europe

Nissan Europe would like to see sales of its Nissan Leaf go up – how unusual – and has brought in an experienced marketing executive to make it happen. Jean-Pierre Diernaz moved from Nissan's luxury brand Infiniti, where he served as director of marketing and communications, to become ...

The struggles that Gisli Gislason has gone through to bring electric vehicle to his home country of Iceland are a near-perfect example of the difficulties that have plagued the EV industry around the world. After working with two companies that ended up not being able to deliver what they ...

Angst or no angst, Germany's government is sticking to its estimate for at least 1 million electric vehicles to be on the country's roads by the end of the decade, Reuters says, despite the fact that fewer than 3,000 EVs were sold in Germany last year. German Chancellor Angela Merkel reaffirmed ...

For Toyota and the new version of its Auris Hybrid that goes on sale starting next month, less is more. In this case, the Auris Hybrid will get an engine that cuts emissions by more than three percent from the current version. The Auris Hybrid that goes on sale next month will emit just 84 grams ...

In Europe, car rental and car sharing are getting tapped into by automakers to "move the metal." Electric vehicles may come equipped with cutting-edge technology, but when buyers balk, automakers are quick to dump them on fleets. EVs only made up 0.23 percent of new car sales in Western ...

General Motors' Opel division is confident that its slate of diesel engines will allow it to meet stricter European emissions standards set for 2020. As for the even stricter ones expected in 2025? Not so much. Stop us if you've heard this before, but that's why Opel says it will consider adding ...

Next month, Smart USA will launch the first US market electric vehicle with a separate rental program for the battery pack. Those buying or leasing the Smart Fortwo Electric Drive will have the option of renting the lithium ion battery for a monthly fee. The US base price for the Smart Fortwo ED ...

General Motors Vice Chairman Steve Girsky has had it up to his eyeballs with Europe. It's one thing to attempt to bail out GM's Opel subsidiary in the beleaguered European auto market. It's another to market the Opel Ampera plug-in hybrid to such tepid response. "All the governments in Europe ...

Automakers don't necessarily sell the same vehicles in both North America and Europe, but a new report from the Continent's Transport And Environment makes it sound like the fuel-economy rating... questions we've seen here in the US might also be happening across The Pond. Well, except over there ...

German automakers are caught in a quandary – how can they pay more for a clean energy surcharge tax when automotive sales are down. The problem stems from German Chancellor Angela Merkel's move to take the country further away from nuclear and toward using more renewables to power the ...

Nissan has got your "range extender" right here. The Japanese automaker says its UK-produced all-electric 2013 Leaf will have a single-charge range of 124 miles, or about 14 percent more than the Japan-produced 2012 Leafs that had a 109-mile single-charge range. Better still, Nissan's again ...

The days of free public charging for electric vehicles may soon be coming to an end, despite there being a lot of it out there right now, whether solar powered or as an incentive deal when buying the EV. Plug In Car's European correspondent Laurent Masson, though, is looking ahead and is making ...

Together, Toyota and its Lexus luxury arm broke the 100,000-unit barrier for hybrid vehicle sales in Europe last year, Automotive News Europe reports. Long known for their diesel-buying preferences as a way to boost fuel economy, Europeans upped their Toyota and Lexus hybrid purchases by a ...

Holland has become a bellwether for electric vehicle adoption and infrastructure development. The numbers certainly are not staggering – about 7,500 on the roads throughout the Netherlands – but they did increase eightfold last year and charging posts are showing up in cities ...

European Union climate commissioner Connie Hedegaard thinks she knows the answer to "the chicken or the egg" debate when it comes to selling more electric vehicles or installing more charging stations. Hedegaard, who served as climate minister from 2007 to 2009, wants to see her home country ...

Germany may only have a quarter the population of the US, but that won't stop the country from being on America's heels when it comes to electric-drive vehicle adoption. The country's Germany Trade & Invest publication, citing a Horvath & Partners study, estimates that there will be ...

Since too much information isn't exactly possible in some situations, BMW is continuing its electric vehicle user study in Leipzig, Germany. The automaker is working with TU Chemnitz (University of Technology) and Stadwerke Leipzig municipal utility to conduct an electromobility study with ...

To paraphrase the old Elvis Presley tagline, more than 800,000 Europeans can't be wrong. That's the conclusion of Pike Research, which estimates that sales of electric vehicles in Europe will jump more than fivefold between now and the end of the decade. Specifically, EVs will account for about ...

Europeans drive a lot of diesel-powered vehicles. This is intentional. Since diesel is inherently more efficient than gasoline, many European countries give tax advantages to diesel fuel. In response, automakers in Europe offer several small diesel vehicles with high-torque engines, offering high ...

For anyone old enough to remember the '70s, the concept of a lowered van brings about images of groovy decals and Cheech & Chong, not fuel economy. But Ford Europe has other ideas. The US automaker's Ford Fiesta "van" (OK, it's "car-derived" from a really small car) starts sales in Europe ...