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Dyson is developing an electric car at its headquarters in Wiltshire with help from public money, according to government documents. The company, which makes a range of products that utilise the sort of highly efficient motors needed for an electric car such as vacuum cleaners, hand dryers and bladeless fans, last year refused to rule out rumours it was building one. But on Wednesday, the government appeared to have accidentally disclosed Dyson is working on one, along with other big companies outside of the automotive industry, such as Apple. "The government is funding Dyson to develop a new battery electric...

Elon Musk is a genius and a visionary who is almost single handedly changing the future of mankind through three different industries at once. With that said, it’s not clear if investors can easily benefit from any of that. Tesla, the company most associated with Musk is in a downward stock spiral over the last month which has taken it to new 52 week lows. There are many reasons for that downward spiral including concerns about market valuations and weak oil prices (which make Tesla’s correspondingly less attractive as a substitute versus conventional cars). But for the first time, Tesla...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17xh_VRrnMU Do electric cars really help the environment? President Obama thinks so. So does Leonardo DiCaprio. And many others. The argument goes like this: Regular cars run on gasoline, a fossil fuel that pumps CO2 straight out of the tailpipe and into the atmosphere. Electric cars run on electricity. They don't burn any gasoline at all. No gas; no CO2. In fact, electric cars are often advertised as creating "zero emissions." But do they really? Let's take a closer look. First, there's the energy needed to produce the car. More than a third of the lifetime carbon-dioxide emissions from an...

In his 2011 State of the Union address, President Obama predicted that there would be "a million electric vehicles on the road by 2015." But only 382,176 plug-in electrified vehicles (PEVs) have been sold in the U.S. since 2008, according to Hybridcars.com. That's just 38 percent of Obama's one million vehicle goal. And although auto sales in the U.S. were at an all-time-high last year with 17.47 million sold, electric vehicles actually lost market share, dropping from 3.47 percent of all vehicles sold in the U.S. to 2.87 percent, according to the Electric Drive Transportation Association (EDTA). Americans bought 9.7...

**SNIP** “I deal through the Clinton Foundation. That gets me in touch with the Haitian officials,” Mr. Rodham said, according to a transcript of his testimony. “I hound my brother-in-law, because it’s his fund that we’re going to get our money from. And he can’t do it until the Haitian government does it. “And he keeps telling me, ‘Oh, it’s going to happen tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow.’ Well, tomorrow hasn’t come yet.” Mr. Rodham’s Haiti project never did happen. The Clinton Foundation said in a statement that it was not aware of Mr. Rodham’s Haiti project and had no involvement...

Nye recently penned an op-ed for digital culture magazine Aeon, in which he argues that NASCAR should make the switch to electric-powered vehicles. In his mind, NASCAR is a celebration of "old tech," one that reinforces the automotive status quo and hinders progress from a social standpoint. And while the environmental benefits of an industry-wide change are obvious, the former mechanical engineer sees another benefit of the EV switch. "Just think what an electric race would be like," Nye wrote. "It would be faster, and quiet. You could talk to the person next to you. The drivers could probably hear...

Plunging oil prices are set to hit the electric car industry hard, but Tesla vehicles won't be the worst affected, says CEO Elon Musk. "[The] industry as a whole, I think, will definitely suffer from lower oil prices," Musk told CNN's Kristie Lu Stout on Monday. "It just makes economic sense."

Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval approved a $335 million incentive package to attract upstart electric carmaker Faraday Future's billion-dollar factory to a hard-hit Las Vegas suburb, even though the company has yet to unveil a concept car or bring a product to market. The move came shortly after the Legislature voted overwhelmingly to support the deal Saturday, after a four-day special session in Carson City. Lawmakers learned last week that Chinese billionaire Jia Yueting was backing the secretive California-based company, which employs some former Tesla Motors executives, and that Faraday plans to bring 4,500 direct jobs to Nevada. ...

He emulates Steve Jobs' fashion sense but loves to brag that his company has already surpassed Apple in areas including design, craftsmanship, hardware and business models. His company -- which is involved in film production, "smart" TVs, video streaming, mobile phones, bicycles and more -- has been called the "Netflix of China." Last year, he put Tesla in his crosshairs. "We will build the best electric cars to solve the problems of air pollution and traffic jams in China," Jia Yueting wrote on his Chinese microblog. Jia, chairman and founder of Leshi Internet Information & Technology Co., also known as...

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...