Welcome to the Electric Car Weblog. In addition to links, news, and tips about electric cars and other forms of alternative transportation we are publishing an on-line diary of our current EV project. Started in August 2005 the chronicle follows the conversion of a gas powered Ford Probe into an Electric Car.
You will find articles organized by categories, along with recent comments, along the right hand column of the website. If you are just getting started with the idea of converting a gas car to electric be sure to check out Your First Electric Car .
Welcome and enjoy!
-Jerry
You will find articles organized by categories, along with recent comments, along the right hand column of the website. If you are just getting started with the idea of converting a gas car to electric be sure to check out Your First Electric Car .
Welcome and enjoy!
-Jerry
- Is that a tiny car or is that a Super Model? Probably a little of both, meet Pietro’s electric Fiat 500. We’ve had a few earlier posts from Pietro and today he sends along a link to his new website, including a nicely translated english version. Makes me want to schedule our next vacation for Italy just to swing by and bum a ride!
- David Pogue did a feature for CBS called Could the Electric Car Save Us? He also wrote an article for the NY Times (he’s their tech columnist) entitled, The Rebirth of the Electric Car.
- NPR also has an article on electric cars, Entrepreneur Hopes to Charge Electric-Car Market. The story covers Miles Rubin and his company, Miles Automotive. You can also learn more and see some of their products on their website.
- For all of our Electric Car friends down under here’s a couple links to Australia EV resources (thanks John): EV Australia and the Australian Electric Vehicle Association.
Comment [5]
- Our best wishes go out to Bill Dube, owner and creator of the Killacycle. Bill was giving an interview at a conference and decided to demonstrate a burn-out in the parking lot. The bike caught traction and suddenly launched the both of them down the road and into the side of a mini-van. Other than that part, it was a great interview with some interesting information about the bike, including its A123 battery system. Bill left a comment regarding the crash, including: “The positive message here is that when we crunched the battery pack, NOTHING happened. No smoke. No flames. Not even sparks. Not only are these cells more powerful, they are are the safest possible for automobiles.“
- Welcome to the new era of electric cars…perpetual concept cars. Meet the Nissan Mixim, which they readily admit has almost no chance of ever being produced.
- A couple of EV related articles: Can the electric car save us, or is it that the technology is too elusive?
- Some interesting EV research and testing has been going on for years at Argonne National Laboratory.
- Finally an article over at AutoblogGreen wondering if the Clean Air Act really stops most of us from buying clean cars.
- Don’t have room/money for a hydraulic lift to build your EV? Check out Eastwood’s Tilt-A-Car™. Kind of looks like you could store your vehicle vertically with this…crazy.
- Queens auto company unveils a new electric car. “We don’t see ourselves becoming a competitor to the majors, but what we are hoping for is that the majors will take up this technology.”
- File this under, “sure thing, buddy” the Mitsubishi Motors EV concept has Solar and Wind power: It is also equipped with a fan in the front air intake system, to enable wind power generation. Uh, huh, along with additional drag, thereby wasting any power generated and some. Perhaps it is only there to power the dash mounted hype machine? “:^)
- Opel is showing off a Volt-like EV with diesel backup power. The E-flex has on-board lithium batteries that can be recharged from a typical house outlet. One of the photos shows it with a slot for a Segway and I’ve read it charges while stowed.
Comment [9]
- Supercaps are in the news again, this time with a few stories about EESTOR and their supercapacitors. According to this Wikipedia entry EESTOR filed a patent for supercapacitor technology, “That would give it an energy/weight value of about 342 Wh/kg, twice that of lithium-ion batteries.“ Great sounding stuff. Still no public demonstration or scientific review of working units.
- The company financing EESTOR, Zenn Motors out of Canada, is set to have their EV launch in the next couple of days. Zenn, Zapi, Zap … I wonder what it is about Z’s and electric vehicles?
- I ran across a guide to using a Prius as a backup power supply for your house, or at least some of the electrical appliances you might need the most. Quite thorough job documenting and analyzing the system. If you like that be sure to check out his many other Prius and energy efficiency articles with fantastic details.
- Electronic weekly’s “Made by Monkeys” sub-site has an article on What’s wrong with Lithium Batteries. Mostly regarding the recent recalls and laptop fires related to lithiums. They don’t talk about A123’s lithium cells, which supposedly does away with many of these problems.
Comment [7]
- Not an EV related story (although they did announce plans for a Plug-in Hybrid Vespa last year) but Vespa is holding a Vespanomics contest with Vespas as the prizes. If you won one, you could always convert it to electric!
- Zap just got a million dollar order for their electric vehicles from a distributor in Canada.
- Speaking of scooters and electric vehicles, ran across a couple mentions of the Motorino HTH electric scooter. Here’s the specs. The site offers other electric scooters and bikes.
- Great news from Nissan, all of their new models will include a fuel efficiency gauge. I’ve found with our first EV and even our Prius, that knowing how much “juice” a given driving style saves or wastes makes it much easier to optimize than trying to aggregate mpg over a tank of gas. Darin’s metrompg.com has proven that time and time again.
- My Mom ran across the following handy guide to the care and maintenance of Lead Acid batteries (478KB PDF). She has four Trojan T-105 (6 volt) batteries running the “electricity” at her house. I’ve installed an Air 403 (Southwest Wind Power) generator and a single solar panel on the roof, yet it is usually enough to power a few lights, her laptop, and even a small color tv from time to time.
- James sent along a link to the BBC article on the new paper battery technology. Nothing for EVs any time soon though, “I’m a strong enthusiast of electric vehicles, but it is going to take time to bring the costs down,” said Professor Sperling.
- Congrats to the Ohio State team on their speed record of 201MPH in their hydrogen powered vehicle. (GCC)
- Maybe you’ll insulate your car or batteries in the future using aerogel? They’ve got big plans for it and are trying to think up others. You can even buy a sample.
- Google funded electric cars?
- Not everyone is buying into GM’s electric car buzz.
Comment [1]
- Interesting news in the battery world: Ovonics/Energy Conversion Devices has licensed their NiMH Patent technology to a Chinese battery maker. The story doesn’t mention if there’s a size limit: i.e. is it only for small portable devices or can they make EV sized batteries? (p.s. I own a little of their stock)
- Tesla motor’s all-electric Tesla Roadster is still scheduled to roll out to buyers late this fall. I read in one article that the car is using around six thousand lithium batteries…wow! I’d love to get a peak at their control and charging electronics. Here’s a few other stories on the Roadster: CNET Crave, Portfolio.com, UK Telegraph.
- Speaking of lots of batteries in an Electric Car, Panasonic has set a record. Nice battery pack. It is certainly a strange approach to promoting their AA batteries, even so I don’t understand the comment in this post questioning why anyone would want more efficient electric cars.
Comment [2]
- Snagged this link to ZEVA (Zero Emission Vehicles Australia) from Shaun’s EV Weblog, which I hadn’t checked in a while. Sounds like Shaun is getting Lithium fever again…
- Thanks to Matt for sending over a link to the weblog covering his wife’s Vanagon EV Conversion Class.
- Natural gas civic beats Toyota Prius in fuel economy and air cleanliness. Only a couple drawbacks to that approach. Btw, US sales of hybrids up 12% in July.
- And the, uh, best for last: Toyota’s plug-in hybrid may have less range than GMs vapor-ware Volt. Who comes up with this stuff? Let’s compare an unknown plug-in hybrid (although we do know much about the existing hybrid part) with a totally fictional, still in development electric car (from the company that killed their last one).