Electric Cars News

Volkswagen and Intel Corp's Mobileye are planning to roll out Israel's first ride-hailing service using self-driving cars starting early next year. Volkswagen will provide the electric vehicles and Mobileye its autonomous driving technology.

The concept gives us a preview of another SUV from the company's stable and it's likely that this will be the next generation version of the HB20. The crossover like styling seen in the sketch gives us some idea of what the car will really look like.

Audi staged a global launch of the e-tron in San Francisco last month as part of its effort to expand the market for premium electric vehicles and grab a share from California-based Tesla, which has had the niche largely to itself.

The vehicle is a derivative of the Taycan which is the first purely electric Porsche that will be launched in the market in 2019. Porsche plans to invest more than six billion euros in electromobility by 2022.

The surprise announcement, delivered via tweet to Musk's 23 million followers, comes as Tesla seeks to steer attention away from a chaotic period in which Musk battled with critics, smoked marijuana during an interview and pledged that he had the money to take Tesla private - a promise for which he was sued by the Securities and Exchange Commission, and which he recently settled.

According to the Society of Manufacturers of Electric Vehicles (SMEV), in FY 2017-18 the sales of electric cars came down to 1200 units from 2000 units in FY2016-17 recording a slump of 40 per cent. The sales were flat at 2000 units in FY2016-17.

We keep hearing electric cars are the future. But while we wait in vain for real-world mass application solutions, it would seem Bosch has an intelligent idea to retrofit even existing cars to go green. Whether it is Tesla or the Volkswagen Group or Mercedes-Benz globally, or Tata Motors and Mahindra in India - all are striving towards cleaner mobility solutions. And they too are relying on a lot of the innovation happening - not in their own labs, but at the supplier end with component makers stepping up their game. Enter Bosch.

The company has already said that its first car in India is likely to come in the second quarter of 2019 and now it has announced that its second launch in the market will be an electric SUV which will come in just under a year from the launch of its first car.