Electric car

During a rally in Michigan, President Trump mocked electric cars, but it sounded like he had a few questions about the technology. Here, we try to answer them. Expand
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Despite an impressive amount of innovation in the electric vehicle industry, it’s not every day that a new electric vehicle is debuted with such a successful pre-order period. That’s why news of the Microlino surpassing $100 million in pre-orders is so promising.

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The electric car revolution always had a perceived chicken and egg problem with charging infrastructure. This perception is starting to dissipate as both industries are growing rapidly side by side.

A new report on the status of the U.S. EV charging industry is giving us a new look at the market and confirms that over 50,000 charge points (public and private) are now in operation in the country. Expand
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A new study from iseecars.com shows that out of the 10 fastest-selling used cars on the market in the US today, 6 of them have plugs – 3 plug-in hybrids and 3 fully electric vehicles.

The top spot belongs to the fully electric Fiat 500e, followed by the BMW i3.  The i3 is listed in the study as a plug-in hybrid, despite the base model being electric – we’re not sure if the two models were counted separately or just bundled together for the purposes of this study.  Both the i3 and 500e have been popular on the used market in the last year, as many of the cars have been coming off 3-year leases, putting a bunch of lightly-used lease return electric cars on the market at attractive prices.

Also in the top 10 are the Prius Plug-in in 4th place, the Nissan LEAF in 6th place, and the Ford Fusion Energi and Tesla Model S rounding out the list in 9th and 10th.

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We have seen some pretty strange electric car charging solutions in the past, like solar panels deploying out of a car or chargers attached to a bear, but that’s something else.

A giraffe-looking electric car charging station powered by both solar and wind. Expand
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The auto industry is once again attempting to slow down the rollout of electric vehicles.

Virtually all automakers, except for Tesla of course, have sent a letter to the Chinese government in an attempt to have them drastically weaken their zero-emission vehicle mandate. Expand
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In a future where the world’s car fleet is rapidly transitioning to electric vehicles, gas stations will be forcefully downgraded to simple convenience stores and consequently, they will lose a significant revenue stream brought in by people stopping for gas but buying something at the convenience store.

Some oil companies have accepted that the transition is happening and started installing electric vehicle chargers at their gas stations. Shell is the latest major company to jump on board. Expand
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U.S. regulators took an outrageous amount of time to decide on this fairly simple issue, but now it’s finally here. The U.S. Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) announced today that electric and hybrid cars will need to emit a sound at up to 19 mph to protect pedestrians.

The sound emitting device will need to be in all new electric and hybrid cars manufactured starting in September 2019. Expand
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In the US, carbon dioxide emissions from electricity generation, primarily coal, have long been the main air polluter in the country, but it’s about to change. Continuing its long declining trend since the 2008 financial crisis, emissions from electricity generation are about to be surpassed by emissions from the transportation sector in the US. Expand
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Today at High Tech XL in the Netherlands, Amber Mobility unveiled their weekly €33 ($37) subscription based service that will allow users to find a shared electric vehicle, called the Amber One, whenever, and wherever for their business or personal use. Unlike the ride-sharing concept that Spiri envisions, Amber Mobility hopes to offer the public the ability to ‘own’ an EV, without actually owning it.

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You might remember the article that we wrote a month ago about the Danish startup, Spiri, that is looking to offer a new twist on carpooling services. Combining the ideas of car sharing networks, like car2go, and ride-sharing services, like UberPool, all into one business, Spiri will aim to be the first company to provide its own fleet of electric vehicles for passengers to drive for free in exchange for picking up riders going the same direction who will then pay a small fee similar to other forms of public transport except with the added benefit of driving you all the way to your end destination.

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With our recent piece about the converted VW Karmann Ghia, we thought it would only be appropriate to share with y’all the experience that Fully Charged had with the all-electric converted 1965 VW Beetle from Electric Classic Cars, which they nicknamed the ‘Voltswagen.’

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A new all-electric VW has hit the roads! No, we aren’t talking about all the EVs that Volkswagen Group has been hinting at and announcing recently. We are talking about a project from an aspiring mechanical engineer who converted a classic 1969 VW Karmann Ghia into an all-electric car with the help of his father.

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After covering Scott Masterson’s Bayliner 175 all-electric boat conversion last month, we have now learned of another interesting electric conversion. Electric vehicle enthusiast, Rich Rudman, transformed a 1984 4×4 Toyota extra-cab pickup truck into an EV with batteries from a Nissan Leaf.

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Students at the Academic Motorsports Club of Zurich (AMZ) in Switzerland announced that they broke the world record of electric car acceleration with a small vehicle built for the Formula SAE. The group released a video of the race car, called ‘grimsel‘,  accelerating from 0 to 62 mph (100 km/h) in just 1.513 seconds. Expand
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Earlier this year – not long after the Dieselgate scandal – the Volkswagen Group announced a new direction for its lineup of vehicles with a plan to introduce 20 new electric vehicles through the group’s brands by the end of the decade.

Today, the automaker extended the timeline to 2025 and said that it will introduce “more than 30 new electric vehicles during the next 10 years”. Earlier this year, CEO Matthias Müller was talking about both all-electric and plug-in hybrids, but now he is making a statement to go all-electric and confirmed that the “more than 30 new models” will all be “purely battery-powered electric vehicles (BEVs)”. Expand
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It looks like Germany is about to become the first major country to set an official deadline for a ban on gas-powered cars. India recently confirmed that it is evaluating a scheme for all its fleet to be electric by 2030 and both the Dutch government and the Norwegian government are discussing the possibility to ban gas-powered car sales and only allow electric vehicle sales starting also by 2025.

But while the Netherlands and Norway are fighting over the technicalities, a senior government official in Germany confirmed they will impose a mandate for all new cars registered in the country to be emissions free by 2030. Expand
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GreentechMedia did the work to determine “Solar Made Up 64% of New Electric Generating Capacity in the US in Q1 2016.” This first quarter is part a potential 119% growth in the solar industry in 2016 – greater than $30 billion in revenue. And these announcements are on top of many other recent solar proclamations – 1,000,000 rooftops, record low pricing, leadership in jobs count and growth, whole countries running on renewables and more. With the Earth setting record warm months, every single month, its good that solar power is becoming sexy – but can we keep up the pace long enough to win the war?

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Yesterday, 9to5Mac.com reported that Apple Inc has founded a new, fully owned, subsidiary known as Apple Energy and that this entity had applied to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC regulates power companies) to be able to sell electricity and other power grid services to anyone that is not a public utility. Does this mean that you can now buy clean electricity made on the roof of the Apple Spaceship? Unless you are a large corporate electricity user within 10-30 miles, probably not. However if we step back and take a broader view, something interesting is happening – the likes of Apple, Google, Ikea and others including even Walmart are showing us a small piece of the future of much smarter electricity grid owned by many instead of the few.

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I managed to come into a lease of a Ford Focus Electric starting in August 2013, and this is my review of my time with it. For a little bit more background on me, and my newest primary car, please check out my review of my Cadillac ELR here.

The Ford Focus Electric (FFE) is an excellent first all-electric car to market. Coming out starting in 2012, there was not much competition, and in my opinion it was the best all-electric on the market at the time.

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