYD, China's biggest battery maker, isn't wasting any time carving its niche in the new world of electric cars and plug-in hybrids. It all started with the F6DM plug-in hybrid sedan, followed by the smaller and less expensive F3DM plug-in hybrid compact car.

Now BYD has introduced its E6 electric car at the Beijing International Auto Show. It takes the shape of a crossover, or MPV, and will be built on on the F6's platform (same as the