Search Results Found For: "John Voelcker"

2022 Ford F-150 Lightning First Drive: Ford’s most valued model is now electric

Ford knows trucks, and demand for its F-150 Lightning shows truck buyers may not be as afraid of EVs as many think. The 2022 Ford F-150 Lightning pickup truck may be the first real mass-market electric vehicle sold in the US. Used by individual owners and businesses alike, pickups are a massive part of the… Read more »

2022 Lucid Air: The makers of the first 500-mile EV should be taken seriously

Created by engineers with years of EV experience, the 2022 Lucid Air is a stunning debut that confronts Tesla—and Mercedes-Benz—with a new competitor. It’s been a long time coming, but the 2022 Lucid Air has been worth the wait. The new carmaker’s all-electric luxury sedan not only competes directly with the aging Tesla Model S,… Read more »

Our Next Energy tests 750-mile battery pack in a Tesla Model S

A two-year-old Michigan startup, Our Next Energy (ONE), has built a custom battery pack that recently propelled a modified Tesla Model S for 752 miles. John Voelcker, writing in Car and Driver, reports that ONE retrofitted the car with a pack that stores twice the energy of Tesla’s original, and fits in exactly the same… Read more »

2022 Hyundai Ioniq 5: Strong new electric SUV competitor

Hyundai’s new compact EV crossover is good enough to sell every unit the company imports—the question may be how high that number will be. The 2022 Hyundai Ioniq 5 is the Korean brand’s first dedicated electric vehicle, positioned at the heart of the fastest-growing part of the market: compact crossover utilities. The premium electric SUV… Read more »

NADA partners with Chargeway to help dealers inform car buyers about EVs

Auto dealers are a well-known bottleneck for EV sales, but it’s not (entirely) because they’re a bunch of gas-loving Luddites. EVs are unfamiliar to most consumers, and it takes valuable time to explain them to shoppers. Most salespeople don’t have the needed product knowledge, and EV sales are such a small part of the market… Read more »

Why is Hertz deploying a huge fleet of Teslas? Hint: it has little to do with emissions.

Are rental car customers ready for EVs? We’re going to find out. Rental giant Hertz theoretically began introducing EVs to its fleet in 2011, and competitors soon followed. However, they were offered only in select markets, sometimes at super-premium prices. Meanwhile, Teslas became popular on the peer-to-peer rental network Turo. Now Florida-based Hertz, which rents… Read more »

Stellantis and LG Energy Solution to build battery factory for North American EV market

Stellantis and LG Energy Solution have agreed to form a joint venture that will produce battery cells and modules for North America at a new production facility. The companies are obviously fans of EV journalist John Voelcker, who praised Ford and GM for announcing new battery facilities in a recent Car and Driver article, and… Read more »

Chevy Bolt battery recall—Car and Driver reveals the gory technical details

The Chevy Bolt battery recall is bad news for GM, and for the EV industry. Every single Bolt EV and Bolt EUV is now under recall because of a potential battery defect that could cause a fire. Roughly a dozen fires have been reported, but no injuries or deaths to date. The three separate recalls… Read more »

“A sad state of affairs”: VW Group CEO Herbert Diess calls out shortcomings of IONITY charging network

Taking a road trip in an EV is no longer a novelty, but it’s still an instructive (and hopefully, fun) thing to do, and the EV road trip story remains an online literary staple. It’s especially interesting when an exec at an automaker takes a trip in one of their company’s new EV models—and even… Read more »