On the sidelines of the 2017 Frankfurt Motor Show, several major automakers made announcements about their electric car efforts.

The Renault, Nissan & Mitsubishi alliance wasn’t among them, but they now also announce new plans as part of their 2022 synergy strategy. expand full story

Renault has no problem selling its all-electric Zoe with a 49% sales jump in Europe earlier this year, but it’s about to deploy a bunch more in a single move through a new car-sharing service in Madrid.

The French automaker plans an initial fleet of 500 electric vehicles by October. expand full story

Renault technically owns a lot of electric car battery packs thanks to its Zoe program under which they sell the actual car, but they lease the battery pack for a monthly fee.

Now they are using some of those used battery packs to power electric vehicle charging stations.  expand full story

Yet another major automaker, the Renault-Nissan Alliance, announces an effort to produce electric vehicles in China following the country’s aggressive goals to electrify its rapidly growing fleet. expand full story

Renault’s Zoe e-Sport RS Concept, a sexy sports version of its successful all-electric Zoe, has been well received since being unveiled at the Geneva Motor Show earlier this year.

At first, it was just to showcase some of their racing tech developed for the Formula E and put into a more accessible vehicle, but now Renault is considering making it available. expand full story

After Faraday Future’s FF91 beta prototype shattered the previous record for a “production electric car” at Pike’s Peak International Hill Climb last weekend, now several other new electric cars are taking to the hill climb at the Goodwood Festival of Speed. expand full story

As we recently noted when Mercedes-Benz launched its home battery pack, it seems that every other automaker, including Nissan and BMW, started leveraging their electric vehicle battery pack technology for residential energy storage since Tesla launched the Powerwall in 2015.

Now Renault is the latest automaker to do the same. The French automaker announced the new home battery pack system in partnership with Powervault today. expand full story

According to the European Automobile Manufacturers Association, alternative fuel vehicles (AFV’s) in the Europe Union are off to a very strong start in the first quarter of this year, increasing their numbers sold by 37.6% to 212,945 vehicles.

Hybrid vehicles (HEV) showed the biggest growth with 61.2% versus the same period last year, now counting 111,006 units. Electrically chargeable vehicles (ECV = BEV and plug-in hybrids) grew with 29.9% from 36,322 units sold in Q1, 2016 to 47,196 units in Q1, 2017. This includes 49% growth for “battery-only” (BEV’s) to 24,592 units sold and 13% growth for the plug-in hybrids (21,644 units). The U.S. market showed a similar growth of 49% for electric car sales to 40,700 units sold in the first quarter according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. The American car market is about 16% larger.

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With the ZOE, Renault pioneered the idea of selling electric vehicles while only leasing the battery pack for a monthly fee. The idea is controversial. While it significantly reduces the entry price, the vehicle is virtually useless without the battery pack and the fee can be expensive.

Nonetheless, the program proved popular since Renault announced that it recently signed its 100,000th battery lease and now those ZOE owners have an interesting opportunity. They can upgrade their battery pack to Renault ‘s new 41 kWh pack released last year. expand full story

Renault was teasing an electric vehicle “surprise” coming to the Geneva Motor Show, which they unveiled today – the first day of the trade show.

The French automaker debuted a new all-electric sport concept built on the ZOE: The ZOE e-Sport Concept. expand full story