Electric

Electric Mobility

The battery, the range, the charge and the catch, electric cars seen through what actually matters.

A driverless Tesla robotaxi Model Y with an empty front seat moving through a busy Austin street at dusk

Electric

Tesla's robotaxi now drives across every street in Austin, and hardly anyone is inside

By Bruno Teles · July 4, 2026

A sleek modern electric high-speed train racing across a desert landscape beside a highway

Electric

The country that built the transcontinental railroad is finally laying its first true high-speed line

By Bruno Teles · July 4, 2026

A white self-driving robotaxi with roof sensors driving on a city street with no driver

Electric

The driverless car quietly went mainstream, and almost no one noticed the moment it happened

By Bruno Teles · July 4, 2026

A sleek aerodynamic electric semi truck hauling a trailer along an open American highway

Electric

After nine years of promises, the Tesla Semi is finally rolling off a real production line

By Maria Heloisa Barbosa Borges · July 4, 2026

A DeLorean DMC-12 sports car with its brushed stainless-steel body and both gullwing doors raised open in a studio

Electric

A star engineer built a gleaming stainless-steel sports car with wings for doors, watched his company die in a drug scandal, and then a Hollywood film turned his flop into an icon

By Bruno Teles · July 3, 2026

A row of antique Edison nickel-iron battery cells in nickel-plated steel cases with screw terminals on top

Electric

Thomas Edison built a battery so nearly indestructible that cells made more than a hundred years ago still hold a charge, yet it lost the electric car to gasoline and was written off as a failure

By Bruno Teles · July 2, 2026

A man bending to turn the hand crank of an early automobile on a snowy Detroit street around 1910

Electric

A man stopped on a Detroit bridge to crank a stranger's stalled car, the handle kicked back and killed him, and his death pushed Cadillac to build the electric starter that doomed the hand crank

By Bruno Teles · July 2, 2026

The Centennial Light, an old hand-blown carbon-filament lightbulb glowing a soft orange as it hangs in a dim fire station

Electric

The Centennial Light has glowed in a California fire station since 1901, outliving by a century the millions of bulbs an industry secretly agreed to build so they would burn out fast

By Maria Heloisa Barbosa Borges · July 1, 2026

Michael Faraday in his Royal Institution laboratory surrounded by coils of wire, a magnet and glass jars by lamplight

Electric

A poor bookbinder taught himself science and found how to make electricity from a magnet, and now every power plant runs on his idea

By Maria Heloisa Barbosa Borges · July 1, 2026

Thomas Davenport, a Vermont blacksmith, at his forge studying an early hand-built electric motor of coiled wire and magnets

Electric

A Vermont blacksmith built the first electric motor in 1834, then died broke because the world had no power to run it

By Maria Heloisa Barbosa Borges · July 1, 2026

An 1880s laboratory bench with the kind of early AC induction motor Galileo Ferraris built

Electric

He invented the motor that powers the modern world, then refused to own it

By Maria Heloisa Barbosa Borges · June 30, 2026

Luigi Galvani touching dissected frog legs with a metal instrument as they twitch in an 18th-century laboratory

Electric

The twitching frog that gave us the battery and Frankenstein

By Maria Heloisa Barbosa Borges · June 30, 2026

A Bersey electric cab, a Victorian battery-powered hansom, on a foggy gas-lit London street in 1897

Electric

London had silent electric taxis in 1897, then threw them away

By Maria Heloisa Barbosa Borges · June 30, 2026

The Telharmonium, a vast 1900s hall of electrical dynamos and a keyboard that streamed music over phone lines

Electric

The 200-ton machine that streamed music in 1906

By Bruno Teles · June 30, 2026

A sleek low luxury electric sports sedan with a long hood under dramatic studio lighting, evoking the Fisker Karma

Electric

A legendary designer built the prettiest electric car of its age, then watched it drown

By Maria Heloisa Barbosa Borges · June 30, 2026

The Voxan Wattman electric record motorcycle at high speed on a long runway, rider tucked low

Electric

A silent electric motorcycle hit 455 km/h on the runway where the Space Shuttle used to land

By Bruno Teles · June 30, 2026

The Niagara Falls power plant of 1895 beside the thundering falls, an early hydroelectric station

Electric

In 1895 engineers chained the world's mightiest waterfall and used it to light a city 20 miles away

By Bruno Teles · June 30, 2026

The Daddy Long Legs car on tall stilt-legs moving through the sea off Brighton in the 1890s

Electric

A Victorian inventor built an electric tram on stilts and drove it straight through the sea

By Maria Heloisa Barbosa Borges · June 30, 2026

Gustave Trouve riding a three-wheeled electric tricycle through a Paris street in 1881

Electric

He drove the world's first electric car in 1881, then was thrown into a pauper's grave

By Bruno Teles · June 30, 2026

A person riding a two-wheeled self-balancing Segway personal transporter along a city pavement

Electric

It was going to remake every city on Earth, then it became a punchline with two wheels

By Bruno Teles · June 30, 2026

The long needle-shaped Buckeye Bullet electric streamliner racing across the white Bonneville Salt Flats

Electric

College students built an electric car and drove it to 341 miles an hour on a salt flat

By Bruno Teles · June 30, 2026

A sleek silver TGV train blurring past at extreme speed on an open high-speed line

Electric

France pushed a train on ordinary rails to 574.8 km/h, almost catching the floating trains

By Bruno Teles · June 30, 2026

A tiny boxy 1970s Enfield 8000 electric city car parked on a British street

Electric

They laughed at this 48 mph electric car, until one beat a Lamborghini off the line

By Bruno Teles · June 30, 2026

A long-nosed SCMaglev L0 Series bullet train speeding along an elevated U-shaped guideway in Japan

Electric

Japan built the fastest train on Earth, a 603 km/h machine that floats on superconducting magnets, and still cannot finish the track to run it on

By Bruno Teles · June 29, 2026

An electric tugboat pushing hard against the huge hull of a container ship in a port, white water at its bow

Electric

A little electric tugboat with a 70-tonne grip shoves the world's biggest ships around all day, then recharges over lunch

By Bruno Teles · June 29, 2026

The Yara Birkeland electric container ship sailing on a calm Norwegian fjord with no funnel or smoke

Electric

A Norwegian fertilizer giant built the world's first crewless, all-electric cargo ship to wipe out 40,000 diesel truck trips a year

By Bruno Teles · June 29, 2026

A small white two-seat electric plane with a nose propeller parked on a grass airfield at golden hour

Electric

The world's first certified electric plane is not a jet from Boeing or Airbus, but a tiny two-seat trainer from a small Slovenian workshop

By Maria Heloisa Barbosa Borges · June 29, 2026

An 1882 Victorian parlour with a tree of early electric Christmas lights

Electric

The cosy tradition of electric Christmas lights began in 1882 as a corporate stunt by one of Edison's men to sell electricity

By Maria Heloisa Barbosa Borges · June 29, 2026

A 1959 Henney Kilowatt electric car plugged in to charge in a suburban driveway

Electric

A battery company built a real electric production car in 1959 and sold most of them to power companies, fifty years before the EV boom

By Bruno Teles · June 29, 2026

An 1890s electric carriage like the William Morrison electric car on a small-town street

Electric

America's first car was electric, built in 1890 by a Scottish chemist who didn't care about cars, only about the battery inside it

By Maria Heloisa Barbosa Borges · June 29, 2026

A period portrait of Lewis Latimer at a draftsman's table with an early light bulb

Electric

He drew the patent for the telephone and made the light bulb cheap enough for everyone, yet the son of escaped slaves is barely remembered

By Bruno Teles · June 29, 2026

The Manhattan skyline in total darkness during the 1977 New York City blackout

Electric

The 1977 blackout dropped nine million New Yorkers into darkness for 25 hours, and the same city that stayed calm in 1965 tore itself apart

By Maria Heloisa Barbosa Borges · June 29, 2026

The 1900 Lohner-Porsche electric car displayed at the Paris World's Fair Palace of Electricity

Electric

The first car Ferdinand Porsche ever built was electric, with a motor inside each wheel, an idea the world is only now coming back to

By Bruno Teles · June 29, 2026

Charles Steinmetz, a short hunchbacked man in spectacles, beside crackling electrical apparatus in a dim laboratory

Electric

Almost turned away at Ellis Island for being a dwarf, this 4-foot immigrant became the wizard who built 120,000-volt lightning for General Electric

By Maria Heloisa Barbosa Borges · June 29, 2026

A vast Victorian brick power station beside the Thames at Deptford with tall chimneys

Electric

A young engineer barely out of his teens bet that electricity should come from giant distant power stations, and built the one that proved the whole modern grid right

By Bruno Teles · June 29, 2026

An early carbon-filament incandescent bulb glowing on a Victorian bench, the kind of lamp Joseph Swan demonstrated in 1879

Electric

A chemist in Newcastle lit a working electric bulb before Edison's famous lamp, lit the first house in the world, and beat Edison so soundly in court that the great inventor had to merge with him

By Maria Heloisa Barbosa Borges · June 28, 2026

A Victorian woman scientist studying a bright carbon electric arc lamp on a laboratory bench, representing Hertha Ayrton

Electric

She worked out why the electric arc lighting the world's streets hissed and flickered, became the first woman in Britain's engineering institution, and was still refused her rightful honour

By Maria Heloisa Barbosa Borges · June 29, 2026

A 19th-century Black engineer in a workshop holding telegraph equipment with a steam train behind him, representing Granville Woods

Electric

A self-taught Black inventor found a way to let speeding trains warn each other of danger, then beat Thomas Edison in court twice, and still died poor and almost forgotten

By Bruno Teles · June 29, 2026

Ian Wright, an engineer in a hi-vis vest, standing beside a garbage truck with an electric powertrain in a workshop

Electric

Ian Wright helped found Tesla and then walked away, ending up not in supercars but in the unglamorous business of electrifying garbage trucks, where the fuel savings are biggest

By Bruno Teles · June 29, 2026

The sleek silver teardrop-shaped GM EV1 electric car parked on a sunny California road

Electric

General Motors built a beloved electric car in the 1990s, the EV1, then took every one back from its drivers and crushed them in the Arizona desert

By Maria Heloisa Barbosa Borges · June 29, 2026

The White Zombie, a plain white 1972 Datsun electric drag car, staged at a drag strip start line beside a muscle car

Electric

A rusty 1972 Datsun rebuilt in a garage as an electric drag car, the White Zombie, has spent decades beating Vipers and muscle cars off the line years before Tesla made electric cars cool

By Bruno Teles · June 29, 2026

The tiny Reva G-Wiz electric car parked on a central London street beside a red double-decker bus

Electric

A tiny Indian electric car that Top Gear crash-tested into a punchline, the Reva G-Wiz, quietly became Britain's best-selling electric car years before most people had heard of Tesla

By Maria Heloisa Barbosa Borges · June 29, 2026

Henrik Fisker presenting a sleek silver electric luxury sedan on an auto show stage under spotlights

Electric

Henrik Fisker drew the curves that made the Aston Martin DB9 a legend, then bet everything on electric cars and went bankrupt twice, the second time owing close to a billion dollars

By Bruno Teles · June 28, 2026

A rider at a bright green Gogoro GoStation kiosk on a Taiwan street, lifting a battery out of an electric scooter to swap it

Electric

In Taiwan, electric scooters do not charge: their riders pull into a green kiosk, swap two drained Gogoro batteries for fresh ones in seconds, and ride away

By Bruno Teles · June 28, 2026

A sleek low flat solar-panelled race car driving along an empty outback highway under bright sun in the World Solar Challenge

Electric

Every couple of years, sleek cars powered by nothing but sunlight race 3,000 kilometres across the Australian outback in the World Solar Challenge

By Bruno Teles · June 28, 2026

A hybrid truck driving under overhead electric wires on a highway, its roof pantograph raised to the catenary line

Electric

The eHighway hangs tram-style overhead wires above the motorway so that long-haul trucks can raise a pantograph and drive on electricity without hauling a giant battery

By Maria Heloisa Barbosa Borges · June 28, 2026

The black and white electric Volkswagen ID.R race car with a huge rear wing climbing a mountain road on Pikes Peak

Electric

On the thin-aired road up Pikes Peak, an electric Volkswagen beat a century of petrol cars to set the fastest time ever, because its motors never gasped for breath

By Bruno Teles · June 28, 2026

The white electric car ferry Ampere crossing a calm Norwegian fjord with steep green mountains rising on either side

Electric

Norway answered a government challenge with the world's first all-electric ferry, a silent ship that glides across its deepest fjord on a battery the size of a small power plant

By Bruno Teles · June 28, 2026

The Pipistrel Velis Electro electric aircraft, a small white two-seat plane, parked on an airfield

Electric

A small Slovenian company beat Boeing and Airbus to the first electric aircraft ever certified to fly, a quiet two-seat trainer that recharges between flying lessons

By Bruno Teles · June 28, 2026

A Formula E electric single-seater racing car cornering on a city street circuit between barriers

Electric

A napkin sketch in a Paris restaurant became Formula E, the electric racing series that petrolheads laughed at, until Porsche, Jaguar and Nissan came to race silent cars through the world's cities

By Maria Heloisa Barbosa Borges · June 28, 2026

The Aptera, a sleek teardrop-shaped three-wheeled solar electric car parked in sunshine

Electric

Two engineers built a three-wheeled car so efficient it can run on sunlight for the daily commute, watched their company go bankrupt, then bought it back to try again as Aptera

By Bruno Teles · June 28, 2026

The Rimac Nevera electric hypercar built by Mate Rimac, a sleek low blue sports car on a track

Electric

Mate Rimac was mocked for turning an old BMW into an electric racer in his garage at 18, and now he builds the fastest car on Earth and runs Bugatti

By Maria Heloisa Barbosa Borges · June 28, 2026

The cherry-red Tesla Roadster in space with a spacesuited Starman dummy at the wheel, Earth behind

Electric

SpaceX needed a dummy weight for its first giant rocket, so Elon Musk strapped in his own electric Tesla Roadster and a spacesuited mannequin, and the car is still orbiting the Sun

By Bruno Teles · June 28, 2026

A charismatic tech founder presenting the Better Place electric car vision on a bright keynote stage

Electric

A charismatic tech star raised more than 800 million dollars so Better Place could kill the gas pump with swappable batteries, and it sold barely 1,000 cars before collapsing

By Maria Heloisa Barbosa Borges · June 28, 2026

An 1830s passenger boat on the Neva in St Petersburg with no funnel or smoke, evoking Jacobi's electric boat

Electric

Decades before the electric car, a battery-powered boat was already carrying passengers up a Russian river in front of the Tsar, the first time electricity ever moved people

By Bruno Teles · June 28, 2026

A small late-1990s hybrid sedan on a road, like the first Toyota Prius of 1997

Electric

The car that made hybrids mainstream nearly died in the lab, with prototypes that would not move and batteries that caught fire, before it was rushed out in 1997

By Maria Heloisa Barbosa Borges · June 28, 2026

A low yellow hand-built electric sports car, the AC Propulsion tzero, in a California workshop

Electric

A brilliant engineer built a screaming-fast electric sports car by hand in a California workshop, the carmakers ignored it, and it quietly gave birth to Tesla

By Bruno Teles · June 28, 2026

Two men in 1910s suits beside an early electric automobile with battery cells, the Edison Ford electric car of 1914

Electric

In 1914 Edison and Ford promised the world a cheap electric car for everyone, then it quietly vanished and gasoline ruled for a century

By Maria Heloisa Barbosa Borges · June 28, 2026

A 1972 Buick Skylark sedan with its hood open showing the experimental hybrid drive built by Victor Wouk

Electric

In 1974 an engineer built a hybrid that doubled the mileage and cut emissions to a tenth, and a single government official killed it on principle

By Bruno Teles · June 28, 2026

A long-nosed high-speed bullet train shaped like a kingfisher's beak bursting out of a tunnel at speed

Electric

Japan's bullet train was too loud for the law, so a birdwatching engineer rebuilt its nose like a kingfisher's beak

By Maria Heloisa Barbosa Borges · June 28, 2026

The first electric railway at the 1879 Berlin exhibition, a small locomotive pulling open cars of passengers

Electric

The age of electric trains began as a fairground ride in 1879, a tiny locomotive pulling crowds in circles around a Berlin exhibition

By Bruno Teles · June 28, 2026

A 1974 CitiCar, a tiny wedge-shaped plastic electric car, parked on an American suburban street

Electric

A plastic wedge that looked like a doorstop was America's best-selling electric car for over 30 years, until Tesla came along

By Maria Heloisa Barbosa Borges · June 28, 2026

A man riding the first electric vehicle, a battery-powered tricycle, on a Paris street in 1881

Electric

The first electric vehicle was a tricycle built in Paris in 1881, years before the petrol car, by an inventor who died forgotten in a pauper's grave

By Bruno Teles · June 28, 2026

A sepia 1890s portrait of inventor Frank Sprague in a Victorian suit

Electric

Cities grew outward and upward because one forgotten inventor put electric motors in streetcars and elevators, and almost nobody knows his name

By Maria Heloisa Barbosa Borges · June 28, 2026

The cigar-shaped Peral submarine of 1888 floating at a Spanish naval arsenal with sailors on its deck

Electric

A Spanish officer built a battery-powered submarine in 1888 that sank a cruiser in trials, and his own navy buried the project out of spite

By Bruno Teles · June 28, 2026

The 1900 Lohner-Porsche electric carriage on display at the Paris World's Fair Palace of Electricity

Electric

Before Porsche meant roaring engines, a 24-year-old built an electric car with motors in its wheels and then the world's first hybrid

By Maria Heloisa Barbosa Borges · June 28, 2026

An 1899 New York electric taxi, a black electric Hansom cab, on a busy city street with a lady boarding

Electric

In 1899 most of New York's taxis were electric, and a crane swapped their half-ton batteries for fresh ones in three minutes

By Bruno Teles · June 27, 2026

Scrapped streetcars piled in a junkyard at the heart of the streetcar conspiracy

Electric

Americans were told General Motors secretly ripped out their electric streetcars, and the real story behind the great streetcar conspiracy is stranger and sadder than the myth

By Bruno Teles · June 27, 2026

A sleek white passenger pod inside a long elevated steel hyperloop tube stretching into the distance, futuristic and clean

Electric

Elon Musk promised a 1,000 km/h tube that would beat the plane, and a decade later the hyperloop has quietly stalled

By Maria Heloisa Barbosa Borges · June 25, 2026

A 1950s cream and red gyrobus at a street stop with three poles raised to an overhead charging post, no overhead wires along the street

Electric

Decades before the electric bus, a Swiss town ran one on a giant spinning flywheel charged at the kerb

By Maria Heloisa Barbosa Borges · June 25, 2026

War of Currents Thomas Edison laboratory 1880s, inventor surrounded by light bulbs batteries and electrical wires in a Victorian-era workshop

Electric

Thomas Edison publicly electrocuted dogs and horses with AC current to discredit Westinghouse, lost the War of Currents anyway, and the first man killed by an electric chair died on Westinghouse power

By Bruno Teles · June 25, 2026

A sleek white and green maglev train speeding along an elevated concrete guideway with motion blur and the Shanghai skyline behind

Electric

Shanghai's maglev floats on magnets and hits 431 km/h, the fastest train on Earth, yet almost nobody else has built one

By Maria Heloisa Barbosa Borges · June 25, 2026

A blue and silver Wuppertal Schwebebahn carriage hanging from a steel frame above the Wupper river with old German buildings alongside

Electric

A German city has carried its commuters under a hanging railway since 1901, and in 1950 a circus elephant leapt from a car into the river below

By Maria Heloisa Barbosa Borges · June 25, 2026

A sleek white and blue bullet-nosed Shinkansen train speeding through the Japanese countryside with Mount Fuji behind

Electric

In 1964 Japan bet everything on a sleek electric train that crossed the country at over 200 km/h, and the Shinkansen has carried billions of passengers without a single death in operation

By Maria Heloisa Barbosa Borges · June 25, 2026

An elegant tall boxy 1910s Detroit Electric car on a city street with a woman in period dress at the tiller

Electric

Around 1900 a third of America's cars were electric, clean and quiet and beloved by women drivers, and even Henry Ford's wife preferred her Detroit Electric to his gasoline Model T

By Maria Heloisa Barbosa Borges · June 25, 2026

The Gossamer Condor, a huge translucent human-powered aircraft, flying low over a field with a pilot pedalling

Electric

Told that human-powered flight was impossible, an engineer named Paul MacCready built a featherlight pedal-powered plane, won a famous prize, and later helped spark the modern electric car

By Maria Heloisa Barbosa Borges · June 25, 2026

The Apollo Lunar Rover, an electric moon buggy with wire-mesh wheels, parked on the Moon

Electric

Decades before electric cars caught on down here, NASA was already driving one on the Moon, a battery-powered Lunar Rover with a motor in each of its four wheels

By Bruno Teles · June 25, 2026

The Wardenclyffe Tower, a tall lattice tower with a mushroom-shaped dome, rising over Long Island farmland around 1903

Electric

Nikola Tesla built a giant tower on Long Island to beam free electricity through the air to the whole world, and the dream of Wardenclyffe Tower helped ruin him

By Maria Heloisa Barbosa Borges · June 25, 2026

A white single-seat Sinclair C5 electric trike with a long nose, parked low on a grey British street

Electric

The man who put a computer in millions of British homes bet his reputation on a tiny electric trike, and the 1985 Sinclair C5 became one of the most famous flops in history

By Maria Heloisa Barbosa Borges · June 25, 2026

The torpedo-shaped silver electric car La Jamais Contente racing in 1899 with driver Camille Jenatzy

Electric

The first car to break 100 km/h was electric, a torpedo called La Jamais Contente, and in 1899 its Belgian driver Camille Jenatzy earned the nickname the Red Devil

By Bruno Teles · June 25, 2026

Solar Impulse, a wide solar-powered plane, flying above the clouds at sunrise

Electric

A plane as wide as a jumbo jet but as light as a car flew around the world on sunlight alone, and Solar Impulse did it without burning a single drop of fuel

By Maria Heloisa Barbosa Borges · June 25, 2026

Elderly hands holding a lithium-ion battery cell in a research laboratory, evoking inventor John Goodenough

Electric

Almost every rechargeable gadget on Earth runs on a battery John Goodenough invented, yet he never got the patent, won the Nobel Prize at 97, and kept inventing until he died at 100

By Bruno Teles · June 25, 2026

A row of yellow electric school buses plugged into chargers at a depot

Electric

A diesel school bus is one of the dirtiest rides of a child's day, so Oakland turned its whole fleet electric, and now those electric school buses double as a giant battery for the grid

By Maria Heloisa Barbosa Borges · June 24, 2026

A blue hydrogen train traveling through the flat green northern German countryside, the first fleet of its kind in the world

Electric

Germany put the world on the first hydrogen passenger trains and hailed them as the end of diesel, now the operator of its first hydrogen line is switching back to batteries

By Bruno Teles · June 24, 2026

A classic small British electric milk float loaded with crates of glass milk bottles, parked on a quiet suburban street in the soft light of early morning

Electric

Long before anyone had heard of Tesla, Britain quietly ran the biggest fleet of electric vehicles on Earth, and almost every one of them was a milkman's float humming down the street at dawn

By Bruno Teles · June 24, 2026

A young engineer standing beside a long sleek silver solar-electric car whose roof and bonnet are covered in dark solar cells on a sunny test track

Electric

Dutch students won three solar races, then built the world's first production solar car that charges itself from the sun, only to watch it unravel weeks after the first deliveries

By Maria Heloisa Barbosa Borges · June 24, 2026

A sleek white electric hydrofoil ferry lifted clear of the water on slender underwater wings, flying just above the surface with the Stockholm skyline behind it

Electric

Crossing to central Stockholm by boat once ate an hour of the day, so Sweden put commuters on an electric ferry that rises onto underwater wings and flies above the water, halving the trip on 80 percent less power

By Bruno Teles · June 24, 2026

A cable car gondola rising over a dense hillside barrio of brick houses in Medellin

Electric

Medellin was once the most dangerous city on Earth, so it strung electric cable cars up to the poorest barrios on the mountainside and let the people there finally ride down into the city

By Bruno Teles · June 24, 2026

A snowy street in a Norwegian city lined with electric cars plugged into charging points beside colourful wooden buildings

Electric

The country that got rich pumping oil now barely sells a petrol car, as 96 percent of Norway's new vehicles went electric while it keeps exporting the fuel it will not burn at home

By Maria Heloisa Barbosa Borges · June 25, 2026

A brightly painted chrome traditional Filipino jeepney packed with passengers on a busy Manila street

Electric

The Philippines wants to swap its smoke-belching jeepneys for clean electric ones, but the drivers who own the country's most beloved icon say the price tag will bury them in debt

By Bruno Teles · June 24, 2026

A busy Indian street crowded with colourful electric auto-rickshaws carrying passengers through dense traffic

Electric

India quietly built the world's largest electric vehicle fleet, and it is not Teslas but millions of humble rickshaws that are pulling their drivers out of poverty one cheap battery at a time

By Maria Heloisa Barbosa Borges · June 24, 2026

A modern electric city bus on a Santiago street with the snow-capped Andes rising behind the buildings

Electric

Santiago spent decades choking on the diesel smoke of its city buses, then built the biggest electric bus fleet outside China, and its 3 million daily riders are breathing the difference

By Bruno Teles · June 24, 2026

A motorcycle-taxi rider on an electric motorbike on a busy African city street with other riders and traffic behind

Electric

For Africa's motorcycle-taxi riders the petrol pump ate the day's wages, so they are switching to electric bikes that swap a dead battery for a full one in under two minutes

By Bruno Teles · June 24, 2026

A sleek modern silver electric luxury sedan driving along an open European highway through green countryside at golden hour

Electric

A Mercedes test car with a new solid-state battery just drove 1,205 km from Germany to Sweden on a single charge and arrived with range to spare, hinting at the end of charging anxiety

By Maria Heloisa Barbosa Borges · June 24, 2026

A huge yellow electric mining haul truck loaded with dark ore driving through a vast open-pit coal mine under a grey overcast sky

Electric

China just switched on the world's largest fleet of driverless electric mining trucks, 100 giant machines that each haul 90 tonnes, swap their batteries instead of charging, and run with nobody in the cab

By Maria Heloisa Barbosa Borges · June 24, 2026

A sleek modern automated electric car battery swap station at night with a white electric sedan parked inside

Electric

Instead of charging an electric car, China's NIO swaps the whole battery for a full one in about three minutes, and it has now done this more than 100 million times across nearly 4,000 robot stations

By Maria Heloisa Barbosa Borges · June 24, 2026

A sleek white and silver high-speed bullet train racing along an elevated railway through green countryside

Electric

China is about to run the world's fastest passenger train at 400 km/h, an all-electric machine that hit 453 km/h on test and can beat a plane on the trips most people actually take

By Maria Heloisa Barbosa Borges · June 24, 2026

A modern white electric delivery van driving along a city street with a faint blue glow of charging coils beneath the asphalt

Electric

An electric car's biggest weakness is stopping to charge, so a street in Detroit now charges vehicles wirelessly as they drive over it, sending power up through copper coils buried under the asphalt

By Bruno Teles · June 24, 2026

A sleek white electric air taxi with six rotors flying over the Dubai skyline at golden sunset

Electric

Dubai is about to launch the world's first electric air taxi service, flying four passengers across the city in a quiet six-rotor aircraft that turns a 45 minute drive into a 12 minute flight

By Maria Heloisa Barbosa Borges · June 24, 2026

A huge yellow electric mining dump truck loaded with rock descending a quarry road in the Swiss mountains

Electric

The world's largest electric vehicle is a 110 ton mining truck in Switzerland that never has to be plugged in, because hauling rock downhill all day makes more power than it burns climbing back up

By Bruno Teles · June 24, 2026

A large white aluminium catamaran ferry cutting across a wide river estuary at dawn with a city skyline behind it

Electric

The world's largest electric ship is a passenger ferry built to carry 2,100 people across the river between Argentina and Uruguay, running on 250 tonnes of batteries instead of a drop of diesel

By Maria Heloisa Barbosa Borges · June 24, 2026

An electric car fast-charging at dusk beside a coffee cup

Electric

BYD's new megawatt platform charges an EV with about 400 km of range in just 5 minutes at a record 1,000 kW, roughly as fast as a petrol fill-up

By Bruno Teles · June 23, 2026

A yard stacked with used EV battery packs

Electric

China won the electric car race, but now it faces a wave of worn-out batteries heading for a million tonnes a year by 2030

By Bruno Teles · June 23, 2026

A glowing solid-state battery cell on a clean-room line

Electric

Solid-state batteries promising up to 1,000 kilometres of EV range just hit a real pilot line in 2026, and the catch is not the chemistry

By Bruno Teles · June 23, 2026

A cutaway of an electric car revealing its battery pack

Electric

An EV battery loses only 2.3 percent of capacity a year across 22,700 real cars, so it still holds more than 80 percent after eight years on the road

By Bruno Teles · June 23, 2026