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By all accounts, Shai Agassi, the founder and CEO of Better Place, Israel's bankrupt electric car company, is an extremely charismatic man. His charm had politicians, venture capitalists, celebrities and non-automotive industry reporters slobbering over him. Everyone wanted to get their picture taken with the man who would transform Israel's auto industry into the first electric powered industry in the world and transform the start-up nation into the transportation hothouse for the world. Agassi's vision was simple and easy to understand. By 2020, half of Israel's cars would be battery powered electric cars supplied by his company, Better Place. We...

General Motors has announced a $4,000 rebate (or $3,000 and a four year, zero interest loan from government-owned Ally Financial) on the slow-selling Chevy Volt. The company had a choice regarding how to deal with an excess supply of Volts that is growing faster than demand. GM could have, once again, temporarily halted production until inventory (currently at about a 6 month supply) came down to reasonable levels. It instead chooses to lose more millions of dollars by spending on incentives designed to manufacture demand that otherwise is practically nonexistent. The much-hyped Chevy Volt was originally presented by GM...

Electric car sales hummed along in May amid a solid month for the auto industry. But the surprise story this year was May's strong full-size pickup truck sales – not exactly a sign an endorsement of efficiency and alternative fuels. Nissan sold 2,138 Leafs in May, up 319 percent over last year. In March, the company sold a record 2,236 units of its all-electric vehicle. General Motors sold 1,607 Volts in May, down 4.3 percent from a year ago. In the first five months of 2013, the company sold only 100 more Volts than during the same period last year.

A lot of thought is put into how much energy we use to drive from point A to B. But what if the road itself could generate energy? Julie and Scott Brusaw, a married couple from Sandpoint, Idaho, have taken on just such a concept, which they hope will make the auto transport of the future cleaner and safer. The idea is as simple as it is ingenious. Wherever roads are laid, solar panels could go instead. They would generate electricity, which would in turn be fed into the grid. Thus, oil is conserved twice: Electric cars could be charged...

Steady Voltage Chevy Volt sales have been consistent lately, with no wild ups and downs as experienced by the Nissan LEAF during the production changeover. Sales of the Volt had hit a 12-month low of 1,140 units in January 2013, but rebounded to 1,620 units in February. For March 2013, Volt sales check in at 1,478 units.

When you buy a car, there are various ratings outfits in the business of calculating the true cost of owning that particular vehicle, inc. insurance, depreciation, maintenance, cost of repairs, etc. Such a comprehensive model is surely more realistic than just looking at the monthly payment or sticker price, and the customer knows if they're actually making a cost-effective, bottom-line decision. But even if you buy-into the now imploding globaloney scam, wouldn't it make sense to apply similar logic to calculate the entire environmental impact of electric vs. internal combustion cars over the full service life... esp since the actual...

When the Congress failed to pass cap and trade legislation during his first term Barack Obama famously quipped that there was “more than one way to skin a cat,� and we all know what he meant by that; he was going to use the EPA to bypass the Congress and subvert the constitution through the regulatory process.This was a proclamation that he reaffirmed during his State of the Union address when he stated, “if Congress won’t act soon to protect future generations, I will.� Well, the EPA has already started making moves to implement cap and trade and at...

Electric cars are promoted as the chic harbinger of an environmentally benign future. Ads assure us of "zero emissions," and President Obama has promised a million on the road by 2015. With sales for 2012 coming in at about 50,000, that million-car figure is a pipe dream. Consumers remain wary of the cars' limited range, higher price and the logistics of battery-charging. But for those who do own an electric car, at least there is the consolation that it's truly green, right? Not really. For proponents such as the actor and activist Leonardo DiCaprio, the main argument is that their...

O'Brien Mitsubishi, based in Normal, IL, is offering something way outside the norm: an absurdly low lease price – the cheapest we've ever seen – for on an electric vehicle. AutoblogGreen reader Josh K. could hardly believe what he saw when driving by a rotating banner advertising the a Mitsubishi i-MiEV recently: $69 a month for 24 months. That compares with the official Mitsubishi lease program from last fall, which was $249 a month for three years. Yes, it sounds too good to be true. So we called the dealership and had the lease offering confirmed. Salesman Scott Lovett explained...

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- The plural of anecdote is statistics. There are lies, damned lies and statistics. So take what I am about to say for whatever it is worth. Maybe nothing. I own some Tesla (TSLA) stock, after all, just so I can go to the annual shareholder meeting, get a free coffee and be my usual pest. You could argue that what I am about to present is the equivalent of saying, "I've never seen a non-Apple (AAPL) tablet out in the wild, so therefore..." -- and you would be right. But people are still justifying this kind...

It becomes a difficult task for those in power to resist the lure of acquiring even more power. The more they have, the more they want. No such example exists greater than that of New York City mayor-king Michael Bloomberg. This is the man who brought into existence the absurd and absurdly named National Salt Reduction Initiative, an incentive-based program designed to reduce the amount of salt in restaurant and prepackaged food. This is the man who, last year, banned the sale of sugary drinks, like sodas, in more than 16-oz containers. Why? Because what’s good for Bloomberg is what’s...

According to Toyota Vice Chairman Takeshi Uchiyamada, "Because of its shortcomings - driving range, cost and recharging time - the electric vehicle is not a viable replacement for most conventional cars; we need something entirely new." Uchiyamada is considered the "father of the Prius." An article by Reuter's exposes the limitations of EVs and focuses on Toyota's, along with Nissan's, change in strategy, which is now moving away from EVs. Even the most ideological and extreme green energy proponents and backers of the Chevy Volt will have to open their eyes to the sad truth uncovered by the latest report....

Hybrid car pioneer and “father of the Prius” Takeshi Uchiyamada says the billions poured into developing battery electric vehicles have ultimately been in vain. "Because of its shortcomings--driving range, cost and recharging time--the electric vehicle is not a viable replacement for most conventional cars," said Uchiyamada. "We need something entirely new." Uchiyamada’s comments come as the U.S. Department of Energy announced Thursday that the government is backing off President Barack Obama’s promise to put one million electric cars on American roads by 2015. As Breitbart News reported last September, there are just 30,000 electric cars on American roads.

"The question, then, is why are so many companies -- especially GM -- scrambling to release these grossly overpriced plug-in electric compact cars? Trying to shoehorn expensive electric vehicle technology into entry-level economy cars makes absolutely no sense, unless you think about it from the perspective of governments, who have inserted themselves into the EV equation by subsidizing the purchase every electric car to the tune of $7,500 to $10,000. ... Currently, the only reasonable value proposition in the EV segment can be found at the top of the price spectrum, which is no doubt where electric car development would...

Exactly two years ago, in November 2010, the Renault-Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn assured reporters that his auto alliance would sell half a million electric vehicles a year by the end of 2013. In 2011, it sold just short of 10,000 electrics, but in April 2012 Ghosn still claimed that the 2012 sales would double to 20,000. On November 15, he had to give up and admit that, after selling less than 7,000 vehicles, the 2012 target cannot be reached. That is just the latest in a less than electrifying saga of modern electric vehicles (this qualification is needed because...

DETROIT (AP) -- General Motors is giving its Chevrolet Spark a jolt of electricity. An all-electric version of the mini-car will debut this week at the Los Angeles Auto Show. It goes on sale this summer in California, Oregon, Canada and South Korea, where it's made. Other markets will follow. Unlike the Chevrolet Volt sedan, which can run in all-electric mode but also has a backup gas engine, the Spark EV is a pure electric. GM won't say how far the car will go on a charge, but says it will be a top performer among the small number of...

Imagine that. Weeks to go before the election and the Department of Energy has restructured its $465 million loan to the electric-car company to make sure it didn’t run out of cash. The New York Times reports:(Emphasis mine)"As it ramps up sales of its sleek electric sedan, Tesla doesn’t appear to be much of a loser right now. But a closer look at company’s cash flows suggests it is hardly out of the woods.For young companies like Tesla, calibrating cash flows is critical. Customer demand may be high for a company’s product,but mistimed spending can lead to a cash crunch....

Electric cars might cause as much or more pollution than conventional gas vehicles, according to researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. According to a study published in the Journal of Industrial Ecology, “the production phase of electric vehicles proved substantially more environmentally intensive” than the production process for traditional gas-powered cars. Specifically, the study found that electric car factories can emit more toxic waste than gas-burning car factories. And greenhouse gas emissions rise exponentially if coal is used to produce the electricity necessary to charge “green” vehicles, according to the study. The researchers compared the overall life-cycle...

Solar panel installer SolarCity Corp filed with U.S. regulators to raise up to $201 million in an initial public offering that could help rekindle investor appetite for cleantech stocks. ....Companies including Google Inc and U.S. Bancorp have provided funds to finance SolarCity's projects. Those investors are able to collect a 30 percent federal tax credit for solar energy systems...... ...SolarCity was founded in 2006 by brothers Lyndon and Peter Rive along with their cousin, PayPal co-founder and Tesla Motors Chief Executive Elon Musk.... SolarCity hopes it can buck the lackluster trend among recent cleantech IPOs.... ....[SolorCity's] total revenue was $46.6...

DETROIT: The fledgling electric car business is in turmoil as predictions about potential sales have proven to be wildly optimistic despite volatile fuel prices and plenty of media hype. Weak consumer demand is hitting both the big automakers like General Motors and Nissan -- which have failed to meet sales targets on the plug-in Volt and all-electric Leaf -- and smaller start-up firms trying to carve out a piece of a very small niche. "Electric vehicles don't make any more sense today than they did in 1912," says Sean McAlinden, an analyst with the Center for Automotive Research in Ann...

Toyota has scrapped plans for widespread manufacturing and sale of a new mini-car that was to be powered as electric only. Reuters reports that Toyota stated they “had misread the market and the ability of still emerging battery technology to meet consumer demands.” We would all be a lot better off, if Only Barack Obama and Harry Reid had the same amount of guts as Toyota to admit to making gross errors in judgment. Takeshi Uchiyamada, the engineer who oversees vehicle development as Vice Chairman of Toyota, was frank in stating, “two years later, there are many difficulties.” Takeshi is...

Nearly two years after the introduction of the path-breaking plug-in hybrid, GM is still losing as much as $49,000 on each Volt it builds, according to estimates provided to Reuters by industry analysts and manufacturing experts. Cheap Volt lease offers meant to drive more customers to Chevy showrooms this summer may have pushed that loss even higher. There are some Americans paying just $5,050 to drive around for two years in a vehicle that cost as much as $89,000 to produce.

One electric-car owner got so angry about internal combustion engine (ICE) cars taking car-charging parking spots, he made a video. If you drive an electric car, it's nice to know that if you're making a trip to the mall or a regular spot that you can charge up your car while you're running errands. Well, it's nice until you get there to find that some ignorant soul has parked their gas-guzzler in the space, preventing you from charging. Unfortunately, it's a trend noticed all too frequently by Santa Monica-based reader Kelly Olsen, who shot the video below to demonstrate just...

The Obama administration invested $2.4 billion as part of its goal of putting one million electric vehicles on the road by the end of 2015. But that effort has, in part, stalled. Nothing is more emblematic of the industry's troubles than the Fisker Karma. In 2010, Fisker got a $529-million taxpayer loan to build a luxury electric sports car. But the government cut off the loan to Fisker after $193 million when Fisker failed to meet its ambitious sales and production goals. Then, a Consumer Reports test dealt the Karma another blow. "It is low. It is sleek. It is...

Photo shows the remains of 2012 Fisker Karma after a fire engulfed the vehicle last week. A $100,000 electric car is suspected in sparking a fire at a Sugar Land home last week, according to media reports. Fort Bend County chief fire investigator Robert Baker told AutoWeek that a newly purchased Fisker Karma sparked a fire that quickly spread to the rest of the home. “The Karma was the origin of the fire, but what exactly caused that we don’t know at this time,” Baker told the news outlet. According to his lawyers, Jeremy Gutierrez said his two-week old Karma...

Jobs: The same president who used stimulus dollars to build electric cars in Finland and sought to be Brazil's best oil customer now complains the GOP nominee built his career outsourcing jobs. At least he created some. President Obama's re-election campaign released an ad Tuesday saying Mitt Romney "shipped American jobs to places like Mexico and China" when he led the investment firm Bain Capital. The $780,000 ad buy in the key swing states of Ohio, Iowa and Virginia was in response to an ad by the free-market group Americans for Prosperity (AFP) noting the administration's penchant for wasting taxpayer...

Green Energy: Another day and another set of layoffs at a Department of Energy-backed solar company and an electric-car maker funded with stimulus dollars. Yet the President wants to double down on green energy. First Solar, a solar energy company that received a $1.46 billion loan guarantee from the Department of Energy, announced Monday it will lay off 2,000 workers worldwide. In December, First Solar laid off 100 employees at a Santa Clara , Calif., plant. The DOE has committed the loan to a project in Riverside County, Calif., expected to create a whopping 15 permanent jobs and 550 construction...

While the choice of fuel-efficient hybrid vehicles for sale in the U.S. continues to grow, more buyers than not are deciding against the technology when they go to buy another car. Only 35% of hybrid vehicle owners chose to purchase a hybrid again when they returned to the market in 2011, according to auto information company R.L. Polk & Co.

Representative Patrick McHenry (R-NC) gave anti-Energy Secretary Steven Chu an earful yesterday during a hearing on oil prices. McHenry ripped Che for the administration’s policies that have prevented access to domestic oil and gas. “You’re telling me my constituents need to buy a Nissan Leaf?” "My time is short, you've listed a long list of things that this administration has done. I have not yet heard that there are trying to increase the supply of American oil or our refining capacity or limit the regulations in the diversity of blends that are required. I have heard nothing from you today...

Industrial Policy: A leading consumer product testing firm takes one of the administration's dream green cars for a spin and had to call a gasoline-powered flatbed truck to tow the lemon away. At least it can go from zero to $529 million in stimulus dollars in nothing flat. When the testers at Consumer Reports took it for a test drive, not only was the $107,850 dream car unable to complete the evaluation, but also it had to be towed away, a visible metaphor for the Obama administration's green energy failures. In a test conducted last Wednesday by Consumer Reports magazine,...

President Obama boasted at a United Auto Workers conference last week that General Motors was back in business, producing cutting-edge vehicles like the plug-in electric Chevrolet Volt. He even promised to buy one when his time in office ends “five years from now.” Whoops! Just three days later, GM announced that it would suspend Volt production for five weeks this spring, idling 1,300 workers at a Hamtramck, Mich., factory. Alas, Obama’s endorsements notwithstanding, there’s not much of a market for this little bitty car, at least not at the price of almost $32,000 — after a $7,500 federal tax rebate....

When GE announced at the end of February that it would be bailing out General Motor’s green car strategy by ordering 12,000 electric-gasoline powered Chevy Volts for their fleet, it was more than just Government Electric doing a solid for Government Motors doing a solid for the Government Owners in the Obama administration. Rather it was an admission of failure by the monetization arm of the Green Conspiracy to control market behavior. While GM bet that Volt would be “a magnet around everything we are trying to do to showcase our brand,” so far it’s been a millstone for the...

There is currently a $7,500 tax credit for the purchase of a Chevy Volt automobile. It also applies to some other electric car purchases, but it’s clear this particular tax credit was aimed at the Chevy Volt. President Obama is proposing to raise this tax credit to $10,000. The only legitimate use of the tax system is to raise revenue for the operation of the government. This tax credit does not meet that standard. It redistributes money from one set of taxpayers to another. This doesn’t raise any revenue for the government. In fact, it reduces government revenues, and thus...

Is gasoline getting too costly for you? Are you already cutting back on your trips to the store, to the theater, to grandma’s? What did you expect? Remember President Barack Obama’s energy secretary Steven Chu saying he wanted much higher gas prices – because it’s good for you? “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe,” Chu said in 2008. . .

Incentives: Doubling down on industrial policy failure, the administration decides to bump up the taxpayer subsidy for Government Motors' touted electric car. Who said its range wasn't enough to drive us to the poor house? Tucked away in the recesses of President Obama's 2013 budget, a budget that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says he will not bring to the Senate floor, is a nugget that speaks volumes about the troubles we're in: While delaying the Keystone XL pipeline, the administration plans to increase the subsidy for the Chevy Volt and other "new technology" vehicles to $10,000 per car. "We...

Won’t those tax-subsidized electric cars solve heaps of problems? Not exactly. There are two examples that run against the politically correct grain: . . .

Here’s a mind-boggling explanation of how the state government, setting out to manipulate private manufacturers into making electric cars, gets so tangled up in its special treatment for special constituents that its bureaucratic web ends up working against itself. The California Air Resources Board, second only to the federal EPA in government heavy-handedness, adopted rules ostensibly to cut down on smog and, of course, global warming. Tucked into the folds of this bureaucratic diktat is a provision that some call “a loophole.” Yes, we’re as shocked as you to find that the dictatorial among us would allow for exceptions to...

You may remember Fisker Automotive as the Goracle-connected company given a huge taxpayer loan to build its cars in Finland. (Politico) — In another setback for President Obama’s clean energy loan programs, the recipient of more than a half-billion dollars in federal loan guarantees is laying off workers at their Delaware and California operations. Delaware’s News Journal reports that Fisker Automotive, a California-based electric car start-up company, is laying off an undisclosed number of staff to try to reserve enough capital in order to qualify for more federal help from the Department of Energy, according to a Delaware state development official....

Call it global warming schizophrenia. It's the disconnect between what really is happening and what global warming alarmists demand must happen. For example, many government officials and government-paid scientists insist the world risks being incinerated because humans generate a little more carbon dioxide than they used to. But they completely ignore the reality that CO2 hasn't proved to be a threat, let alone the horrific danger they make it out to be. Why must they pretend this fiction to be true? Because so much rides on it.

Green Politics: Golden State regulators have passed sweeping emission standards requiring one in seven new cars sold in the state in 2025 be an electric or other zero-emission vehicle. What can go wrong? Plenty, for if we've learned anything in recent years, it's that industrial policy and telling consumers what they need and must have vs. what they want and find useful doesn't work. Only the marketplace can accurately pick winners and losers. The government, having no competition, usually picks losers. We have also learned that climate change is an overhyped fantasy based on ideology rather than science. Yet the...

Have you purchased your new, all electric car yet? Me neither. Of course, I can’t decide whether it’s because I hate the environment, hate America, or a result of my severe allergy to burning to death in a fiery roadside inferno. But we shouldn’t feel too alone. It seems that drivers have been rather cool on the idea all over the country. This is producing a significant impact on Indiana in particular. Reporting from Elkhart, Ind.— For politicians betting on electric vehicles to drive job growth, the view from inside Think City’s plant here is their worst nightmare: 100 unfinished...

With NHTSA's closure of the investigation into the Chevy Volt, General Motors is now trying to rebuild the plug-in hybrid's image . But a new stumbling block has appeared on the road to higher sales — dealers turning down Volts from GM. General Motors sold only 7,671 Volts in the United States in 2011, well short of its 10,000-unit target for the first year. GM spokespeople have attributed weakness in demand to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's investigation into the risk of fires in the car's battery pack. But I'm not entirely certain that can all be blamed...

DeLorean Motor Co., Inc. has unveiled the DeLorean EV, an electric car that marries the legendary Back to the Future DeLorean automobile of the 1980s with a lithium-ion-based, DC-powered, electric drivetrain of today. "It turns out the DeLorean is a perfect platform for electrification," noted Chris Anthony, CEO of Flux Power, Inc. and Epic Electric Vehicles, both of which worked with DeLorean Motors to develop the powertrain for the new vehicle. "It's well designed, it's lightweight, it never rusts, and it has a design aesthetic that's meant to blow you away." DeLorean's "new" EV maintains the look of the legendary...

Electric car enthusiasts – those who want someone else to subsidize their extravagances and then pretend that the electricity they use isn’t created with fossil fuel anyway – may at first find something to cheer about in this news from England. There are now more charging stations than electric vehicles on the road, reports the MailOnline. . . . But we need to read a bit more in that Mail story. The reason there are more electric charging stations than electric cars isn’t because there are so many stations. It’s because there are so few electric cars.

Electric car company that received a $529M federal loan recalls vehiclesBy Andrew Restuccia - 12/30/11 10:31 AM ET An electric vehicle manufacturer that received a $529 million loan from the Energy Department is recalling 239 vehicles. The Transportation Department’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said Thursday that the company, Fisker Automotive, will recall its Karma vehicles made between July 1, 2011, and Nov. 3, 2011, because of a faulty electric battery component that could cause a fire. “Within the high-voltage battery, certain hose clamps may have been positioned incorrectly during assembly. If positioned incorrectly, the batter compartment cover could...

Green Policy: A think tank crunches the subsidy and bailout dollars and puts the true cost of Government Motors' electric car at a cool quarter-million. And the few sold have been largely bought by the 1%. At a time when Democrats are blaming the GOP for blocking a payroll tax cut deal that will add $40 in the average paycheck, they have no problem taking that worker's tax dollars to make and subsidize what we once called an electric Edsel bought by a precious few with an average income of $170,000. "Each Chevy Volt sold thus far may have as...

Electric-car sales are on fire. Okay, well, only a few electric cars have actually gone up in smoke. But with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opening a formal safety investigation into fears about fires started by the much-hyped Chevrolet Volt, it’s become clear yet again that electric vehicles are The Next Big Thing — and they always will be. Safety questions are the last thing that the electric-vehicle market needs. Indeed, the U.S. already has a huge excess of electric-vehicle (EV) battery-production capacity. This month, A123 Systems, one of the country’s highest-profile battery makers for the EV market, cut...

Industrial Policy: The investigation into the safety of electric car batteries intensifies after additional fires involving the flagship of a proposed electric vehicle fleet. Central planning doesn't work for cars or insurance. When the Toyota Prius was being accused of having overlooked design flaws that were causing accelerators to get stuck with fatal results, the owners of Government Motors, a competitor, wasted little time pushing for a recall and congressional hearings while accusing Toyota of cutting corners for the sake of corporate profits. We wonder if the same sense of urgency will prevail in the wake of new safety tests...

Environmental Impacts: An investigation is launched into the possibility of battery fires occurring in crashes involving Government Motors' touted electric car. Industrial policy meets the law of unintended consequences. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has announced an investigation into the safety of electric cars using lithium batteries, particularly the Chevy Volt, after a battery fire occurred after a side-impact crash test. It has asked other manufacturers who make electric cars or that plan to do so for information on how they handle lithium-ion batteries. The request also includes recommendations for minimizing fire risk. The feds say this is only...

Industrial Policy: Not only do taxpayers subsidize failing green energy here, they may soon be on the hook for a Department of Energy loan to a firm owned by a Russian billionaire. Just say nyet. When a foreign firm wants to build a facility in the U.S. that hires American workers and pays American taxes, we welcome it. We'd prefer they do it with their own money, not rely on this administration's failed industrial policy to provide them with a huge taxpayer-backed loan — especially when it's owned by a billionaire who doesn't need the help. The administration's latest green...