Getting the jump on the Presidents exhortation to the country to "win the future" through innovation and exports, California maker of electric powertrains and port-vehicles Balqon has scored a $15.9 million contract to ship 300 of its electric powertrain assemblies to China for incorporation into electric buses. A pio...Read more

The White house rolled out its new three part "advanced technology vehicle plan" Wednesday as Vice president Joe Biden visited the Ener1 battery factory in Indianapolis, a facility that, thanks to a 118 million DOE loan, is currently manufacturing vehicle batteries for Volvo and Think and will soon be expanding. This l...Read more

 In VW's ongoing program to produce a vehicle capable of traveling 100km on 1 liter of fuel There have already been two previous prototypes, but this week at the Qatar International Auto Show the company will be revealing  the third and in a sense, penultimate prototype. Penultimate because this is the first ...Read more

The brand new 2012 Honda Civic is scheduled to make its U.S. debut sometime in April. The initial model available will be the base four-door sedan, but Honda plans a slew of variants including a coupe, an SI sport version, and of course, a hybrid.  Unlike most of the other big automakers, Honda has a history of re...Read more

Automobile makers from Taiwan and mainland China are citing research unveiled at the recent Beijing-Taiwan Science and Technology Forum that predicts world-wide EV and hybrid sales in 2014 will top 100 billion dollars (U.S.). They estimate that between 4 and 5 million will be sold, at an average cost of approximately $...Read more

Chrysler (or perhaps parent company Fiat) don't seem to really believe in gasoline-electric hybrid technology, paying it a certain amount of lip-service out of deference to public perception but preferring to go its own way mechanically. We see this in Fiat's pursuit of ever tinier and more efficient conventional inter...Read more

Often in this blog we've discussed the efforts of various U.S. municipalities and states to begin building EV infrastructure by putting public charging-points in place. Well, you can now add to that list the city of St. Paul, Minnesota. A public/private partnership called Drive Electric Minnesota is beginning the insta...Read more

More than 150 electric vehicles are expected to be on the streets of Austin Texas this summer. The city is one of the initial five markets for the 2011 Chevy Volt, and also a hotbed of tech industry (and has a college-town, Prius loving vibe anyway). So Austin Energy, the city-owned electric utility, has been directed ...Read more

In addition to its new electric car and c-max hybrid, Ford has trotted out a new Plug-in hybrid called the The C-max Energi, which appears to be aimed squarely at the Volt and its European variant, the Vauxhall Ampera. The C-max Energi, which goes into domestic production in 2012, and becomes available in Europe in 201...Read more

The first of the new Toyota Prius variants to go into production was unveiled at the Detroit International auto show Monday, and as expected, it's a slightly larger but similar-in-appearance vehicle that a non aficionado might have trouble distinguishing from the standard model. According to Toyota however, it boasts 5...Read more