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The California Air Resources Board is reportedly considering a new plan to help transportation for low earners: buying them cars. The agency would like to give those of low income a voucher to buy energy-efficient vehicles like the Nissan Leaf, which has a sticker price of $21,000. The board currently gives drivers $1,000 to $1,500 to get rid of their older vehicles in an attempt to curb carbon emissions; there is a second program that gives up to $4,000 depending on the vehicles involved.

What do the poor need most? Jobs? Nah. In Governor Moonbeam’s California they need free electric cars.Free means that you’ll be paying for them. Even if you’re not a California resident, there will probably be Federal money involved. “The California Air Resources Board is now embarking on a program that would help poor people buy energy-efficient vehicles. In one scenario posed by the agency, a “voucher” might even pay the full price for a Nissan Leaf, an electric car with an MSRP above $21,000, or for used cars with lower price tags.” But it only stands to reason. If...

When it comes to resale value, electric vehicles don’t hold their charge. Electric cars lead our list of the cars and trucks that lose their value faster than average. Also ranking poorly are some big-ticket luxury cars, and, not surprisingly, older, lame-duck vehicles that are late in their product life cycle and about to be replaced. On a list of predicted residual values for 2013 models produced by ALG Inc., the bottom three examples are the battery powered Nissan Leaf; the Lincoln MKS, a more upscale, expensive cousin to the Ford Taurus; and the Mercedes-Benz CL Class, a two-door version...

The federal government announced on Tuesday that it had opened an investigation into two recent battery fires in the Tesla Motors Model S sedan. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s decision came amid public speculation over the electric car’s safety and the battery pack’s design after reports of three fires in six weeks. Two of the fires occurred on American highways when the cars hit debris in the road. A third, in Mexico, took place after a high-speed crash into a wall and a tree. The drivers in all three incidents were unhurt. Tesla also said late on Monday that...

French President François Hollande hailed “a new industrial revolution” in inaugurating Friday a new lithium battery plant built by the Bolloré group, which manufactures the Bluecar made popular by France’s electric-car sharing scheme. … Earlier in the day, as he attended an environmental conference in Paris, Hollande vowed to halve energy consumption in France by 2050 and cut fossil fuels by 30% by 2030. The French president has also made electric cars “a priority.” …

Germany hopes to put one million electric cars on the roads by 2020, but just 3,000 have been sold this year. A study released on Tuesday casts doubt on sales projections. Electric cars have been among the highlights of the IAA motorshow in Frankfurt which opened last week. New models include the BMW’s i3. … Researchers argue that the best scenario for electric cars is for the price of batteries and energy to decrease, while diesel and petrol gets more expensive. …

Neil Young, a high-profile proponent of cars powered by alternative fuels, was recently stranded on the highway when his own $1 million biomass-powered hybrid car broke down. **SNIP** Young was on his way to an environmentalist festival in Canada, according to the Sierra Sun, driving his custom-made hybrid electric 1959 Lincoln Continental.

Terry McAuliffe, the Democratic candidate for governor of Virginia and former owner of an electric car company now under federal investigation, once paid a visit with three other advisers to the same White House “green energy” official who helped secure more than $500 million in guaranteed loans for Solyndra, the now-bankrupt solar panel manufacturer backed by a prominent Barack Obama fundraiser. White House visitor records reviewed by Watchdog.org indicate that McAuliffe met with Greg Nelson, the former associate director for energy, environment and technology, at the White House on October 13, 2010. While the substance of the meeting is unknown,...

DETROIT (Reuters) - General Motors Co (GM) said on Tuesday it is slashing the price of its Chevrolet Volt electric car by $5,000 to help boost demand for the plug-in hybrid in a segment still struggling to gain a foothold in the U.S. auto market. The price cut for the 2014 model will lower the price to $34,995, including delivery fees before federal tax credits. Pricing could fall as low as $27,495 with the tax credit. "We have made great strides in reducing costs as we gain experience with electric vehicles and their components," Don Johnson, U.S. vice president for...

A California company was given more than $100 million in taxpayer funds by the federal government – with few strings attached – to establish a network of electric car charging stations that is fraught with problems, according to a government audit. All this, despite weak demand by the American public for electric cars. While President Obama has pledged to get 1 million electric cars on U.S. roads by 2015, a new report by the Department of Energy’s inspector general found that Americans’ aversion to electric vehicles and loose department supervision led to stalling the charging network – which cost taxpayers...

Last summer, California highway police pulled over pop star Justin Bieber as he sped through Los Angeles in an attempt to shake the paparazzi. He was driving a hybrid electric car—not just any hybrid, mind you, but a chrome-plated Fisker Karma, a US $100 000 plug-in hybrid sports sedan he’d received as an 18th-birthday gift from his manager, Scooter Braun, and fellow singer Usher. During an on-camera surprise presentation, Braun remarked, “We wanted to make sure, since you love cars, that when you are on the road you are always looking environmentally friendly, and we decided to get you a...

On Monday, BMW announced that the U.S. base price for its all-electric i3 will be $41,350, not including any federal or state incentives. For General Motors' Chevy Volt, and possibly Tesla Motor's Model S, BMW's move spells major trouble. Here's why. Bad news, GM With a starting MSRP of $39,145 in 2012, the Volt was the best-selling EV, and it's not hard to see why. Really more of an electric hybrid than a straight EV, the Volt combines a 9.3-gallon fuel tank with a lithium-ion battery. This combination allows the Volt can go an estimated 38 miles on pure battery...

Former Electric-car Engineer: Electric Cars Pollute More Than Gas The New American 12 July 2013 Is the only "green" aspect of electric cars the money some companies make off them? If former plug-in advocate and General Motors engineer Ozzie Zehner (shown) is correct, this is exactly the case. Author of the book Green Illusions, Zehner once built his own hybrid car that could run on electricity or natural gas. And, he writes in a recent article entitled "Unclean at Any Speed," he was convinced cars such as his "would help reduce both pollution and fossil-fuel dependence." But he now...

Conservatives have long argued that the pursuit of electric vehicles through government grants and credits is a bad idea, mainly from a public-policy and economic standpoint. But what if electric vehicles are a bad idea from an environmental standpoint, too? An environmental activist who once pushed for EVs and now works as a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley now calls electric vehicles “unclean at any speed” in a recent article for the engineering journal IEEE Spectrum (via Weasel Zippers and UPI): The idea of electrifying automobiles to get around their environmental shortcomings isn’t new. Twenty years ago, I myself built...

Last summer, California highway police pulled over pop star Justin Bieber as he sped through Los Angeles in an attempt to shake the paparazzi. He was driving a hybrid electric car—not just any hybrid, mind you, but a chrome-plated Fisker Karma, a US $100 000 plug-in hybrid sports sedan he’d received as an 18th-birthday gift from his manager, Scooter Braun, and fellow singer Usher. During an on-camera surprise presentation, Braun remarked, “We wanted to make sure, since you love cars, that when you are on the road you are always looking environmentally friendly, and we decided to get you a...

BERKELEY, Calif., July 1 (UPI) — Electric cars, despite their supposed green credentials, are among the environmentally dirtiest transportation options, a U.S. researcher suggests. Writing in the journal IEEE Spectrum, researcher Ozzie Zehner says electric cars lead to hidden environmental and health damages and are likely more harmful than gasoline cars and other transportation options. Electric cars merely shift negative impacts from one place to another, he wrote, and "most electric-car assessments analyze only the charging of the car. This is an important factor indeed. But a more rigorous analysis would consider the environmental impacts over the vehicle's entire life...

Can Tesla Motors really make it in the automotive mass market? It's the question that haunts (or that should be haunting) current and potential Tesla investors. Tesla has already achieved big things, designing and building a great electric luxury sedan in the Model S, pictured above. It has also proven that it can sell enough of them to turn a profit. It's true that so far the profit has been tiny, and the economic conditions in the U.S. quite favorable, but still: That's an enormous achievement. But it's another big leap from there to becoming a mass-market carmaker - but...

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.