Filed under: EV/Plug-in, Hybrid, Chevrolet The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has issued a statement on its investigation into a Chevrolet Volt fire that occurred at the organization’s facilities. NHTSA had done a side-impact test on a Volt then parked it outside, and three weeks later Chevy’s plug-in hybrid caught fire. The battery was determined [...]
Filed under: EV/Plug-in, Hybrid, Chevrolet, Legislation and Policy The Chevy Volt may be able to travel about 40 miles without emitting a gram of CO2, but the car isn’t clean enough to qualify for High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lane access in California. Make that wasn’t clean enough. Today, GM announced that California dealers are now [...]
Filed under: EV/Plug-in, Hybrid, Chevrolet Garage fires are nothing new, and there will come a day when stories like this one won’t make national news. For now, though, if a Chevy Volt is inside a garage that blazes up, people notice. This happened earlier this year in Connecticut – in a fire that was later [...]
Filed under: EV/Plug-in, Tesla Motors Potential buyers of the upcoming Tesla Model S shouldn’t expect to find a J1772 connector under the charging flap. The SAE International standard may be on board most electric vehicles, including the Nissan Leaf and the Chevy Volt, but Tesla has never liked the design. Calling the standard connector “ugly,” [...]
Filed under: EV/Plug-in, Opel, Europe/EU The Opel Ampera may be very similar to the Chevy Volt under the skin, but a lot of people in the U.S. would argue that the Euro-plug-in’s skin is far more attractive. Apparently a lot of Europeans agree. First year production for the Ampera had been targeted for 8,000 units, [...]
Filed under: EV/Plug-in, Hybrid, USA Are plug-in vehicle incentives distributed correctly? Apparently not. A study conducted by Carnegie Mellon University (PDF) suggests that by subsidizing vehicles with big battery packs (that is, bigger than 16 kWh), the return on investment (in terms of reducing gas/diesel consumption and lowering emissions) is less than if the $ [...]
