Electric
-
Following on from its Escooter electric two-wheeler concept at last year’s Paris Auto Show, Smart has rolled out a new open-top ‘speedster’ based on the brand’s Fortwo Electric Drive minicar. The new vehicle is called the Forspeed and it’s scheduled to make its world debut in concept form at the 2011 Geneva Motor Show next week. The Forspeed completes Smart’s electric range, which in addition to this latest speedster includes the aforementioned Fortwo Electric Drive and Escooter, as well as a bicycle. The Forspeed will be the perfect tool for quick city...
-
Urban Transport Of The Future? Bike Meets Car With E-3POD
The Royal College of Art in London, England has produced some of the auto industry's top design talent for 40 years now and attracts budding car designers from all around the world. On occasion, they hold competitions for their top talent to design vehicles of the future, mixing the best in car...
Antony Ingram -
Ruf Announces Trials Of ‘eRuf’ Electric Porsche 911 Fleet
In the same week that Porsche unveiled its own in-house developed electric Boxster E, one of the automaker’s longtime tuners, Ruf, announced plans for its own trials of a small fleet of electric Porsche 911 prototypes. Ruf is probably most widely recognized for its wild modified Porsches such...
Viknesh Vijayenthiran -
2011 Geneva Motor Show: Three World Premieres For Toyota
We already know that Toyota will be unveiling an updated version of its FT-86 rear-wheel drive sports car concept at next month’s 2011 Geneva Motor Show, the aptly named FT-86 II, which we saw a teaser of last month, but now the Japanese auto giant has confirmed several other world premieres...
Viknesh Vijayenthiran -
2011 Nissan ESFLOW Concept Live Photos
The Nissan ESFLOW electric sports car concept isn’t scheduled to be unveiled until the 2011 Geneva Motor Show in just a couple of weeks but we have live images of the car, which were taken at a special media presentation held earlier today in Frankfurt, Germany. Most of its specs are already...
Viknesh Vijayenthiran -
Porsche Unveils Boxster E Electric Prototype
Last year Porsche made the startling announcement that the company was looking into the concept of an electric sports car and had already built three prototypes based on the mid-engine Boxster, with an aim to eventually develop a production version. Today the automaker has revealed the first of its...
Viknesh Vijayenthiran -
Just a few days ago we reported that BMW would be bringing a new roadster concept to the 2011 Geneva Motor Show, and today, just a few weeks out from the show, the wraps have come off the stunning new concept car. Rather than preview a specific production model--though we could envisage this being a baby ‘Z2’ roadster--the new BMW concept has been designed to showcase new developments in the fields of drive systems and intelligent networking of the driver. Dubbed the BMW Vision ConnectedDrive, the new concept vehicle demonstrates current and future methods of mobile networking...
-
Report: BMW May Lease First Batch Of Megacity Vehicles
With the launch of its new Megacity Vehicle, BMW’s first production vehicle with an electric drivetrain and full carbon fiber construction, the luxury automaker will essentially be launching a whole new class of vehicle. It will be technologically advanced, fun-to-drive and premium, yet it...
Viknesh Vijayenthiran -
Tesla Model S Crossover Coming To 2011 Frankfurt Auto Show?
We've known since 2009 that Tesla has plans for a crossover and a minivan based on the Model S platform, but now it looks like the crossover, dubbed the Model X, may soon take shape, with a possible debut, at least in concept form, at the 2011 Frankfurt Auto Show. Tesla can do the many-hats thing...
Nelson Ireson -
2011 Nissan LEAF And Others 'Connected To The Cloud'
Cloud computing is very much a feature of 'Web 2.0'. Rather than using a location-dependent center of resources such as a server, cloud computing uses shared servers, all of which can be used to provide resources, software and data. For Average Joe, this might mean using web-based word processing...
Antony Ingram -
Report: BMW Working On New Electric Car For China Based On 5-Series
BMW is set to launch a hybrid version of its 5-Series sedan, the production version of the ActiveHybrid 5 concept, later this year, but according to a new report the automaker is also working on an all-electric model based on the same platform. According to a report out of the Beijing Youth Daily...
Viknesh Vijayenthiran -
Venturi Establishes U.S. Operations, Unveils America EV Concept
We first heard about Monaco’s Venturi Automobiles back in the early days of 2006, back when the company was first touting the benefits of zero-emission electric vehicles with the Tesla Roadster rivaling Fetish and unveiling wacky concepts like the Eclectic ‘autonomous energy’...
Viknesh Vijayenthiran -
The last we heard of Tesla’s upcoming Model S all-electric sedan was that the car was in an ‘Alpha’ build stage, where akin to the software industry the Model S is in its first rough draft of the final product. Today at the 2011 Detroit Auto Show we got to see a bit more of the Model S than we bargained for, with Tesla showcasing a ‘body-in-white’ example to the press. In the car industry, body-in-white refers to the development stage where a car’s sheet metal components have been welded together--but before moving parts (doors, hoods, and deck lids as well...
-
Crashed Volvo C30 Electric Car On Display At 2011 Detroit Auto Show
Volvo has some ambitious plans for the future. In addition to the market launch of a plug-in hybrid in 2012, work is currently under way on evaluating the viability of an entirely electric-powered car as well as range-extended electric car fitted with a hydrogen fuel cell. The automaker well...
Viknesh Vijayenthiran -
Report: Volkswagen Considering Production Of Electric Up Taxi Concept
Over the past 12 months or so Volkswagen has unveiled three all-electric taxi concept vehicles based around its Up small car platform. These included the previous Berlin and Milano Taxi concepts, and now this new London Taxi. While the cars themselves are nothing to rave about, the possibility that...
Viknesh Vijayenthiran -
Report: Chevrolet Planning Volt-Based ‘Amp’ For 2011 Detroit Auto Show
Since the very beginning of GM’s reinvention of the electric car, we’ve known that the automaker would eventually launch a whole range of vehicles based around its common ‘Voltec’ range-extended electric drivetrain. The first car, of course, being the new 2011 Chevrolet...
Viknesh Vijayenthiran -
Tesla Follows BMW’s Lead And Rolls Out Roadster Art Car
If you were thinking this psychedelic paint scheme on this Tesla Roadster looks familiar then you would be thinking straight as the design is very similar to the one on BMW’s own art car revealed back in June. However, the Tesla is the latest creation of artist Laurence Gartel who transformed...
Viknesh Vijayenthiran -
Video: OMG Fabio Is Alive And He's Hawking Electric Cars
The life of a model/actor is hard. "Oh, right", you say, "lying on a sofa and staring vacantly into a bank of cameras is way tougher than military service or manual labor or having no job at all." But hey, we've seen All About Eve and Valley of the Dolls and America's Next Top Model. Like Gina...
Richard Read -
Electric vehicle backers love to tout the fact that the so-called green vehicles don’t produce any emissions and don’t rely on dirty fossil fuels dug up out of the ground, but at the end of the day their electrical energy has to come from somewhere--and more often than not it comes from said fossil fuels, which are burned in power stations all across the globe. Audi is one automaker that’s backing a clean solution: solar energy. At its main plant in Ingolstadt, Audi e-tron models will in future have their batteries charged with electrical energy obtained directly from...
-
Honda Shows Off Fit EV Concept And Plug-In Hybrid Platform In L.A.
Honda has been slow to the game when it comes to plug-in hybrids and all-electric vehicles but today at the 2010 Los Angeles Auto Show the automaker proved that it was not completely in the dark in this area. Honda unveiled a new version of its Fit compact car powered by an electric drivetrain, as...
Viknesh Vijayenthiran -
Neil Young Warehouse Fire Started By One-Off LincVolt Hybrid
Turns out the $800,000 warehouse fire suffered by Neil Young that we reported on last week was caused by the recording artist’s one-off LincVolt hybrid vehicle. The LincVolt isn’t a production model but a custom ride based on a 1959 Lincoln Continental packed with an electric motor, an...
Viknesh Vijayenthiran -
Ron Howard: If Electric Cars Can't Be Gay, The Terrorists Have Won
If you keep up with Hollywood and/or the car scene, chances are pretty good that you're aware of the whole "Electric cars are gay" conflamma surrounding Ron Howard's new film, The Dilemma. But just in case you've been out of the loop, here's what you need to know: (a) there's a new movie called The...
Richard Read -
Volvo Starts Development Of Fuel Cell Range-Extended Electric Vehicles
Volvo has some ambitious plans for the future. In addition to the market launch of a plug-in hybrid in 2012, work is currently under way on evaluating the viability of an entirely electric-powered car and now we can add hydrogen-powered fuel cells to that list--but with a twist. Volvo is...
Viknesh Vijayenthiran -
2010 Paris Auto Show: Volvo DRIVe Electric Headed To Test Fleets
New Volvo Cars president and CEO Stefan Jacoby made his first official appearance in the position at the Paris Motor Show, introducing the new V60 sport wagon, along with performance-themed R-Design versions of the S60 and V60—and, surprisingly, emphasizing the importance of electrification...
Bengt Halvorson