No matter how careful we are, every once in a while a story comes along that was taken out of context, everyone bought it, and now we must say, we’re sorry!
The Dyston Company is not making an electric motor that could drive an electric car, as we reported just a short time ago with this post: “Dyson Plans Solar Powered Car”
After seeing [...]
Update: Dyson Is NOT Making An Electric Car, A Report from London
The king of vacuum cleaners, James Dyson, is betting that a souped-up version of his vacuum cleaner and hair dryer motors will power cars over hundreds of miles.
Using technology developed for his lightweight electric motors, Dyson hopes to partner with Honda or another car maker, rather than build a car from the ground up.
Solar panels on top of the vehicle, or on the garage where it is stored, would provide electricity to charge the car’s battery. Of course, the best performance would probably come from a country where there’s abundant enough sunshine to keep the battery charged.
Of course, he could also think about adding a plug-in function, just in case it stays cloudy for days on end.
Over the last few months, several big car makers, including Nissan, Subaru and Mitsubishi, have announced plans to produce all-electric cars before the end of the decade, or soon after. Now Daimler has announced that it to plans to jump on the growing EV bandwagon, with plans to roll-out a Mercedes-Benz electric car in 2010. According to Chief Executive Dieter Zetsche, the company also plans to offer an electric Smart car in the same year.
At this stage, it’s unclear whether the cars will be based on an existing model, or on a completely new platform. If the former, it’s likely that the Mercedes EV will be based on either an A-Class or B-Class, as is the case with their fuel-cell prototype (pictured below).
Although an Ox is not what I’d call a particularly stylish or intelligent animal, don’t let the name confuse you — the Th!nk Ox could be about the most attractive and functional electric car ever designed. Before the debate starts over that claim, note the all-important “and” between the words attractive and functional.
Due out in 2010/2011, the Ox is about the size of a Toyota Prius. It can go from 0 to 60 miles per hour in 8.5 seconds, travel between 125 and 155 miles on a single charge, and its lithium-ion batteries can be charged to 80% capacity in less than an hour.
How would you like to drive an all-electric Mini? An EV Smart Car? A PT Cruiser? With the help of Hybrid Technologies, you can. They’ve taken many familiar vehicles, ripped out their engines, and replaced them with lithium batteries and electric motors.
On the surface it makes great sense and it seems there would be a huge demand for this sort of thing. Electric cars are nearly maintenance free. They don’t need oil changes and they have 90% fewer parts than gas cars. Plus, these EVs look like the normal cars that are already popular with many folks.
Plug-in hybrid, all-electric or fuel cell? Car-makers are hedging their bets on what will emerge as the next generation engine technology of choice – now it seems another alternative approach could well be set to enter the mix. Scottish engineering firm Artemis Intelligent Power has tested a hybrid system that it claims can cut carbon emissions by 30%, with the added advantage that it is better suited to inter-urban journeys than conventional hybrids like the Toyota Prius.
In common with other hybrids, the system employs a regenerative braking system that stores energy as the vehicle slows down, and feeds it back into the engine as it accelerates. The key innovation is that instead of storing the energy in a battery, the new system stores it in a hydraulic accumulator.
As part of a push by the US Department of Energy (DOE) to make plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) cost competitive with other cars by 2014, Ford has delivered a plug-in hybrid electric flex-fuel Escape to the DOE to join its test fleet of other PHEVs currently undergoing research and testing.
The vehicle is equipped with a 10 kilowatt lithium ion battery that can take it up to 30 miles at speeds under 40 mph before needing to fire up its fuel-fed hybrid-electric engine. After that, the hybrid-electric engine kicks in and can deliver a fuel economy of 88 mpg in the city and 50 mpg on the highway when using E85 (85% ethanol/15% gasoline blend).
Shai Agassi is a man with with a pretty big mission - to engineer a globally sustainable personal transportation system for the 21st Century. As the founder and CEO of Silicon-Valley based company Project Better Place , he aims to turn that dream into a reality.
The Project works by teaming up with existing players in the car industry to establish large-scale electricity recharge grids (ERGs), made up of electric cars, batteries, charging points, and renewable energy power stations. Earlier this year, the company announced it had teamed up with Renault-Nissan to roll-out an impressive network of 500,000 recharging stations across Israel by 2010. Now it has announced plans for similar electric car projects in Denmark and San Francisco, with more in the pipeline for the near future.
A key benefit of the planned ERGs will be their role in driving demand for renewable energy. In Israel, most power comes from coal or gas, but the project plans to use solar energy generated in the country’s Negev Desert to power the batteries.
By John Addison (6/4/08). With oil prices rocketing past $130 per barrel, a growing number of vehicle makers are planning to offer electric vehicles by 2010. Zero gasoline will be used.
Over 40,000 electric vehicles (EV) are currently used in the United States. [...]
Most of the time I like to profile cars we might actually get the chance to drive, but it never hurts take a look at the forefront of technology. Enter the X1 prototype, an open-canopy electric vehicle that meets somewhere between go-cart and Indy-500 race car.
Think electric vehicles can’t hack it? They don’t all look like golf carts, and they sure as hell don’t all poke around under 65 mph: The X1 was just featured in a series of Mythbusters’ tests where it beat a Ferrari in a quarter-mile race (see MythBuster: Why Electric Vehicles Beat Gas in 5 Extreme Tests).
Sure it sounds silly, but XP vehicles, a start-up in California, is doing just that with their upcoming electric car, the Whisper™. Apparently, XP has taken the same sort of airbag technology developed to safely land recent NASA missions on Mars and used it to create an inflatable polymer car frame in which they pack all the essentials for it to actually be considered an automobile.
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