Honda Smart Home Integrates EV Into House
Adding eMobility To Zero Carbon Living Honda has a view of the future that might include not only plugging your electric car into your house, … Read more
Electric Cars
Top 10 MPG Best-Sellers of 2014 (January-June)
Overall, 2014 has been a good one for the automotive market and generally the alternatives – diesels, plug-in hybrids and pure electric cars – have been outpacing the market. The big question mark is the hybrid market.
Ford Restates MPG on 6 Cars
Today Ford announced what most of the motoring world already knew – the claimed fuel economy on several of its gasoline, hybrid and plug-in hybrid cars are pretty tough to reach in the real world. In a deal with the EPA, Ford said it would be recalibrating
Top 10 Best-Selling High-MPG Cars of 2014 (January-March)
While overall sales languished a mere 1.3 percent above the first quarter of 2013, high-mileage electric cars, plug-in hybrids, and clean diesels continued a torrid pace similar to what they were experiencing during most of last year. The only laggard in this group was gas-electric hybrids, which dropped almost 16 percent compared to last year, based heavily on declining sales of several Prius models.
Electric Car Charging Etiquette
Mixing cars that need to be plugged in with traditional vehicles has created a whole new interaction. Here are some of the rules.
Texas Dealers Stymie Tesla
Tesla Motors, seller of the much desired Tesla Model S, is no foreigner to the realm of legislative battles. Within more than a few states, including New York and North Carolina, Tesla has managed to win lawsuits and prevent blockage of their non-dealership sales technique, resulting in more of the electric luxury cars on the road than ever.
Unfortunately, Tesla seems to have hit a wall in Texas.
Tesla Battles With Dealers and State Legislatures
Tesla has set out from the beginning to challenge everything in the auto industry. Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk characterizes himself as an outsider selling a an electric car the auto industry has said it couldn’t build or sell and he set up a network of dealers and chargers all owned by his company. The vertical integration might be something a founding titan like Henry Ford might have appreciated, but it has run into problems in 21st century automotive retail business world.
The issue is state-by-state franchise laws, which set up the conditions for the retail sale of automobiles. They have a long history, rooted in protection for local businesses against potential predatory practices by the deeper pockets of a factory-owned store. Consumer protections are also a part of the franchise system, in theory guaranteeing local recourse for any issue a consumer might have with a product that could have been produced on the other side of the globe.
Tesla argues that the model, like the auto industry itself, is dated and not reflective of new world of electric cars and online ordering. In addition, Tesla says as a start-up it poses little threat to larger, established dealerships and as a purveyor of online pure electric cars, it needs factory control to ensure the educational message about this new technology is fully transmitted.
Toyota is “all in” on fuel cell electric vehicles
The race to provide the car of the future is heating up and it should surprise no one that one of the world’s largest car companies, Toyota, is right in the middle of chase to provide it. For Toyota, that future car is powered by a fuel cell that produces electricity on-board from hydrogen.
Smart EV Wins Best Eco Car Award
ACEEE ranks the Top 10 environmental cars and finds smaller is better and small hybrids are best, although it found the smallest electric car sold in America as the best of the best.
10 Best Engines Named By Magazine
Ward’s 10 Best Engines contest hits its 20th anniversary but the field of contestants has changed. Winners this year were led by three diesel engines, an electric motor and a three-cylinder gas engine.