#ElectricCars

It would appear that the Smart money is literally on electric cars. Daimler says it plans to stop selling combustion-engined Smart models in North America entirely. If you live in the United States or Canada and want a goofy gas-powered mini car, you’d better buy one now.

Mercedes-Benz USA CEO Dietmar Exler has issued a letter to dealers explaining that the sale of Smart cars with gasoline engines will stop when the 2017 model year ends this fall.

It appears apprehensions over the driving range of electric vehicles will be sticking around for a few more years.

Tesla initially said its highly anticipated Model 3 would posses a 215 mile per charge capacity in its base trim, encouraging rumors that the BEV would offer optional power packages and extended range. However, Big Daddy Musk tweeted yesterday the Model 3 is incapable of housing the larger batteries found on the Model X and S.

Tesla’s CEO also said the current 100 kWh battery will be as large as the company plans to go on its present passenger vehicles — but did mention larger units would need to be installed on the company’s semi-trailer-trucks and, again, referenced the possibility of an electric pickup truck.

Faraday Future’s preeminence in bad publicity has been unsurpassed as of late. It has amassed legal disputes almost as fast as I can report them, so another lawsuit might seem par for the course — until you realize it’s for an almost trifling amount over a mismanaged squabble surrounding the company’s domain name.

A complaint was filed against the automotive startup in San Francisco County Superior Court on November 18th of last year by a business acting as a broker for obtaining the company’s current domain name. The document outlines a $210,000 claim against Faraday for neglecting to remunerate Domains Cable for services that resulted in the acquisition of FF.com.

One of the first things you notice in the silence of an electric car is how prevalent wind and tire noise can be without an internal combustion engine to breakup the aural monotony. While no one has ever slipped into madness due to an overabundance of road noise, rubber grinding against concrete at seventy-five miles an hour isn’t the most pleasant sound in the world, either.

Lucid Motors promised that its upcoming Air EV would possess an audio system equipped with active noise cancellation to ensure that its interior remains a silent space. However, we are only just now discovering how seriously they took that promise.

Faraday Future had already broken ground on a sprawling $1 billion factory in North Las Vegas when a multi-million dollar late fee forced contractors to go on hiatus last November. Then, at CES 2017, the company announced the resumption of construction as the city’s mayor waved to the crowd — a physical manifestation of goodwill towards the company’s new promises.

What they did not say, however, was that the factory would be a fraction of the size as originally claimed, existing as a smaller-scale starter plant. Faraday is the automotive equivalent of Monty Python’s Black Knight. It continues to suffer horrendous blows that cripple its operational ability, all the while telling the world, “Tis but a scratch.”

Chevrolet has released the state-by-state distribution plan for the Chevrolet Bolt, with the all-electric subcompact gradually trickling inland from the coats from now until the third quarter. Nineteen states will see a preliminary wave of deliveries completed by summer’s end. That’s assuming, of course, that dealerships ordered the EV in a punctual manner and production keeps pace.

The manufacturer was careful to call this an “approximate” timeline.

After lulling everyone into a false sense of security, Tesla Motors recently announced that it will begin billing new customers for making use of its Supercharging stations. The promise of free charging was replaced with the promise that the company wouldn’t profit from the powering fee — instead, it would use the money to expand its growing network of stations.

While the pricing structure is about as rigid as boiled spaghetti, the EV manufacturer does appear to be respecting the nature of the new deal. Announced Thursday, all Tesla vehicles ordered after January 15th will receive around 1,000 miles worth of charging credits, updated annually, before becoming subject to the company’s new charging monetization.

Unfortunately, due to state regulations and regional demand for power, pricing will vary greatly depending on where you plug in.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of Mercedes-Benz’s high-performance AMG division, and the company decided to celebrate by offering a new Anniversary Edition GT Coupe and letting slip that it will build electric vehicles in the future.

While Mercedes-Benz formerly provided an extremely limited-production SLS AMG Electric Drive in 2014, that EV’s restricted functionality and stratospheric price tag left the impression that the technology wasn’t yet ready. The juiced SLS turned out to be more of an experiment than anything but, now that the experiment is over, it sounds like they’ll be taking a serious stab at electrified AMGs.

Faraday Future, the Chinese-answer-to-Tesla car company whose travails have been worthy of three concurrently running soap operas even though they have yet to put a single car anywhere near a showroom, debuted a sorta-concepty-production thing this week. And boy oh boy did the knives come out. But why?

Tesla announced Friday that it will impose an additional fee of forty cents per minute on vehicles left idle in a Supercharger space for more than five minutes.

The new expense is apparently another attempt by the company to clamp down on the habitual misuse of its charging network. Since many Supercharging locations are literally parking spots and a Model S takes longer to “refuel” than a gas-powered car, it makes sense that Tesla drivers might wander off to search for coffee.

If you’re still holding on to that copy of Who Killed the Electric Car? you bought back in your university days, it might be time to toss it in the trash.

In just two years, there could be four 200-plus mile electric vehicles on the market, now that Hyundai plans to jump into the long-range EV game.

The South Korean automaker doesn’t want to be an also-ran in the emerging field, so it’s planning a 2018 introduction of an EV designed to battle the 215-mile Tesla Model 3. It’s an ambitious goal for a company whose green car chief once called EVs and hybrids “a headache.”

Electric cars take considerable flack from average consumers for being far too expensive in comparison to gas-powered competitors — and that’s before you realize it takes years to make that money back in fuel savings. Combine those two points with range anxiety and you’ve summarized the major hangups normal folk have with electric-vehicle ownership today.

The U.S. Federal government offers tax incentives, in the form of income tax rebates, to ease the monetary pain of EV ownership for average buyers. Individual states have joined the rebate incentive bandwagon, too. However, the state of Colorado is changing its tune, and will now gift you an incentive before you even drive off the dealer lot — no tax return required.

The big Blue Oval is setting in the Land of the Rising Sun.

That, Volkswagen’s labor boss doesn’t like what he hears, Detroit’s big show and Kia’s big plans for the Rio … after the break!

China’s finance minister said Saturday that the government will end green car subsidies by 2021 and let its market dictate whether EVs or plug-in hybrid can sell on their own in the country, Reuters reported.

Lou Jiwei told reporters that the government would cut subsidies by 20 percent over the next two years, by 40 percent before 2020 and eventually end subsidies altogether by 2021, according to the report.

China surpassed the U.S. last year in electric car sales, in part because of the government’s aggressive support. Few electric cars made in China are available outside the country, however its expected that Cadillac will build in China and sell in the U.S. a plug-in version of its CT6 sedan.

Investors say Volkswagen should have told the world they were cheating earlier because then they could have bought more Apple stock.

That, Mercedes-Benz prices new E-Class in Europe, BMW’s bigger i3 battery and Jeep soars in Europe … after the break!