Concept cars and bikes.

GEM NEVs lack "the right stuff"; Army decides aganst electric cars

2008-12-21T08:46:00.000-08:00

Six months into trialing 3 GEM neighborhood electric vehicles (NEVs) at the US Army Garrison Grafenwöhr (in Germany) it has been decided that the small utility vehicles just don't have "the right stuff." The decision has nothing to do with the plummeting price of oil or the lack of cool add-ons. Apparently, not only was their range deemed insufficient, but they reportedly suffered from a reliability problem as well. Said Tom Hays, Grafenwöhr's director of public works, "They broke down too often and didn't have enough range". Definitely not characteristics desired in a military working environment.

The Army hasn't given up completely on the idea of electrics and say that improved batteries, and therefore better range, would be a compelling reason to try again. Perhaps they should check out the 70 mile Nemo. Heck, the Ruff and Tuff has that kind of range as well and comes already painted in camouflage! Thanks for the tip, Evan!

2009's Most Efficient Sedans

2008-12-21T08:40:00.000-08:00

http://evworld.com/general.cfm?page=critview&id=2779

IMPORTANT NOTICE: This news item or feature is hosted at an external web site. EV World neither endorses nor supports the editorial positions of these resources, but provides them to our readers for information purposes only. Inactive or broken links are the responsibility of the host site and not EV World. We provide this intermediate page so that our readers can comment on this material. Clicking the above SOURCE link will launch a new browser window.

30 already electric models

2008-10-22T03:33:00.000-07:00

Better place minifesto

2008-10-22T02:45:00.001-07:00

3 pillars

2008-10-19T02:34:00.000-07:00

A world living free from oil.

A planet healing and thriving.

And our environment and economy brought back into balance with each other.

This is the vision of Better Place: As consumers, we can continue our love affair with cars, and even rekindle that relationship by experiencing transportation as a sustainable service. As nations, we can redefine the economics of transportation by breaking the connection with oil. And as a global population, we can see our environment flourish because of our economic growth and prosperity.

Think of it like this: The plug we use to charge our electric cars, the people who drive those cars, the planet we live on, and our mutual prosperity are all interconnected.

PLUG: When we recharge our zero emission electric cars, we’re plugging into a “smart” mobile transportation service that eliminates our addiction to oil.

PEOPLE: When we drive, we’re still in the cars we know and love. The only things that change are how much less we pay, how much more we’re benefiting our world, and how much better we can feel about driving.

PLANET: Together, we achieve global oil independence, reduce greenhouse gases, and create new markets for renewable energy.

PROSPERITY: As we build the infrastructure to lessen our dependency on oil, we create a carbon-free economy that generates new jobs, levels the global playing field, and creates sustainable and environmentally beneficial growth for future generations.

Our cars cannot run on oil and gas forever. The resource is running out, the price is crippling us, and the continued use of it is harming our planet.

Many technologies are jockeying to replace the internal combustion engine. We’ve studied them all, and have decided that the electric drive train is the world’s best option. It could transform our cars into vehicles that produce economic prosperity in harmony with the environment, and end our addiction to oil.

That’s why the battery-powered electric vehicle is the centerpiece of the Better Place vision for sustainable, zero-emission transportation as a service.

Please explore this section to see why we chose this technology over other low- and zero-emission alternatives, how the infrastructure for the electric car is already being built, and how this vision is already becoming a reality, today.

Introducing Zapino Electric Scooter

2008-10-19T02:27:00.001-07:00

The time has finally come for affordable, elegant, and green-friendly commuting.
Here is the electric commuter scooter you've been searching for! With a range of up to 30 miles per charge, a top speed of about 30mph, and plenty of power, the Zapino transports you in impressive style.
The Zapino is not just another pretty face: it's practical, too ... amazingly economical to operate and easy to maintain. The Zapino comes with a 6-month warranty and exceptional ongoing customer service, to keep you on the road without interruption.

HOW TO GET STREET LEGAL:
Some states classify the ZAPINO Electric Scooter as a moped; other jurisdictions consider it a motor-driven cycle. Check with your local DMV or police station to get information about the laws governing your area. Typically, because the top speed of the Zapino is not above 30mph, vehicle registration (getting a tag, providing a VIN #) is NOT required.

Better Place negotiating lease on Tel Aviv property

2008-10-19T01:37:00.000-07:00

The electric car operator will use the new center for staff training.
Dubi Ben-Gedalyahu15 Oct 08 11:51
Project Better Place is negotiating to rent the old drive-in near the Tel Aviv Exhibition Grounds, which the company will use to train staff ahead of next year's planned deployment of its battery recharging and replacement stations. The old drive-in will be used to train staff with the batter recharging equipment, service personnel, and possibly fleet managers and maintenance teams of electric car leasing companies.

Better Place initially wants to rent the 70-dunam (17.5-acre) site for a few months from its owner, the Tel Aviv municipality. Better Place said in response that the drive-in is one of several possible sites which it is negotiating to rent.

Best choosen interiors 2008

2008-10-13T03:23:00.000-07:00

Colage of great cars from autoshows

2008-10-13T02:03:00.000-07:00

see those super cars

2008-09-28T08:57:00.000-07:00

Could The Electric Car Save Us?

2008-09-21T10:44:00.000-07:00

Let's face it: Gasoline-powered cars are a gigantic problem. They pollute, they keep us dependent on foreign oil, and when gas prices go up, they cost a fortune to drive. But what's the alternative?

The problem is, oil is found only where on earth God put it, and He happened to put a lot of it in the Middle East.

Vijay Vaitheeswaran is a correspondent for The Economist and coauthor of "Zoom: The Global Race to Fuel the Car of the Future." He’s heard the sales pitches for every solution under the sun - like ethanol derived from corn.

"I like the idea that farmers are growing energy that powers our cars," President George W. Bush said in a speech last March.

But Vaitheeswaran says that it actually requires more fossil fuels to create enough ethanol to take the place of a gallon of gasoline than the gasoline itself would need.

He has also heard about hydrogen, but says it is expensive to make and difficult to distribute.

"You can't just pull up at the Exxon station and say, 'Fill her up with hydrogen,'" he told CBS News correspondent David Pogue.

But a better solution might be ready to roll sooner than you think:

"Electric cars could be a game changer," Vaitheeswaran said.

Toyota's Prius is a half-electric car and cracked the top ten cars sold in America this summer. It's a hybrid, so it has both an electric motor and a gas engine. At low speeds, the electric motor provides all the power, you're not using any gas. When you need more power, the gas engine kicks in as well, and then when you're slowing down and braking, the power from the wheels is reclaimed and stored in the battery. All told, the Prius gets 45 to 50 miles per gallon of gas, but it is still using gas.

But the public's perception of the electric car is about to get a big makeover, and it's going to start with the Tesla electric roadster. It goes from 0 to 60 in 4 seconds. You plug it at night, and the next day it can go 200 miles on a charge. There's no gas tank, no tailpipe, no oil changes and certainly no boredom.

Not bad for a car company that's based in Silicon Valley.

Martin Eberhard co-founded Tesla Motors with a bunch of software and engineering experts who had no car-design experience. As a result, Eberhard says they weren't held back by conventional wisdom.

"I thought we should build a car that's actually better than those gasoline cars, a car that people want to drive," he said. "So that it doesn't require some great leap of altruism on the part of everybody suddenly to break our addiction to oil."

Electric cars don't produce any pollution or greenhouse gases, but some worry that they will shift the pollution to the power plants that burn coal when making electricity.

"If you do the math, you'll find that an electric car, even if you use coal to make the electricity, produces less pollution per mile than burning gasoline in the best gasoline-powered car," Eberhard said.

But if you do a little more math, you might get a little electric-car sticker shock. This radical innovation doesn't come cheap. The Tesla starts at $98,000. At this price it compares comparably favorably with sports cars that have this kind of performance.

Actually, the Tesla handles like a sports car and can go quite fast.

It's selling fast, too. The first 570 Tesla roadsters have already sold out, and there's a one-year waiting list. Fortunately, not all Tesla Motors cars will cost so much; the roadster is just an opening move.

"With that progress, then we consider the next car," Eberhard said. "Then we look for a car that's in the $50,000 range that can seat, you know, five adults, as our next model."

So why does it take a Silicon Valley startup to reinvent the electric car? Why can't Detroit do it? Actually, it can. Bob Lutz is vice chairman for Product Development at General Motors. The Chevy Volt electric is his baby and it won't cost $100,000.

"My personal target still is to bring this car into the market at, you know, nicely below $30,000," Lutz said.

The Volt can run for 40 miles on a battery charge, which GM says is enough daily range for 82 percent of the population. But for longer trips, the Volt also has a tiny engine (either gas or ethanol, or hydrogen) that recharges the battery as you drive.

"That engine never drives the car," Lutz said. "It's not hooked up to the wheels. Think of it as a portable generator that gets your battery back up."

The car is almost an inside-out traditional hybrid. Instead of a battery helping out the gas engine, the gas engine helps out the battery.

But skeptics like Vijay Vaitheeswaran may have a hard time believing that these cars are the solutions.

"I would watch very carefully what GM actually does," he said. "The country saw a small moment of hope, you know, for electric cars for zero emission vehicles in the '90s, when California saw GM produce the most aerodynamic production car ever made. It was called the EV1. And it was very popular amongst those who could get their hands on it."

You can see the end of that sad story in the documentary, "Who Killed the Electric Car?" Filmmaker Chris Paine was the director.

"In the 1990s, California told car companies that they had to put electric cars on the road," he said. "It took about eight years for a variety of industry interests to kill these mandates. And as soon as they killed them, the car companies took the cars back and destroyed them. And people were very upset about it. In General Motors' case, they took the cars out to Arizona and they secretly crushed them all."

Today, Bob Lutz admits that crushing the EV-1s may not have been the best way to conclude that experiment.

"Now, it turns out that from a PR standpoint probably the dumbest move we ever made," Lutz said. "It was done for all the right legal reasons, but PR-wise it was dumb. So, now I'm getting e-mails saying, 'I hope you rot in hell.'"

But Lutz says that this time, GM is dead serious about the electric car.

"I mean, this car means more to me than anything else I've had anything to do with in the 42 years that I've been in the business," he said. "I think this is because it's transformational. It's all new, which is why it just truly excites us."

Tesla and GM both face the same technological roadblock: coming up with a safe, powerful, long-life battery.

"This is what the battery box looks like if you pulled it out of the car," Eberhard said. "And what's inside here is a system built around standard lithium ion batteries. So if you broke open the battery pack on your laptop computer, you'd find a set of these inside - 6,831 of these."

Scrappy little Tesla Motors may hope to save money and development time by adapting off-the-shelf battery parts. General Motors, though, has the mass market to think about, so they're developing a new lithium-ion battery for the Volt from the ground up - a huge, international, multimillion-dollar effort in labs like GM's battery testing lab, where Denis Gray is the director. The lab tests prototypes from the two engineering firms that are working on the Volt battery.

"Some of us replace our cell phones, our Blackberries, every year because a new model comes out or we've gotta change the battery," Gray said. "I can't do that when it comes to vehicles. Customers won't be very happy with me if I change it after six months."

The entire Chevy Volt project hinges on Gray's ability to lick the battery problem.

"Bob Lutz, Rick Wagoner, they're constantly asking how are we doing? Are we making the progress that we need?" Gray said.

In other words, if Gray's team doesn't come through, then there will be no Volt.

"The problem is nobody has done a lithium ion battery pack this big," Lutz said. "And we say it's the big unknown because it is. But our battery suppliers say, 'Hey. Stop saying that. We're telling you the battery's gonna be okay.'"

So who killed the electric car? Nobody, yet. In fact, just about everyone's excited by the possibilities - even Vijay Vaitheeswaran.

"I think it's a real grassroots revolution," he said. "Could be the next big grassroots revolution in American politics. What I call the great awakening of America to climate change and oil addiction."

Chris Paine is excited; in fact, he's making a sequel to his movie.

"The next film is, 'Who Saved the Electric Car?'" he said.

The first Teslas will hit the streets this fall. And if the battery gods smile on GM, Bob Lutz's Chevy Volt will be joining it in two years.

"Will it live up to its promise of 40-plus mile electric range?" Lutz said. "Will the battery last ten years? Can we bring it in at a price that most people could afford? If the answer is 'yes' to all that, then I think the future for electrics is absolutely unlimited.

want to buy Tesla roadster

2008-08-25T09:42:00.000-07:00

This is no chance to buy tesla roadster in close 2 years , you only can stand in turn

favorite ev videos (impresive)

2008-08-25T07:59:00.000-07:00

every thing that new, conceptual, not normal, not conventional is here

2008-08-25T07:02:00.000-07:00

Always was interested in mobility , it's design technology and innovations.
This century showed us lots of examples how far and deep human thought could get.
I want to compile the latest news related to this topic, so read, subscribe and comment.
Every body welcome