BMW is equipping 500 Minis with electric drivetrains for use in California. Company officials say they’re using the hip hatchback to test a few different electric powertrains. No word on exactly when the electric Minis will be available to the public, but I guarantee they’ll be a smash hit.
And still, the question hangs in the air like dirigible ready to burst into flames: Where are the Big Three’s electric vehicles? And don’t talk to me about the Chevy Volt, because there’s no way it should take one of the world’s largest car companies this long to develop a feasible electric car.
Link to CNET article.
Volkswagen’s 1-liter concept car has been winding its way through the twists and turns of the automotive news back roads lately. British auto mag Car has reported that the 600-pound streamlined fuel sipper will go into production in 2010, sporting a hybrid diesel drivetrain and sequential motorcycle-style gearbox. The original concept ran a one-cylinder, 1-liter petrol engine wrapped up in a carbon fiber body. The microcar features tandem seating like a fighter jet, but performance promises to be less than stellar.
The fact that small, fuel-efficient cars are making a comeback fills my heart with a warm fuzzy feeling that’s not unlike the buzz one gets from huffing gasoline fumes.
Link to Jalopnik article.
Photo: It failed the global warming test.
Soon every new car in California will be rated based on how much greenhouse gas it spews into the atmosphere. The California Air Resources Board (CARB) plans to roll out a window sticker that will feature two scores, one to rate a car’s smog emissions and another to gauge global warming. The scores will fall on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the best possible score.
The agency will compile emissions data for all new 2009 cars. Average polluting cars will be given scores of 5, the least polluting will earn perfect 10s.
CARB says it’s a good way for consumers to compare automobiles and encourage more eco-friendly vehicles. It’s a step in the right direction, but it seems like a round-about way to force manufacturers to produce more efficient, cleaner cars.
“This label will arm consumers with the information they need to choose a vehicle that saves gas, reduces greenhouse gas emissions and helps fight smog all at once,” board chairman Mary Nichols said in a statement. “Consumer choice is an especially powerful tool in our fight against climate change. We look forward to seeing these stickers on 2009 model cars as they start hitting the showrooms in the coming months.”
CARB has launched a website that will feature new-car ratings: http://www.driveclean.ca.gov
Everybody has one crazy uncle who, through mysterious circumstances, managed to secure the secret schematics for a car that runs on water. Maybe he ordered them from the back of an old Popular Science magazine, or even got them from the inventor himself; a man who is doggedly pursued by oil industry henchmen. Well, those plans have been leaked, to Japan. A Japanese company dubbed Genepax claims it has invented a car that runs on nothing but air and water.
The car uses their mysterious “Water Energy System,” or “WES” for short, to generate electricity from splitting water into its component parts. The deus ex machina seems to be an ingenious Membrane Electrode Assembly (MEA) that can do the job with a simple chemical reaction.
Details are still under wraps, but Genepax says that WES doesn’t require any hydrogen reformer, high-pressure hydrogen tank or exotic catalysts. It still requires platinum, but no more than other current hydrogen fuel cells.
The company has wired their WES system into a Reva electric car, made by Takeoka Mini Car Products Co Ltd. The car runs on a supply of water and air, fed to the WES system with a pump. It doesn’t emit any carbon dioxide.
Right now the WES system costs about $18,000 to build, but Genepax hopes to get the price down to around $4,600 through mass production.
Creative Commons. Some Rights Reserved. Photo by naitokz
Another bulletin from the whirring, buzzing, blinking techno-future that is Japan: Japan Post announced last week that it plans to replace its entire fleet of 21,000 mail delivery trucks with electric vehicles during the next eight years. They also plan to install more than 1,000 charging stations at post offices across the island nation. And if that doesn’t get your green bean buzzing, this will: They just might make those charging stations available to the public. The move could spark an electric motoring revolution in Japan and shock other countries into using more EVs.
No word yet on which Japanese automaker will be honored with the ginormous government contract.
Link to treehugger article.
Tesla Motors made green transportation sexy and fast. Now other manufacturers are edging into the niche market of green super cars, including the greenhorns at Hybrid Technologies. The company’s engineers have come up with one sexy super car, a sleek sportster reminiscent of the famed Porsche Carrera GT that will come in all-electric and hybrid configurations. Their goal is between 150 and 200 mile range for the electric and 220 mpg plus for the hybrid. Performance? Expect it to be on par with the Tesla Roadster—blisteringly fast.
The car is still in the initial stages of design and only exists as a CG rendering, but the mockup looks hot.
Link to Treehugger article.
Metal cars are so passe. The future of automotive technology? Balloons! Mysterious startup company XP Vehicles is developing a line of featherweight inflatable electric cars laced with carbon fiber. They claim the cars, developed using aerospace technology, will obtain unheard of levels of efficiency, traveling up to 300 miles on a single charge. They’ve also created hot-swappable power packs that could give the cars a 2,500 mile range.
XP Vehicles plans to sell the cars as build-it-yourself (and inflate-it-yourself) kits. But what are the advantage of inflatable cars? Besides their light weight and extreme efficiency, XP Vehicles claims they’re safer than ferrous automobiles. In an accident, they say, metal tends to fracture into flesh-shredding shards or bend around occupants, imprisoning them in a mangled metal tomb. Soft, inflatable cars distribute impacts and can’t, of course, sever anything.
But they can pop. Don’t worry, say the engineers at XP. Their cars will contain multiple chambers and will come with several patch kits.
Link to Ubergizmo article.
