Electric Vehicles

The car world is stepping on the accelerator as it shifts away from the piston and toward the electron. This week at Detroit's auto show, nearly every major automaker, including General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and Toyota Motor Corp., announced plans to develop more electric vehicles. But amid all the chatter about charging times, range and 0-to-60 acceleration, an essential business question is emerging.

When it comes to electric vehicles, the Tesla Roadster and Chevrolet Volt get all the love. But there are other EVs rolling around, and they're balancing on two wheels. Since 2007, when Vectrix of Middletown, R.I., first rode onto the scene with its battery-powered Maxi Scooter, a growing number of U.S. start-ups have entered the plug-in two-wheeler market. They've invested millions of dollars in vehicles, many of which are poised for production within a year.

The future of transportation is now available for lease. In the next few weeks, 450 consumers in California, New York and New Jersey will begin picking up fully electric Mini coupes, charging them at home and using them as their daily commuters for the next year. They'll pay $850 a month, plus taxes and insurance, for the right to drive the first highway-legal electric cars that don't cost more than $100,000 to hit the streets in more than a dozen years.

Tesla, the San Carlos, Calif.-based electric car company, said Tuesday that it had been selected to provide the batteries and chargers for Daimler's Smart EV electric car and would deliver 1,000 of the batteries this year and next. "Daimler just gave me permission this morning to announce the news," said Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk, best known as the co-founder of PayPal.

If the future is widespread use of electric cars, it may arrive in San Diego before other places in car-happy Southern California. Renault-Nissan and San Diego Gas & Electric Co. announced a deal Monday to deploy Nissan's new all-electric vehicle on the roads here before it hits the consumer market in 2012. The utility plans to lease 15 to 20 and urge its customers -- private, public and military -- to consider switching to electric vehicles.

General Motors Corp.'s planned launch of the highly anticipated Chevrolet Volt in 2010 is "a stretch" even though the automaker has not hit any snags in its development of the rechargeable electric car, the automaker's chief executive said Tuesday. Rick Wagoner said the automaker's initial tests of a new-generation of lithium-ion batteries needed to power the Volt had been favorable.

To judge by the vehicles being touted at the North American International Auto Show this week, an extension cord may well become a standard car feature. Irvine-based Fisker Automotive unveiled a luxury sports car here Monday that it says can travel 50 miles on a battery charged by plugging it into standard, 120-volt current. The $80,000, rear-wheel-drive Karma will be able to accelerate from zero to 60 mph in less than six seconds and top out at 125 mph, the company says.

Electric car maker Tesla Motors has sued a well-known automotive designer it hired to style the body and interior of its electric-hybrid four-door sedan, after the man announced plans for a competing vehicle.

The company that built the first mass-produced, all-electric car will keep its manufacturing plant in California, thanks to a new tax break. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and state Treasurer Bill Lockyer worked out the deal for Tesla Motors Inc. after learning that the Silicon Valley company intended to build its second-generation vehicle in New Mexico. The financial break, announced Monday, allows Tesla to avoid paying state sales tax on equipment it buys to build its Model S.

When the Zero X wheeled onto the dirt track at Lake Elsinore, the Colgate-white motocross bike looked positively virginal next to the belching, candy-colored models that leaped from mound to mound around it. Not surprisingly, the Zero X drew a lot of attention. Two-stroke? Four-stroke? That wasn't the question riders were asking after watching the electric dirt bike roll around the track a few times and do everything a traditional, gas-powered motocrosser could do, minus the noise and pollution.