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Rocker Neil Young has spent years converting a 1959 Lincoln Continental into a turbine-charged electric hybrid, even releasing a green-car song album. Last week, a fire at his California warehouse severely damaged the LincVolt. The apparent cause? The LincVolt's charger. More »
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The electric car is nothing new. Ninety years ago, Henry Ford and Thomas Edison, two of America's greatest innovators, tried building one and failed. Daniel Strohl of Hemmings Blog tells us how they killed the electric car. —Ed. More »
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Porsche recently announced it would offer a thirteen-pound lithium-ion starter battery for select models. The battery saves 22 pounds over a conventional lead-acid unit. Here's what you get for your money. More »
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Hybrids have become the public perception of the pinnacle of efficiency, though they may become victims of their own success. A recent Reuters report details how hybrid sales growth is spurring fears of shortages in the rare earth elements market. More »
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The homemade Balanced-Over-Batteries car works like a skateboard tilting its chassis when it steers. The electric car's batteries are slung underneath the cockpit as counterweights and the whole thing leans 45 degrees. Oh, and it was built for only $500. More »
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Toshiba has improved it's Super Charge Ion Battery technology to the point where a 90 second recharge is possible. With enough amperage it would actually be faster to recharge than to fill up with gas. More »
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There's an idea kicking around in the egghead community about a notion called V2G, or vehicle to grid, where parked hybrid or electric cars would be plugged into the city grid and used as a distributed power storage medium. Car owners would collect a fee as the cars would be used as a buffer to store power generated in off hours for use during peak times. The concept would do away with the need for backup generators and further offset the higher costs of hybrids. What the idea won't do is work without ginormous cross industrial and governmental standardization the likes of which will never be seen in the United States. To Europe, eggheads! [LiveScience] More »
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Ever been curious what takes place under the Tesla Roadster’s hood in the absence of internal combustion? Well, here’s an explanation of what the parts are and and what they do, conveniently numbered so you can follow along at home. Make the jump to see why "Tesla mechanic" would be a totally cush job. More »
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So we had the Today Show on in the background this morning while getting ready to run over to NPR when we heard some story about gas prices. We glanced up and noticed a guy who looked exactly like John McCain talking to Matt Lauer. We mean, it looked like McCain, it sounded like McCain — he even moved his cheeks like McCain! But the words coming from his mouth were like those from a crazy man. This nutty doppelgänger told Lauer he thought the possibility existed that we could have a car battery capable of running a car for...wait for it...100 miles on one charge. By November. And, of course, that this new "magic superbattery" would change the gas prices game. Huh? Wait. What? Does he know something we don't? Who is this crazy old coot? We've got the transcript below from the above clip — judge for yourself. More »
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The current state of gas prices may not be as big of a ball-buster for Prius owners, but recent reports suggest that there aren't as many Priuses on the road as there could be because of manufacturing shortages. One move by Toyota to try and combat this shortage is by building a $192 million battery plant in the Japan city of Shizuoka. Toyota is partnering with Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. for a plant that will produce nickel-metal hydride batteries, the same batteries used in the Prius hybrid. Maybe they'd save on materials if they made smaller keys. [Wired] (Image via Getty) More »
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Nissan has announced a strategic partnership with tech giant NEC for a lithium ion battery factory in Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan. The facility will operate under a new company dubbed Automotive Energy Supply and will be capable of putting out 16,000 batteries by next year, and 65,000 at full rate by 2011. With this $115 million announcement, Nissan's claims of putting EVs on the road by 2010 don't seem so far fetched. If Carlos the vanquisher says it will be, it will be. [Wired] More »
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It's always fun to look back at publications which predict what the future will be like - especially if that future is already the past. Most of the enjoyment comes from seeing just how far we haven't progressed. In the case of this 1979 book, The Usborne Book of the Future - A trip in time to the year 2000 and beyond the predictions are remarkably prescient. Take for instance the car of the future; The book offers two distinctly different and yet remarkably familiar predictions - the hybrid, and the ever elusive electric car. More »
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Johnson Controls and Saft Advanced Power Solutions have teamed up to open the world's first lithium-ion battery plant—for cars. The plant will be in Nersac, France and will churn out 5,000 batteries per year for clients such as GM, Chrysler and Mercedes-Benz. More »
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First of all, our good buddy Autoblog Sam is now writing for Hydrogen Forecast. Go Sam! Second, A123 Systems showed off their new "prismatic lithium-iron-phosphate cell" at the twenty-third Electric Vehicle Symposium in Anaheim, CA. This new battery cell was developed for General Motors' E-Flex development program, and that means it will wend its way into the 2011 Chevy Volt. Those of you in the snow belt will be happy to know that the the cells work in -40 degrees. For those living in the sun belt, they are good at temps as high as 120. What does that mean for those days in Vegas when it's 125 in the shade? We don't know. But we do know that these cells will be in Volt mules by 2008. [Hydrogen Forecast] More »
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Location, location, location. Er, make that timing is everything. Whatever the cliché, we were sitting on our butt talking to some friendly Honda folk when in rolls Autoblog Sam and Tesla's Darryl Siry. They had just whipped the all-electric, Elise-based Roadster up and down Latigo Canyon — which is a hell of a road. So, not only is the Tesla for real, but according to Sam it kicks some major butt. More »
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Isreal's cabinet is set to endorse an aggressive plan to convert the country to all electric cars, which is a decent idea if you're surrounded by oil-producing countries that kind of hate you. The idea is to spread charging points (500,000 of them) across the country and let people buy the cars and lease the batteries at a low cost, similar to cell phones. It's a fascinating proposal and may have legs thanks to the endorsement, which comes with major tax breaks and other forms of support. Renault has been mentioned as a possible partner, but the plan hasn't gotten quite that far. More »
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OMG! Ann Coulter is right. Just like when Dale Sr. took one for the team and the New York Times failed to put it on the front page, once again the Gray Lady gets it all wrong when it comes to cars. Oh wait, the New York Times actually did run Earnhardt's death on the front page and Coulter is a freaky looking drag queen/performance artist. Exhale... Anyhow, in a profile on Silicon Valley "technologist" Shai Agassi, who is planning on sticking battery recharging stations everywhere, Times writer John Markoff mistakenly reported that the delay in the much anticipated electric Tesla Roadster was due to "battery related issues." Tesla's VP of Sales, Marketing and Service — Darryl Siry — was all over it and the New York Times issued a retraction. Funny how that works. Turns out that the delay was and is continuing to be caused by transmission woes. Having spent some time behind the wheel of an Elise, the car the Tesla is based on, we can see how the tranny — the Elise's Achilles' heel — would be an issue. [Update:: Now I have to publish a retraction. What I meant by my bad tranny comment is that the worst part of the Lotus Elise by far is the transmission. Therefor, even though the Tesla has a totally different 2-speed gear-swapper, I'm not shocked because... oh, forget it. I'm just going to re-read Godless: The Church of Liberalism.] More »
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Carlos "Guitarlos" Ghosn is pushing his company's dedication to lighter, more compact battery units. While Nissan's current hybrid system is based on NiMH batteries with powertrain tech licensed from Toyota, Renault's Japanese brothers are hammering on lithium ion cells in hopes of gaining a competitive advantage in electrical propulsion; in fact, Ghosn says he'd love to see Nissan in the ring with a viable electric vehicle. With GM having offered up a full-boat commitment to the Volt project and Toyota continuing to be well, Toyota, the melee in the hybrid market's only going to get more interesting before it gets codified. – Davey G. Johnson More »
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