Ah, yes, forwarded emails with subject lines like, “The real story behind …” or “Things you haven’t been told about ….” They can contain much misinformation, and their “facts” can spread at digita…
Author: John Voelcker
Step aside, Boomers: New electric-car buyers in Northeast may be Millennials
A new survey of Northeastern drivers suggests the demographics of future electric-car buyers in that region may evolve from the Baby Boomers who’ve bought most of them so far to Millennial buyers who see them as an inevitable part of a tech-focus…
10 lessons from the short life of the Chevy Volt, 2011-2019
On February 15, GM ended production of the innovative Chevrolet Volt with little fanfare. Over two generations and nine model years, the company sold more than 150,000 of the compact plug-in hybrid hatchbacks. In automotive time, nine model years isn&r…
Toyota and Kenworth to build 10 fuel-cell semis for LA port duty
The word “drayage” isn’t commonly used, even among green-car fans, but it’s used by the shipping and logistics industries to refer to the transport of goods over short distances. Drayage turns out to be the sweet spot for early efforts to put zero-emis…
Toyota’s newest self-driving test car is a Lexus LS luxury sedan
If you’re going to develop a self-driving test vehicle, why not make it one that passengers would enjoy riding in? Perhaps that’s the logic behind Toyota’s choice of its new Lexus LS large luxury sedan as the basis for the P4, its latest automated-driv…
How Nissan hopes to market its future electric cars
The Nissan Leaf with a roughly 60-kilowatt-hour battery was expected to make its public debut at the LA Auto Show earlier this month. It didn’t. That car is expected to appear “very soon,” perhaps at the 2019 Consumer Electronics Show…
Electric cars from Audi, Porsche: Explaining platform magic
It would be unthinkable for any automaker but Porsche to introduce a new car with a flat-6 engine hung out behind the rear axle. At this week’s 2018 LA Auto Show, the 2020 Porsche 911 duly made its debut in the hallowed configuration that has per…
2019 Hyundai Nexo: first drive of 380-mile fuel-cell crossover utility
Pretty much any story on a new vehicle these days notes that new-car buyers are snapping up utility vehicles, while traditional sedans languish on sales lots. That puts Hyundai right on trend with its latest hydrogen-powered entry, the Nexo, which it d…
2019 Jaguar I-Pace real world review: 3 days with the sexy electric crossover
To the world’s surprise, the first all-electric luxury utility vehicle to follow the Tesla Model X into production did not come from the German makes of Audi, BMW, or Mercedes-Benz. Instead, it arrived from that trio’s smaller, scrappier Br…
Audi e-tron electric crossover debuts to battle Tesla
And finally, there is Audi. Late Monday night, the German luxury maker debuted took to the stage in San Francisco with its long-awaited, first volume battery-electric vehicle, a five-seat midsize crossover utility to be known simply as e-tron. It also …