Energy, Electric Cars | featured news

Barack Obama will use a visit to a Chicago-area lab on Friday to call on Congress to set aside $2bn over the next decade to fund research into a next generation of electric cars. The White House said the Energy Security Trust, which Obama first proposed in his state of the union address, would use royalties from offshore oil and gas drilling in public waters and would not add to the deficit.

Paris, in its latest bid to be an innovator of the City of Tomorrow, is launching an electric car-sharing program to cut air and noise pollution on the city's medieval cobblestone streets and beyond.

As more electric vehicles come on the market, the need for a common standard for fast-charge connectors is growing.

One of the biggest hurdles on the road to make electric vehicles attractive for the mass market is the long time it usually takes to charge batteries. But a Japanese company called JFE Engineering now claims it has found a solution for that problem.

Shares in electric car maker Tesla opened at $19, above the IPO price of $17, which in turn topped the proposed price range by $1.

Industry officials may be quick to talk up the newest in electric transportation. They’ll also admit it’s not going to be easy abandoning the time-tested internal combustion engine.