Electric cars have been in the news a fair bit of late as auto makers prepare for the upcoming season of new models.
Nissan is coming out of the gate in early September with the much anticipated 2018 Leaf, a completely redesigned version of the world’s best-selling electric car to date.
Earlier models had a distinctive style that was either loved or roundly hated, and the new leaf is rumoured to come much closer to traditional Nissan lines and features.
There has also been much speculation in the automotive industry news about just how many cars are on back-order with Tesla Motors.
The 2018 Tesla Model 3 is a hot commodity, and after much coaxing CEO Elon Musk has revealed that they have 455,000 standing reservations in their order books. Even though the company is hoping to ramp up production to 5,000 cars a week by the end of the year, it could take up to 18 months for some of those back-orders to be filled.
Meanwhile, the Chevy Bolt EV set a new monthly record for electric cars in July, selling 1,937 vehicles in the U.S.
The Chevy Volt, Toyota Prius Prime, Tesla Model S and Tesla Model X crossover have all sold more than 10,000 cars in the U.S. market this year. It is anticipated that the Bolt and redesigned Nissan Leaf will soon join in with five-figure sales of their own.
As a show of confidence in the electric automotive industry, Britain has joined France in vowing to ban all new petrol and diesel vehicles by 2040. This follows on the heels of Norway and the Netherlands’ pledge to ban such cars by 2025.
Half of Norway’s new vehicle sales are already either hybrid or plug-in electric cars. Europe as a whole continues to move swiftly towards curbing fossil fuel emissions, even as the U.S. President is vowing to stay soft on emissions and even increase that country’s fossil fuel consumption.
If you’ve never driven an electric car, there’s no better way to go for an extended test drive than hiring one for a few days. It looks like we’ll all eventually have them parked in the driveway, so it might just be time for you to check out one of these green machines for yourself.