Here is a quick recap of electric vehicle news at CarNewsCafe and around the world. Are you charged up?
Driving a Ford C-MAX Hybrid in San Francisco. If you haven’t followed our trip from Los Angeles to San Francisco, I highly recommend you reading the first part of the trip here . The second part focuses on driving the C-MAX Hybrid in hilly San Francisco. The electric motor takes care of those steep hills if you are light footed enough. Click here to read the rest.
Elsewhere,
EVs Outsell PHEVs. Great catch from John Voelcker at GreenCarReports reporting how pure electric vehicles outperformed their plug-in hybrids in terms of sales the first months of the year. Is it time for car makers to rethink their EV strategies and beef up their games?
Ford Focus Electric, More Affordable. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you can’t miss the fact that Ford discreetly lowered it’s Focus Electric price by $4,000, a whooping 10%. Why? According to my sources at Ford, it was to keep the car competitive. Mission accomplished.
BEV, PHEV & HEV May/June Sales EDTA. Great numbers from the EDTA that shows a great spike in PHEV sales these past few months; 3,209 in May compared to 2,735 for the previous one and 4,169 for the month of June. With Hybrids the numbers are; 48,796 in May, compared to 42,804 the previous month and 44,924 in June. Pure electric vehicles are: 4,545 in May, compared to 4,403 for the previous month and 4,573 in June. All in all, 56,550 for May, compared to 49,942 for the previous month and 53,666 in June.
Retailers Catching On To Charge While You Shop. The big question we have for retailers is will they understand the business opportunity in letting customers charge for free while they shop? The New York Times blog might be hinting at it here.
Terra Motors, Electric and iPhone Friendly. Great catch from our friends at Gizmag. An electric scooter from Terra Motors that loves your iPhone. The gist, dock your iPhone and use it to monitor your escooter. Simply smart!
Who Wins The All Electric Vehicle Rally? A Tesla Motors Model S, of course. The Model S covered 1,500 freeway miles in 41 hours and 8 minutes, and won this year’s All Electric Vehicle Rally from Canada-to-Mexico win, via BizJournal.
2013 Prius MPG Challenge. We don’t hear enough Toyota PHEV and EV news, so there it is. Toyota partners with seven prolific environmental influencers in its second wave of its PHEV Challenge.
Next week, stay tuned as I take a closer look at plug-in hybrids from Volvo, Mercedes and Porsche. Is it fair to say they will compete against Tesla Motors? You decide. Next week, a 7 day test drive of the Honda CR-Z and more.
