Electric Vehicle Links
Its clear that vehicles without electric motors will become as unusual in the 10 to 20 years as wet film cameras and vinyl records are now. If its not obvious to you why that is, a separate page here explains it.
This page attempts to track the developments that will help free us from our dependency on fossil fuel for transport.
The sections here are:
Once I started looking, I just kept finding more and more of these. Here are the companies setting the pace.
Great looking electric sports car, looking suspiciously like an Electric Lotus Elise.
Currently in production with a year long waiting list.
It gets a mention in this BBC article here that includes some video footage of the car made prior to it being in production.
For an amature video article on the production model go here
Beautiful looking car for buyers who are not price sensitive.
Further behind Tesla but if the batteries
they have chosen live up to their promice, they will have much better durability and quicker recharges.
Formed by a Telsa motors founder who left early on and now seems intent on producing a more hard core performance machine. They are currently running a
demonstrator built from an Arial Atom.
These have got to be the easiest place to start if you want to build your own. Everything is accessible, but you have to be a hardy sort to drive it.
Who needs a body shell? Windscreen? Pah!
It got a mention and some video footage in a recent click online
article along with the Tesla machine.
Electric vehicle sales channel also doing some of their own vehicle development. Check out the Zap-X
Developing some more affordable and mainstream machines.
Here is a little city runabout. They are licensing battery backs from Tesla, who are presumably not too worried about the competition!
Another entry in the small and funky category.
But if you want big time fun with your small and funky, then you need to check out the VentureOne from fly the road. When you look at their website, start with the video links.
Electric scooters and quad bikes.
Fast electric Scooters.
Practical and affordable electric scooters. The 90S is available already, is limited to 30mph and has a range of about 30 miles.
Price is £2800 in the UK, which is reasonable too. The main limitations currently are the batteries. They are heavy and good only for 6,000 miles. But in May they expect to be selling the lithium based 100L. This will be almost 30kg lighter, have a range increased to 50 miles and the batteries should go for 18,000 miles before needing replacement. Nice.
Owner of possibly the worst web site in the entire world. Looking at that its difficult to imagine that they could produce anything useful, but its always possible. Could it be their President has never used a web browser?
Included for completeness, nothing yet in production. Common sense tells us that small and light is the way to go to get range out of electric vehicles, but these guys are having none of that. It appears they are planning to make electric trucks! Irrelevant for the consumer market, with the possible exception of the US where some odd local tax laws may mean they make sense.
They have close financial ties with Altairnano.
Probably the component that is changing most rapidly to make the Electric car a reality.
The battery maker with the biggest claims.
- They claim their batteries can be recharged to 80% in a minute, that's faster than filling up at the petrol station!
Obviously your domestic power supply would not be able to do this, but the fuel stations could invest in fast chargers,
if they still want a role in the world.
- They claim 10,000 to 15,000 recharges before the batteries need replacement, at once a day that is 27 years!
If the reality is only half as good as they claim, its still a huge breathrough.
Here is the relevant web page,
and here is the pdf data sheet
Some anecdotal evidence that these batteries may be for real:
Nanosafe fast recharge demonstrated
Packed up and ready for the show
Phoenix Motorcars takes delivery of Nanosafe batteries
Lack the extravagant claims of Altair (10X worse in terms of life and charge rate), but they are real and shipping now. Speculation is that Tesla use their batteries.
Those interested in experimenting can buy the batteries in small quantities here, or for the electric model community, here.
Sell lithium-ion batteries, both as individual cells and car battery size packs designed as lead acid replacements. They are used in the Segway. They have a good web site, and supply all the revant data on their product, except how to buy it. If you are looking for investments, like Altairnano, you can at least buy the company
Their claimed peek and sustained discharge rates are less than half that of A123, which will affect their suitability for some vehicles.
Chinese company selling lithium battery packs. Be warned, their web site is a bit of a stress test for your browser.
This bunch are working on some very nice in-the-wheel motors that contain all the drive electronics. Just connect them to a battery, and tell them how fast to go!
They even do the regenerative breaking for you. Their technology demonstrator vehicle sounds amazing, although I cannot find anything on the web that indicates its yet running. This is what hybrids should be, Toyota Prius designers, check this out and build one!
They are working on a car as well, but their main contribution could prove to be in the area of charge electronics
It's bi-directional charging feature can pull power down from the grid, or upload it back again. Their idea is that you could rent some of the capacity of your battery pack to the electricity grid company. Once there are sufficient electric cars plugged in, they could be used to smooth out the spikes in power demand.
In England the electricity companies offer a deal called Economy 7, where they charge you a little more for electricity used during the day, but sell it at half price during the night. With one of these power supplies plugged in, you could set it up to accumulate power during the night, and run it back out during the day. Assuming that you get more than half the power back out of the system that you put in, it should be able to save you money while sitting in your garage. Finally a car that works to limit its own depreciation!
Broad line news site with an electric transport section here.
News and discussion forums.