Electric

Can an electric race car get within three minutes of the all-time record up Pikes Peak? Team Yokohama and AC Propulsion want to find out.

Renault might not sell any cars in the United States but that won't stop them moving into town. With partner Nissan the international group has opened a research and development office in the heart of Mountain View, Silicon Valley. The Renault-Nissan Alliance was created in 1999 and now sells one...

Google built its reputation as a small, simple search engine, but there's nothing small about the company's investment in electric vehicles. Google has just placed an order for 30 Nissan Leafs and Chevrolet Volts, as well as 250 EV charging stations from Coulomb Technologies. Google will add the...

One of those pesky, little complaints that today's electric car just can't live down is the fact that it can't quite perform at the same level as its dirtier, gas-pumping brethren. It can't travel as far. It can't drive as fast. And it may just leave you for dead in the middle of nowhere. But the...

Volvo showed us its C30 Electric zero-emissions hatchback at the 2011 Detroit Auto Show back in January, which included a crashed example with the car's expensive battery pack fully intact, but now the automaker has confirmed that customer leases are about to start. Unfortunately, those leases are...

The Tesla Model S electric sedan is on track for a market debut in the middle of next year, although the production version of the car is scheduled to be revealed at the end of this year. We say production version as we’ve already seen a number of Model S sedans in the past, though all of...

Nissan has announced that its Leaf Nismo RC Concept electric race car concept from the recent 2011 New York Auto Show will be making a demonstration run at the Le Mans Vers Le Futur, a support event for the 79th running of the 24 Hours of Le Mans. The Leaf Nismo RC was never meant to be a one-off...

If you own a computer, chances are good that you’ve got it tied into a battery backup just in case the power goes down while you’re hard at work, ignoring the adage to “save early, save often”. If you work in IT, you may even have massive uninterruptable power supply (UPS)...

Though the car is officially in production, there’s still no sign that deliveries of the Fisker Karma plug-in hybrid luxury sedan in the U.S. are about to start despite continuous claims that the car is coming. Despite the setbacks, Fisker managed to roll out one example of the svelte sedan...

In an internal combustion engine, fuel is burned to power the engine, but as a result a lot of heat is also produced. Most of that heat in ordinary vehicles is wasted; but what if you could catch the energy from the heat, turn it into electricity, and use it to increase your fuel efficiency? Well...

Porsche may not be the first name you think of when you think electric cars--Tesla, Nissan, Chevrolet, even Smart are more likely--but that may change, especially if you're into speed and handling. Porsche recently reaffirmed its promise of a year ago to build electric performance cars. A year ago...

Feeling lazy? Don't feel like driving home from work tonight? Sounds like an autonomous car would be right up your street... ZMP's RoboCar doesn't quite have the aesthetics or practicality (and especially not the performance) of Google's automated Toyota Prius, but the technology it demonstrates is...

In 2009 Swiss engineering and design firm Protoscar unveiled its first Lampo electric sports car prototype, and just one year later the firm unveiled the follow up to the original Lampo, the aptly named Lampo2. Now, almost exactly two years after the unveiling of the first Lampo prototype, the guys...

The Nissan Leaf Nismo RC electric race car is an intriguing look at the (very likely) inevitable future of motorsports, and the day we're all talking in volts, amps, and kilowatt-hours instead of horsepower and fuel capacity may not be that far off as we saw yesterday with the Formulec EF01. While...

Meet the Formulec EF01, a truly awesome single-seater electric race car which combines speed and efficiency with sustainability and respect for the environment. Designed and created by South African firm Formulec and its technology partner SEGULA Technologies, the new electric race car is capable...

Over in the UK, a relatively new company by the name of Delta Motorsport and based at the famous Silverstone race circuit, has designed and built from the ground up a sporty coupe with a distinct sportback design and zero-emission electric drivetrain. The company boasts a 0-60 mph time of less than...

Late last year we first told you about a new development and testing center established by Audi exclusively for its electric drive systems near its headquarters in Ingolstadt, Germany. Now we have an inside look at another electric car development center belonging to Audi, this time at a satellite...

Still unsure if the $100,000-plus Tesla Roadster is for you? Well, Tesla is hoping to change all that with its latest promotional effort, the Drive Change Electric Roadster Tour, which will see the company’s iconic Roadster paraded across the country in order to convince buyers that electric...

Electric vehicles, of both the two- and four-wheeled variety, commonly use a single gear ratio, thanks to the instant-on torque band of electric motors. Sometimes that's not ideal, however, and Brammo has developed a new system to better emulate the performance of gasoline-powered sportbikes with...

We've long lamented the fact that Peugeot's exotic-looking, relatively high-performance EX1 Concept electric car won't be seeing production. The latest feat, a 9-minute, 1.338-second lap of the Nurburgring's Nordschleife just makes the pain worse. The time is nearly a minute quicker than the...