USA / Global
November 25, 2013
Smart Fortwo Electric Drive Now On Sale in China
Smart announced at the 2013 Guangzhou Motor Show that it has become the first European manufacturer to bring an all-electric vehicle to the Chinese market. And this is true, as no one else is exporting electric vehicles to China from Europe. Smart fortwo electric drive is now available at dealerships in China as well as in 13 other countries (mostly in Europe but also in some areas of USA, Ca...
Nissan Conducts First Public Expressway Test of Autonomous Drive LEAF (w/video)
Nissan LEAF with Autonomous Drive capability Nissan announced that it recently carried out the first public road test of Autonomous Drive on a Japanese highway. The event took place at the Sagami Expressway in Kanagawa prefecture, southwest of Tokyo - near the "Sagami Robot Industry Special Zone." Passengers of Autonomous LEAF at first were Nissan Vice Chairman Toshiyuki ...
Plug-In Electric Vehicle Walkthrough Of The LA Auto Show (lots of photos)
LA Auto Show Brings A New Crop Of Plug-Ins To America Despite the fact auto show promoters did their best to trip us up by having both the Tokyo Motor Show and Los Angeles Auto Show on the exact same press dates (5,500 miles apart), InsideEVs did manage to catch both shows in person. And while a lot of our focus was on Tokyo as they featured many new electric vehicle offerin...
BMW Confirms 2015 US Launch of Active Tourer - Plug-In Hybrid Version Destined to Follow
From the floor of the 2013 Frankfurt Motor Show, we brought you live images of the BMW Concept Active Tourer. Active Tourer Display at Frankfurt Motor Show Way back then (75 days ago), we stated this: "...a version of this vehicle (called the 1-Series GT) will be production-bound soon, perhaps as early as 2014." Some had their doubts, but today BMW is ...
BMW i3 at LA Auto Show: Driving Impressions & Details
BMW i3 First Drive It's been a long time coming, but I finally got to drive an i3. From ActiveE to i3...The Transition Starts Soon I've actually been getting tired of having journalists contact me and ask me for my opinion of it on the road compared to the MINI-E and ActiveE and having to tell them I haven't had the opportunity to drive o...
Tesla CEO Elon Musk Expects NHTSA to Clear Model S in Fires - Tesla Is Not Working on a Model S Safety Fix
Tesla Model S Expected to be Cleared by NHTSA, Says Tesla CEO Elon Musk Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk went on record late last week saying that he fully expects the NHTSA to clear the Model S after it completes its investigation of the 2 US fire-related incidents. In an interview with the Associated Press, Musk stated: "In both cases it was a large piece of metal essentially...
Mitsubishi Confirms March 2014 Launch of Outlander PHEV in UK
Mitsubishi has elected to launch its Outlander PHEV in the UK a year or so ahead of its planned US launch. Outlander PHEV Recently, Mitsubishi stated this in regards to the 2015 US launch of the Outlander PHEV: “The reason for this vehicle being introduced in 2015 rather than in 2014 is because we have received overwhelming demand from Japan and Europe ...
Cadillac ELR Sales Expected to be Around 3,000 Units Per Year By Analysts
Cadillac ELR Sales Expected to Reach 3,000 Annually? It's not a Cadillac Volt. Cadillac ELR Oozes Luxury It's the Cadillac ELR, an entirely different, luxurious premium machine, according to General Motors. As such, the $75,995 ELR will not sell at the same volume of the Chevy Volt (not that we ever expected it would). While General...
Nissan LEAF and Renault ZOE Lead EV Sales in Europe Through First 9 Months of 2013
The European EV market has been growing nonstop for a few years now and after the first 9 months of 2013, is on the level of 24,000 or so passenger EVs. As we can see from the table below, most of these EVs sold in Europe are Nissan LEAFs and Renault Zoe (together 14,282 units). Where the ZOE is a newcomer, the LEAF is still seeing sales growth. We hope to see both EVs sell over 10,000 units...
Smart Fortwo BRABUS Electric Drive at 2013 Tokyo Motor Show (Photos)
smart fortwo BRABUS electric drive Smart recently announced launch of the fortwo electric drive in China marking the electric fortwo's entry into it 14th market, but sales began in Japan way earlier. BRABUS (which is smart's tuner), delivers its own version of the fortwo electric drive with 5 kW of additional power and 5 more Nm of torque to bring the total numbers to 60 kW ...
BMW Says Next Year's i8 Is Sold Out
BMW i8 Is "Sold Out" In 2014 According To BMW Sales Boss Sometimes new product offerings are so much in demand and they are sold-out practically the moment they go on sale. Sometimes a product is offered late in the calendar year or when production is just ramping up, so few are available. That is not the case with the BMW i8 in America. The luxury, 22 mile (NEDC sc...