Electric Car – Page 2

The Detriot Electric

April 14, 2008April 14, 2008 by Wattsy

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The Detroit Electric was the name given to a range of cars built between 1907 to 1939 making them one of first electric cars. Fitted with a lead acid battery they could a range of 130 km with a top speed of around 32km/h.While this speed doesn’t sound like much it must be remembered that these cars were mainly sold to woman and city drivers who found the instant start of the car much more convenient than hand cranking. Later versions of the car could be fitted with Thomas Edison’s Nickel Iron battery that gave better range and performance, Edison believed that electric cars would soon be the most popular cars on the road at the time and he himself was the proud owner of a Detroit Electric along with John D. Rockefeller, Jr and even Henry Fords wife. While the company battled to stay afloat after the great depression some of the cars today can be found in motor museums around the world thanks to the fact that during the companies peek they were selling between 1000 to 2000 a year. When you compare the Detroit electric to GM’s EV-1 despite all the technological achievements the EV-1 claimed to have it was not that much better in range and sold a hell of a lot less.

DIY electric cars

April 12, 2008April 13, 2008 by Wattsy

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Want an electric car but don’t like the very few that are available if there are any available to you at all? Well you could build your own, there have been plenty of people out there that have converted there existing cars to run on electricity and there are specialist parts available to make it happen. It’s not cheap but if you do a lot of city driving the savings in fuel will soon pay off the initial outlay. Conversions have been done on all sorts of cars from Ford F100 pickups to Porsches. Generally you start by ripping out the petrol engine, tank and exhaust and replacing them with a big electric motor a controller and a heap of batteries. Things like your existing AC and power steering often get powered by a separate smaller motor and electric heaters can be bought to replace your existing heater. The cool video above is of a triumph Spitfire conversion being done at an electric car show.

G-wiz, it’s the Reva

April 11, 2008 by Wattsy

The Reva is an Indian built electric car and one of the largest selling electric cars in the world. The Reva is a small 3-door hatchback measuring only 2.6 m long and with a top speed of 70km/h it is designed as a city car. Its small size and lake of pollution has won favor with London’s city council where it is exempt from London’s congestion charges. The car features a 13 kW DC motor mounted in the rear with 8 lead acid batteries under the front seats. It takes 2.5 hours to get to 80% charge or 8 hours to fully charge the Reva that gives it a range of 80klm although future use of lithium ion batteries will improve this greatly. The body of the Riva is made of colour impregnated ABS plastic that makes it dent and scratch resistant. In some markets the Reva is sold as the Reva G-wiz and as with most electric cars has found itself a niche market for people that want a cheap neighbourhood runabout and dont really need to go far or fast on a highway.

Think Th!nk

April 10, 2008April 10, 2008 by Wattsy

The Th!nk City is a zero emission electric car which is built for European cities, capable of a top speed of 100kmh and about 200 km range the car is estimated at being three times more energy efficient than a petrol vehicle of the same size. The car is made in Aursokog in Norway by Think Global and once had Ford as their major shareholder investing over 150 million dollars into the project which got the car into production. Ford left the company in 2003 and it is now owned by Norwegian investor InSpire who are now looking to launch the 5th generation vehicle onto the market. The Th!nk project has had a chequered life, Lotus were another company involved in the early days as consultants to the project. A Swiss firm also owned the company for a short time, but now with environmental concerns a major issue world wide, the new consortium can see a profitable future for this tiny environmentally friendly vehicle.

The GM EV1

April 7, 2008 by Wattsy

This week we are looking at electric cars and the most well known electric car was the GM EV1. The EV1 was the first electric car built by General Motors, it was made to address the requirement of Californian law at the time for automakers to start making zero emission cars. 800 were made from 1996, as the whole program was so expensive for GM all the cars were leased to customers instead of being sold. This proved handy for GM later on in 2003 when they recalled all the cars and crushed them thereby wiping out the expensive program. Many customers who leased the EV1 begged to purchase their cars but GM didn’t want to know about them claiming it would be too costly to keep the program going. The car also became the subject of the Doco “Who killed the electric car?” Many people believe there was a conspiracy by the fuel companies to get rid of the EV1 but in reality the car wasn’t that great, at the time it may of be seen as a car ahead of its time but looking at the advances of today’s Chevy Volt concept it perhaps was the right idea at the wrong time. Today the few remaining cars that weren’t crushed were donated and used in either museums or university labs, there are still a few used in GMs own test fleet as well.

Who’s breathing life into the electric car?

April 4, 2008 by Wattsy

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The Chevy Volt is a plug in hybrid electric vehicle concept that was first unveiled at the North American Auto Show in January 2007. It was soon announced that the concept would make it to production by about 2010 and GM have just released some footage of the car under development (see video above). GM prefer to call the car a electric vehicle with a range extender as the car will be powered by the electric motor and only use the onboard petrol engine to charge the batteries when needed, normally you could do this from a standard power point at home. The Volt will mark GM’s return to electric vehicle production since the demise of the ill fated EV1, in contrast the Volt’s improvements ove the EV1 include the ability to seat 4 people, longer range thanks to improved battery technology with the ability to recharge them on the road via the petrol motor and cost. The EV1 was so expensive to produce they were only available on a lease plan while the Volt is expected to be sold for less than $40k.