Prius C – likeable entry-point Toyota hybrid
A colleague laughed like a drain when a Prius C was offered as a test car recently. Toyota, to their credit, neither named nor mentioned the gender of the chuckler, but evidently the car was beneath them, it seems. Perhaps they have the luxury of being able to accept performance cars only as test vehicles. […]
EVs: Variants will be arriving
The chairman of Drive Electric believes many marques are likely to have electric variants in all of the segments that they have models in the near future. Mark Gilbert says the marketplace of the future will be petrol, diesel and electric. “Many manufacturers have said that in every sector they compete in they could have […]
Tesla’s $3,000 Powerwall Will Let Households Run Entirely On Solar Energy
By Jon Russell. You almost certainly associate Tesla with cars — very cool cars — but the company has an even grander vision beyond that. Today, CEO and founder Elon Musk unveiled ‘Tesla Energy’ — a new business arm that is focused on ending our dependence on grid power and switching instead to solar energy. […]
Why BP should buy Tesla from Elon Musk
By Mark Gilbert. Executives at BP, which has a market value of about $130 billion and a family tree dating to an oil discovery in Persia at the start of the 20th century, are worried. It turns out that Royal DutchShell ran its slide rule over BP before pouncing on BG Group for $70 billion. […]
Power companies to become one-stop energy shop: Contact Energy
By Ellen Read. Imagine having the cost of recharging your electric vehicle, monitoring your home power use, and seeing how much money you made from selling solar power back into the national electricity grid, all on one bill. Customers will be able to do just that in five years, according to the bold prediction from […]
Nissan Australia CEO Puts Government on Blast – Aussies “Only” Country Not Promoting EVs
by Jay Cole. Richard Emery, CEO of Nissan Australia, has taken his government and its industry minister Ian Macfarlane to task over its apparent love of hydrogen – the “fuel of the future”, and Mr. Macfarlane’s promotion of the new Hyundai ix35 Fuel Cell. In so doing, the Australian minister also took some serious shots […]
UK electric fleet passes 32,500 mark
Combining figures from the Department for Transport with new data from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) reveals that the total number of electric cars and vans registered in the UK now exceeds 32,500 vehicles for the first time. The latest statistics demonstrate the continuing growth in EV sales of high-quality electric cars […]
Free electric vehicle charger proving popular
Since last week’s launch of a free public EV charger at Vector’s Carlton Gore Road offices, there has been a steady stream of electric vehicles plugging in. From the head-turning, sleek lines of the BMW i8, to an EV SUV, all manner of cars have made use of the charging unit. “Vector is ideally positioned […]
Elon Musk had an $11 billion deal in place to sell Tesla to Google in 2013
By Jay Yarow. Elon Musk almost sold Tesla to Google in 2013, according to Ashlee Vance, author of a new book on Musk. At the time, Tesla’s Model S was new, and buggy. Tesla was losing sales, and it was looking like it might go bust. Google was Musk’s saviour. From an excerpt published on […]