They say that one of the bigger reasons why electric cars haven’t soared in popularity is the lack of infrastructure. When you have a relatively shorter range on a “full tank” of electricity, you need to be sure that there’s somewhere you can charge up along the way. The Government of British Columbia agrees.

In fact, the BC government is partially funding the creation of 454 new electric vehicle charging stations around the province. They’ll be built by businesses, community groups and local governments, giving drivers of cars like the plug-in Prius and the Nissan Leaf somewhere to “top up” while on the go. Not surprisingly, these charging stations will be mostly located in major points of interest like malls, city halls and hotels.

Among the organizations set to install these charging stations are Best Buy (Burnaby), the City of Chilliwack, the City of New Westminster, the District of Tofino, Ridge Meadows Hospital, Metro Vancouver, Thompson Rivers University, Vancity (Coquitlam), Vancouver Airport Authority and WorkSafeBC (Richmond). The 168 government-run ones will be public charging stations, of course, though it’s unclear whether these stations will be completely free for the end consumer. The remaining 286 electric fuelling stations are receiving 75 percent funding.

“We’re providing more accessibility for electric vehicle owners,” said Environment Minister Terry Lake, “so that they can have the convenience of charging up at Brentwood Town Centre here in Burnaby and of course different locations across the province.”

[Source]

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Tata Motors has gone ‘Mega’, not just in the naming convention, but also in the range and mileage of their latest four-seater range extended electric vehicle (REEV) concept.

The Indian automobile giant unveiled its latest offering – the Megapixel – at the Geneva Motor Show and it has already started making heads turn and all for the right reasons.

The Megapixel, an evolved version of the REEV concept ‘Pixel’ the company unveiled in Geneva last year, uses four 10 kilowatt motors attached to the wheels plus a single-cylinder 325cc range-extending engine that runs on petrol. The engine is capable of generating 22 kw of power while charging the lithium ion phosphate battery and add to that the rather light design of Megapixel means it has a net range of 900km  and an electric-only range of 87 km.

Not bad if I’m planning on running it alongside the marathoners at the London Olympics later this year. But what about the highway sprinters, who constitute more than 99 percent of the drivers, be it in the US, UK or anywhere across the world for that matter? We all love to push our cars a bit once out in the open and Megapixel will be literally out in unchartered, deep waters there.

The single-cylinder “tuk-tuk” of a car simply doesn’t have enough juice to save you from yawning all the while during a 100 km drive through the freeway.

But then Tata’s Megapixel is not meant for speed. It has other tricks up its sleeve.

For starters, its acutely turning wheels give it a turning radius of just 2.8 metres. Yeah, you heard it right, a mere 9.2 feet. Surely Tata might have perfected this design, testing it on narrow Indian roads. But the irony is that the car is not sturdy enough for Indian roads, the focus on cutting weight making it only suitable for the well-maintained tarmacs in Europe and the US, provided they have plans to launch it across the Atlantic.

Another feature is the induction charging pad. You needn’t plug this beauty but just have to park it neatly over an induction pad to get it charged. How convenient is that?  But will it make much of a difference is the question. To plug a car in, it will take just two minutes max. Yeah why not use those two valuable minutes saved to search for your TV mobile once you are back in your drawing room.

Getting in and out of a small car is not that easy, especially for bigger drivers among us. Here Megapixel scores a near perfect 10 for its innovative double-sliding doors. The inside of the car is also rather spacious, claiming that it will sit four adults (not pigmies or kids) with luggage easily.

The layout of the motor and the battery pack is helpful in the leg-space department but one wonders what Tata’s definition of luggage is. If it is an ultra-sleek laptop then Megapixel has more than enough room. But four rugby players carrying their playing kit for a workout session, now that’s a different proposition altogether.

Megapixel, with looks and size borrowed from other REEV models, is Tata’s attempt to push the electric small-car envelope a bit further, at least as far as range in concerned. If, launched, after juicing up the engine a bit further, this could indeed give the bigger players in this segment a run for their money.

The post Mega Range On Offer In Tata’s REEV Concept ‘Megapixel’ appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

There is certainly a push towards having more environmentally friendly vehicles these days. Between the Volt, Leaf, Tesla, RAV4 EV, and countless others, electric vehicles seem to be picking up steam. But not in Italy. In fact, Ferrari president Luca di Montezemelo has stated explicitly that there will never be an electric car under the famed horse brand.

“You will never see a Ferrari electric because I don’t believe in electric cars, because I don’t think they represent an important step forward for pollution or CO2 or the environment. But, we are working very, very hard on the hybrid Ferrari. This should be the future, and I hope in a couple of years you can see it.”

Kudos. I think we all have to recognize that while it is certainly worthwhile to consider how we can be more environmentally friendly in our daily commutes, supercars like Ferraris fall under a different category altogether. They’re not about getting MPGs and reducing CO2s; they’re about getting more MPH and faster times around the Nurburgring. They are true racing machines, and except for the occasional mid-life crisis and rap video, we don’t see them on our roads anyway. I wonder what Montezemelo would think about the EV Cup coming to the US this November.

Though it’s odd that after shooting down EVs he says hybrids are something they’re working on. Watch it be a 400hp gas engine mated with a 5hp electric assist.

The post Ferrari Prez Vows there will never be an electric Ferrari appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Before electric cars can really become a completely viable alternative to the regular gas-powered vehicles on the road, they need to have a way to charge up more quickly. The new 3D film batteries being developed by University of Illinois could be the answer.

Paul Braun is a professor of materials science and engineering and he has developed a technique that gives you the most useful characteristics of capacitors and batteries. On the one hand, capacitors can charge and release energy very quickly, but they can’t hold much. On the other hand, batteries can hold a lot more energy, but it takes them much longer to charge.

The new technique being developed involves a thin film that is then coated with nanoscale spheres. These spheres arrange themselves in a lattice, and then the scientists coat them with metal. The spheres are melted away, the metal framework is electropolished to enlarge the pores, and then they coat it with active material like lithium-ion or NiMH.

The net result? A compact battery that charges quickly, but also holds a lot of juice. They’re saying that it can charge and discharge between 10 and 100 times faster than conventional batteries, meaning that you might be able to “fill up” your electric car in the same few minutes it would take to fill a petrol tank.

Now imagine if these electric recharging stations were more readily available. Those poor stranded Nissan Leaf owners wouldn’t be, well, stranded.

[GizMag via U Illinois]

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Their numbers assume each vehicle costs between $225,000 and $267,000 on average, with worldwide sales reaching 4-5 million for the year.

But these goals may be grossly underestimated.

According to a 150-page report released by Deutsche Bank in Nov. 2009, 5.6 million electric and hybrid vehicles will be sold in 2015, rising to 17.3 million in 2020 – and at a lower price than Taiwan’s estimate.

“…The cost of producing an EV is currently higher than the cost of an ICE [or, internal combustion engine] vehicle, even without the battery,” reads the report. “But automakers believe this comparison is not likely to hold once EVs are produced in higher volumes (the components of an ICE are already being produced in the millions, which has allowed for cost reduction). Given their simpler design, and higher electronics content, the cost of an EV is expected to fall rapidly, and reach parity with ICE vehicles within a few years.”

This is good news for the electric vehicle industry, underscored by the 20 different makes and models of all-electric vehicles hitting or returning to the global market this year – including the Nissan Leaf, the Mitsubishi iMiEV and the Peugeot Ion.

Though Chinese and Thai automakers have traditionally lagged behind in the conventional industry, they see the electric revolution as an opportunity to gain some ground with international sales.

[DigiTimes via FullerMoney (PDF)]

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For convenience and flexibility, the cable wrap can actually be located separately from the charger when in home garages. For busier areas, commercial designs come with a light at the top of the charger that signals when the unit is available. With the Nissan Leaf and Chevy Volt soon hitting the streets, these friendly iPod-looking giants may start popping up in the blink of an eye.

[Gizmodo, Engadget via Frog Design, ECOtality]

The post Is that a giant iPod or a Blink EV gas pump? appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

The truth about "zero emissions" vehicles

Everyone wants to go “green”, in theory anyhow. And it has been asked many times why the electric car is not more commonly used, as it is said to give off “zero emissions”. And recently with Tesla motor company joining forces with Toyota to create the Model S electric sedan, it seems it’s time to really evaluate just what “zero emissions” means in the USA.

First, we should examine where our electricity comes from. It is estimated that in the USA about 50% of electricity is derived from coal.  After coal, the second most common energy source is natural gas, which produces about 20% of the USA’s electricity.

The final 30% of the USA’s electricity comes from non-combustible resources (gives off no CO2), what one could consider “green”; Nuclear, Hydro, and finally about 2% of electricity is derived from “renewable resources” Solar and / or wind.

The 2010 Tesla Roadster boasts a 0 – 60 mph time of under 4 seconds, a fine time for any automobile; but even more impressive when one considers that the Roadster is an electric car. Acceleration like that must need a lot of power. According to the Tesla website the Roadster’s motor puts out about 288 hp, or 215 kilowatt’s. So we can assume that if we were driving the Roadster for one hour, at full throttle, we would use at least 215 kilowatt/hours of electricity.  Or closer to 86 kilowatt/hours at 40% throttle.

As was stated earlier coal power is the most common form of electricity in the USA (and Canada). So just how much coal would need to be burned to power a Tesla Roadster at full throttle for one hour?

One Kilogram of coal can produce 6.67 KWh. Unfortunately a coal power plant is not 100% efficient, in fact it is only about 30% efficient, the rest of the energy being lost to heat and friction. A kilogram of coal actually only produces about 2 kilowatt hours of electricity. Meaning, to drive a Tesla Roadster for one hour (215 KWh) at full throttle we would need to burn over 100 kg’s of coal, or 30-40% of that in actual daily driving conditions.

What about gasoline?

Gasoline at full efficiency produces 13 kilowatts per kg. Of course a car’s engine isn’t 100% efficient, though it is much more efficient than a coal power plant. It can be estimated that the average car engine is about 40% efficient, of course power is also lost through the transmission, so in the end we can estimate that about 20% of the energy given off by the gasoline is actually reaching the wheels. So to produce 215 KWh’s of power a car’s engine would have to create 288 HP (1HP is 746Watts) which is unrealistic.  But 86 HP is more attainable and is 30% of the power; more in line with daily driving conditions.  That would require approximately 5.1 L, or 6.6kg of gasoline.

What does this mean for “zero emissions”?

With over half of the USA’s energy coming from coal, driving any electric vehicle more often than not would be creating more CO2 than if one drove a standard gasoline based vehicle:

1 Kg of Coal produces 1.83 Kg’s of CO2, 1 Kg of gasoline produces 3.2 Kg’s of CO2. If we drove our Tesla Roadster at 30% throttle for one hour, using 65 KWh’s of electricity, the electric car using coal power would create about 55 Kg’s of CO2, the gasoline based car would clearly need much less.

Now of course these numbers are rough, as no one drives a car the same or necessarily at 30% throttle all the time. But as you can see per kilowatt hour coal actually produces far more CO2 than gasoline.

So why do we call it “zero emissions”?

The truth is an electric car does give off zero emissions, at the tail pipe. But to create that electricity pollution is given off a few hundred miles away at the nearest power plant.

Does “zero emissions” exist?

“Zero emissions” only exists in cases where energy is not derived from combustible sources. As was stated earlier, 30% of the USA’s energy comes from non-combustible sources, such as Nuclear and Hydro. Technically, both these forms of electricity give off zero emissions, but both still create other forms of pollution. So in a short answer for all practical purposes right now “zero emissions” is a myth.

The post The truth about “zero emissions” appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

The Protoscar LAMPO2 will be unveiled at the 2010 Geneva Motor Show beginning next month giving Europeans their own version of the sporty Tesla electric racer.

With 4 different charging modes: standard single-phase with an on board charger for typical overnight home-charge, a “control-pilot” equipped single-phase on board charger typical for public charging, a standard three-phase on board charger typical for charging at industrial plugs (fleet-owners) and an interface for DC fast charging, where up to 100 km of additional range can be charged within just 10 minutes, by an off-board system. Protoscar will compare these different systems in terms of usability and efficiency by demonstrations in real conditions. An added solar panel on the rear trunk will allow for trickle charging.

LAMPO2 has two electric motors (allowing it to operate as a four-wheel drive with variable torque between front and rear axle for optimal handling, safety and efficiency) with a total output of 300 kW (equivalent to 408 HP), 640 Nm (50% more than its predecessor) and over 30 kWh of Lithium-Ion battery capacity. LAMPO2 features real sports-car performances: 5 seconds to accelerate from 0 to 100 km/h, 200 km/h of max. speed and a range over 200 km.

Weight, aerodynamics and the efficiency of individual components of the BRUSA drive train have been further optimized in order to reach a world-class energy consumption of less than 100Wh/km-ton under real conditions.

Protoscar LAMP2 Image Gallery

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