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Tesla's showing all the signs of a company in trouble: bleeding cash, securitized assets, and mounting inventory. It's the trifecta of doom for any automaker, and anyone paying attention probably saw this coming a mile away...Snip...Nobody has ever been successful with company stores...snip...they're losing $4000 per car, they're in trouble.

The government has defended its move to gradually phase out tax breaks on electric cars as a way to make things fairer for car owners, but the maker of Denmark’s most popular electric model has slammed the plan as anti-competitive and a death knell for the industry. A political agreement reached on Friday afternoon will see tax breaks on electric cars phased out over the next five years. As a result, the costs of some popular electric models will skyrocket. The hardest hit will be the luxury model Tesla S P85D, which will more than double in price from 875,000...

A first-of-its-kind car-sharing program will give residents of Los Angeles' neglected neighborhoods access to carbon-free transportation.Electric vehicles have helped people save money and curb their greenhouse gas emissions. But for those with less cash to spare, those benefits have been largely out of reach. Now a first-of-its-kind E.V. car-sharing program in Los Angeles aims to put the city’s low-income residents—some of whom have to walk a mile to the closest bus stop—behind the wheel of convenient and carbon-free transportation. “It will help improve the lives of every Angeleno in these neighborhoods by offering them options they don’t have,” said Matt...

You may have a "green" car, but it could be causing black rain in China from the graphite mined and used in its lithium ion battery. Two academics at Toronto's York University, Carla Lipsig-Mumme and Caleb Goods, applaud many of the new advances in green technology in recent years, but at the same time warn that those very technologies may come with a host of environmental issues. The pair issue a caution about “superindustrialization” in which the answer to climate change is a matter of “technological adjustment.” In an article recently published in The Conversation and picked up by the...

The age of electrification across the transportation sector, the solar panel revolution, and Tesla’s battery gigafactory are igniting a battle for the cheapest battery. That will transform lithium into a boom-time mineral and the hottest commodity on the energy investor’s radar. It has been easy to take lithium for granted. This wonder mineral is the backbone of our everyday lives, popping up in everything from the glass in our windows to our mountains of electronics. And while investors have long appreciated the steady rise in demand for this preferred mineral, the number of new applications continues to multiply. Smart phones,...

The problem of limited range has been an important factor curbing the wide-spread adoption of electric cars. But scientists in South Korea have developed a new technology which could solve the problem. The lithium-ion batteries used in most of the current generation of electric cars have limitations. They are expensive and store insufficient power for the needs of many drivers, requiring frequent top-ups. And when they have to be recharged the charging process is time consuming. The technological breakthrough could solve these problems. And in the process, Dr Lu Wu of the Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology in South...

Is that electric car in the driveway — yes, that one with the long cord tethering it to the inside of the garage — a sign of deep environmental concern and human goodness? Or is it an indication that someone has been duped? A growing body of evidence shows that electric cars are more harmful to the environment than comparable fossil-fuel burners. The latest is a study — "Environmental Benefits From Driving Electric Vehicles?" — out this month from the National Bureau of Economic Research. The study's authors — economics and business professors — say that "rather than simply accepting...

Jake Pultorak chuckles at the mention of “range anxiety,” the fear among some electric vehicle owners that their car's battery will run out of juice before the driver can find a charger. “I had that as a gas-car driver, but the anxiety was over how much I had to pay to get where I was going,” said Pultorak, 44, of Franklin Park, who has owned an all-electric Tesla Model S for about two years. Worries at the gas pumps have diminished over the past nine months as the global crash in oil prices brought the cost of gasoline to its...

While Tesla Motors continues to fight it out on a state level with dealership groups—most recently gaining ground in Georgia but getting shut out in West Virginia—one thing is for sure about the automaker's product: The Tesla Model S is, again and by far, the most-loved vehicle in the U.S. The Tesla Model S, according to the market-research firm Strategic Vision, boasts figures of ‘love’ from their overall vehicle experience that handily top those for much-loved sports-car models like the Porsche Boxster and 911. A whopping 92 percent of owners of the Model S summed their experience in the top...

Last year, New Jersey’s state legislature told Tesla its selling style wasn’t welcome. But now, Elon Musk’s electric car company is back in the Garden State’s good graces. On Wednesday, Gov. Chris Christie signed a bill that allows Tesla to sell cars directly to consumers, Bloomberg reported. The move is part of a bill that overhauls the state’s automobile franchise laws. Under the new law, Tesla has to meet some criteria, such as maintaining a service center in New Jersey where the electric vehicles can be fixed. ... But Texas lawmakers have refused to let the company sell directly to...

Hybrid powertrains used to always tag vehicles as optimized for fuel efficiency. But that’s changed in very pronounced ways the past several years, as the fastest supercars in the world--from McLaren, Ferrari, and Porsche--have all adopted some form of hybrid technology that helps with acceleration and performance. And increasingly, with models like the McLaren P1 and Porsche 918, automakers are showing how wealthy owners can stay electric-only and free of tailpipe emissions for lower-speed use in urban city centers, saving the zany acceleration times for the racetrack and the countryside. The latest to go hybrid is the Swedish supercar maker...

If one raises the topic of electric vehicles (EVs), everybody seems focused on Tesla these days. How many vehicles have they sold? Is Apple a would-be competitor? Where’s the stock going? And of course Tesla and its EV brethren have tremendous potential to reduce overall energy consumption and pollution, if sold in significant volumes. To date, there are over 250,000 EVs on the road, which is a solid start. But if one really wants to cut down on fuel use through electrification of vehicles, it might make sense to focus on the types of vehicles in which the most energy...

The new 2016 Chevrolet Volt is sleeker, has more electric range, higher gas mileage, a fifth seat, and should be both faster and quieter on the road. ... For the record, the new transmission and final drive unit is formally known as the 5ET40 Electrified Transaxle. The pair walked us through the five separate operating modes of the new Voltec system: two electric-only, and three blended.

The pack is sized to provide a comfortable range buffer for trucks with predictable daily use, and Amp quotes a range of about 60 miles. But it also equips the E-Gen with a extender to eliminate range anxiety under unexpected circumstances. ... Fleet operators used to the costs of buying fuel for 6-mpg delivery trucks will see a clear financial benefit to an electric truck from Day One if they're leasing it, Burns said, when lease payments, fuel, and maintenance are added together. And that's even without the Federal tax credit for buying a plug-in electric truck, he claims. The...

War makes strange bedfellows. Over the past decade, the Koch Brothers have become a major political force, funneling money from their family company into organizations that support conservative politicians and causes--including the denial of climate change. So Charles and David Koch wouldn't seem like enthusiastic supporters of electric-car maker Tesla Motors. Yet the Koch-funded group Americans for Prosperity is one of 10 signatories on a letter sent to U.S. governors and legislators urging them to support Tesla's direct-sales business model.

... Based on 84 data points from the 85-kWh version of the Model S and six from 60-kWh cars, the study concludes that the Model S will retain about 94 percent of its capacity after 50,000 miles, with losses thereafter shrinking to about 1 percent per 30,000 miles. That means that after 100,000 miles, the typical Model S is projected to retain about 92 percent of its battery capacity and range.

eGolf is Volkswagen’s late entry in the electric vehicle (EV) market, a neighborhood scooter that builds upon the EV concept defined by the Nissan LEAF—except it’s engineered by clever Germans who analyzed Nissan’s steep learning curve. In the fundamentals of range, performance, curb weight, powertrain layout, price, amenities, and even consumer leasing, eGolf SEL was benchmarked against the top-spec Nissan LEAF SL. VW has less costly trims levels arriving within the year, but entered the market with the range-topping eGolf SEL Premium. Above: VW eGolf has 83 miles of range, which costs about $3. That’s one-half to one-third the cost...

Though initially heralded by Elon Musk as Tesla’s biggest potential market after the United States, China is shaping up to be an enormous blind spot for the electric car maker. Tesla sold just 120 cars in China last month, according to Reuters -- a dismal figure that has Musk seeing red. He allegedly blasted out an email to managers in China in January threatening to fire and demote executives who were “not on a clear path to positive long-term cash flow.” And so it is. Today, June Jin, Tesla’s vice president of communications in China, has left the company, Bloomberg...

General Motors Co (GM.N) said Thursday it will build the Chevrolet Bolt electric car at an assembly plant near Detroit, where it will invest $200 million for the project. The compact Bolt, shown as a concept vehicle at the Detroit auto show last month, is designed to have a range of 200 miles, and will cost about $30,000 apiece after tax breaks. GM's announcement confirms a report last week by Reuters that the Bolt would be produced at the under-used Orion assembly plant in Michigan. The only electric car currently available with a 200-mile range is the Tesla Model S,...

Conventional Chevy Silverados being transformed into plug-in hybrid trucks at VIA Motors’ high volume assembly plant.Think of it as a Volt with a flat bed. Via Motors’ “electrified” 4WD Chevy Silverado entered commercial production last month. That’s a first for the company — founded in 2010 — that retrofits GM pickups and vans and turns them into $85,000-plus plug-in hybrids that can also function as roving generators. (More on pricing below.) It’s no coincidence that the concept is similar to the Volt. The chairman of Via Motors is Bob Lutz, father of the Chevy plug-in hybrid. It’s also no coincidence...