safety

Life can be good in a 2013 Nissan Leaf, even when you're crashing one. The all-electric five-seater from Nissan, which is enjoying surging sales this year, has now received the top safety rating by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS). The Leaf joined the Nissan Altima and Infiniti ...

Electrovaya, the Canadian lithium-ion battery maker, is ready to go full speed ahead on battery production after cutting its output and improving its technology. The company, which is launching its SuperPolymer 2.0, specifically says the new battery is less prone to fire risk because of, among ...

General Motors' Opel division is adding metaphorical fire to the real dispute over a new air-conditioning refrigerant's potential flammability. Opel recently ran crash tests with an SUV using a refrigerant, called HFO-1234yf, that is being pushed by the European Union as a way to cut greenhouse ...

Read into this what you will, but Nissan may have given a subtle hint that it would prefer to have its all-electric Leafs powered by something safer than electricity make at a nuclear plant. The reason? The Japanese automaker recently presented a Leaf to an award-winning actor who starred in a ...

The Ford Focus Electric received the highest possible crash-test rating from the federal government, giving Ford another reason to pitch its first all-electric production vehicle to US customers. The Focus EV received a five-star overall score from the National Highway Traffic Safety ...

It's been a long time coming – remember the Pedestrian Safety Enhancement Act of 2010? – but the proposed rules for the noises that electric or hybrid vehicles have to make at low speeds have been released (get them here in PDF). The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration ...

Let's just say the smart money's on smart transportation. A recent study by MarketsAndMarkets found that global spending on so-called smart-transportation initiatives will quadruple to more than $102 billion in 2018 from almost $27 billion this year. Spending on communication systems that do ...

US regulators continue to push for a mandate that makers of hybrids and electric-drive vehicles install a pedestrian-warning system on their vehicles to alert blind pedestrians, the Daily Caller reports. The US Secretary of Transportation had previously set a January 2014 deadline for a final ...

Zero Motorcycles is recalling 315 of its 2012 model year S and DS electric motorcycles to fix a problem that can cause their electronic motors to suddenly lose power. Affected bikes have motor encoder position signals that may drift, or change, over time, Zero Motorcycles stated in a document ...

Chrysler hasn't exactly been in a leadership role when it comes to, plug-in hybrid electric vehicles. Disbanding the ENVI group in 2009 sure didn't help. Plug-in vehicle development continued, though, but the company's PHEV's are now facing another obstacle: overheating. Fortunately, this hasn't ...

Los Angeles-based electric-vehicle maker Coda Automotive is recalling 78 of its Sedan models for what the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says may have been improper installation of side-curtain airbags. NHTSA said that the Sedan's side-curtain airbags may not deploy in an ...

As Wheego Electric Car has been experiencing, starting up a car manufacturing business is a very tough thing to do. Wheego is wending its way through acceptable compliance with Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards Regulations (FMVSSR) for its two-seat, all-electric Wheego Whip LiFe car. The ...

Well this kind of defeats the purpose, doesn't it. Since Olympic organizers have shut down London's only hydrogen refueling station, three of London's hydrogen-powered cabs are being shipped – via diesel-powered car transporters – 65 miles away for refueling. Why did they do that, ...

What a difference 120 pounds make. That's the weight difference between a standard Toyota Prius hatchback and its newer, slightly heavier plug-in hybrid version, and that's the reason why the plug-in didn't match the standard's five-star crash-test rating from the National Highway Traffic Safety ...

It may not be an electric-vehicle junkie's version of "War and Peace," but it's pretty close. The American National Standards Institute (ANSI), which last year formed its Electric Vehicles Standards Panel (EVSP) to accelerate electric-vehicle component standardization, last week released the ...

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) will conduct a meeting in Washington, D.C. on May 18 with representatives from the auto and battery-making industries to talk about safety issues related to lithium-ion batteries used on battery-electric vehicles. "The purpose of this ...

More than three-quarters of the American public say limited driving range is a point of concern when considering an electric vehicle, while almost 30 percent indicated that they thought EVs were more dangerous than conventional vehicles, Consumer Reports said, citing responses to its 2012 Car ...

Maybe this will calm some of the "plug-in cars are scary!" fears that are out there. Recently, a Nissan Leaf driver rear-ended a school bus in Oregon, causing minor injuries but no fire, the Yamhill Valley News-Register reported. The Leaf's front and side airbags deployed during the accident, ...

General Motors has launched an advertising campaign touting the safety of the Chevrolet Volt extended-range plug-in electric vehicle, just as its CEO testified to Congress that a recent Volt fire that took place after a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration crash test would never occur ...

Chevrolet dealers in some U.S. markets are turning away Chevrolet Volts that General Motors is allocating to them, indicating that consumers remain concerned that the extended-range plug-in vehicles pose an additional safety risk relative to convention cars, are too expensive or are otherwise not ...