You may know the name Martin Eberhard: one of the founders of Tesla, now the electric-vehicle engineering director at Volkswagen’s Electronics Research Lab in Palo Alto, Calif. Suffice it to say that with plenty of work put into the Audi e-tron supercar (pictured) and the VW E-Up city car, among others, the man is on the cutting edge of battery technology.

Eberhard has good news for those eager to see the widespread adoption of EV technology: Range anxiety, widely agreed to be a major hurdle for most everyday consumers, may be virtually nonexistent in just 10 years. Eberhard says that at the current rate of progress, an EV's range could be up to 500 miles on a single charge within 10 years. 

The history of Fisker's Karma hybrid -- it of the head-turning design and the impressive credentials of its eponymous designer -- is hurry up and stop. The company has delayed the sleek plug-in three times, despite $828.7 million in backing from the government and private sources. So what has the company produced?

A commercial.

And while the manufacturer says its factory in Finland will go online in February, with a sales goal of 15,000 units in 2011, given the company's history, this may be all you'll see of the Karma for some time to come. Check out the commercial after the jump. 

Coda's self-titled debut sedan is small in statue but carries ambitious goals for the upstart California electric-car maker.

The five-passenger ride is expected to launch this December in California, and Coda Automotive wants to sell the cars across the nation by the end of 2013. It's the first product for a company that is banking on the battery: the 33.8-kilowatt-hour lithium-ion unit powers a small motor for a range of 90 to 120 miles.

Coda brass are candid: It won't be the only car for most people, but it can meet the daily needs of most people. And in plain English, it's a “real car.” There's a trunk. It has fairly bland, universal styling and is roughly the size of a Chevrolet Cobalt. The ambitious goal is to sell 14,000 Codas next year with a sticker in the mid-$30,000 range after the $7,500 federal tax credit and other potential incentives.

 

"Top Gear's" silent masked racer, known only as the Stig, is the subject of many rumors, mysteries, and fables -- mostly put forth by the show's co-hosts, Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May. Now the mystery driver, whose real identity is reportedly known only by the three presenters and a handful of top British Broadcasting Co. execs, wants to write a book -- and the BBC is set to throttle him with a lawsuit if he does.

The issue, according to the BBC, is that the Stig is under contract to keep his identity a secret. 

Last Thursday Mazda notified the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration of steering issues on its Mazda3 and Mazda5 models; a week later, it's turned into a major recall, with the manufacturer planning to summon back more than half a million vehicles worldwide to repair power-steering systems that fail without warning. Currently, 215,000 recalls have been filed in the U.S., with an additional 10,000 affected vehicles sold in China. Recalls will also extend to Europe and Australia. 

Today we will discuss the new Boss Mustang, Honda CR-Z, GM's plan to go public and more.

 

http://live.foxnews.com/strategy-room

 

The Phaeton large sedan is coming back to Volkswagen's lineup in the United States, according to the head of the German plant that builds the car.

VW pulled the $85,000 Phaeton from the U.S. market in 2006 after four years of falling short of sales expectations.

The new Phaeton for the States will be a complete redesign, according to a report by Bloomberg.

“We have our eyes firmly set on the U.S. market,” Juergen Borrmann, director of VW's plant in Dresden, Germany, told Bloomberg in an interview.

 

There’s no denying that cars have swollen in size over the past 10 years. While crash standards are often pointed to as one of the many reasons for the auto industry’s apparent thyroid problem, the truth is that few things contribute to the overall size of a vehicle quite like consumer demand. Here in the good old U.S. of A., buyers are driven by the mantra that bigger is better, and according to a Consumer Reports article, that may be because American drivers weigh more now than they ever have before.

The report says that obesity has grown by 1.1 percent in this country in the three years from 2007 to 2009, and that the number of states that have an obesity rate of 30 percent or more has tripled in that time period. That’s a problem, sure, but what does it have to do with the auto industry? Consumer Reports cites a study from a nonprofit called Resources for the Future that claims that a 10 percent increase in obese drivers from 1999 to 2005 contributed to a reduction in the average fuel economy of in-demand vehicles by as much as 2.5 percent. While people were piling on the pounds, demand for large vehicles such as trucks and SUVs climbed in unison.