Your guide to all the electric cars, motorcycles, and bicycles. Find out about the models available, the coming models, and laws and tax incentives. Read about vehicle tests, factory tours, dealer visits, and more.
PENDLETON, Ind., Aug. 24 /PRNewswire/ -- Remy International, Inc. announces that its subsidiary, Remy Electric Motors, LLC, has entered into an agreement with MotoCzysz LLC to bring a revolutionary, new generation electric drive system to market. The unique drive system leverages Remy's patented High Voltage Hairpin (HVH) electric motor technology and patent-pending cooling and integration technology from MotoCzysz. The resulting breakthrough is a "complete electric drive system" optimized to elicit and manage the full performance benefit of the powerful Remy motor.
On Earth Day, Sierra Club member Oliver Bock and acquaintances left Woodside, Calif. on electric bikes on a cross-country trip to Washington, D.C., where they met their congressional representative. Along the way they engaged with environmentalists, bicyclists, clean-energy activists, politicians, and media members to talk clean energy and transportation.
This is the first funding action by the newly-formed General Motors Ventures, LLC, and it will help accelerate Bright’s production of the IDEA, a revolutionary plug-in hybrid commercial vehicle.
Bright's plans to ramp up production of the IDEA has been on hold due to a lack of funding. Bright also has a project to install their drive train technology into postal vans as part of a US Postal Service trial study. With this investment they expect to begin ramping up IDEA production later this year. Bright is also seeking, but not received, a loan from the Department of Energy's Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing program.
Porsche Develops Research Cars with Electric Drive
Porsche AG has stated that they have a threesome of All Electric Drive Boxters that they will be initiating research with starting early 2011. They are getting their wheels wet if you will, for Porsche AG feels driven to know the driver and the car's behaviors, insight into battery technology and the componentry of an all electric drive vehicle as well as what sort of infrastructure will be required for "electromobility" before they move in to production.
The Odyssey of Pioneers Tour - Tesla & TAG Heuer Strut Their Stuff
From world famous timepiece maker TAG Heuer and now famous EV Manufacturer Tesla Motors comes the first ever electric vehicle world tour!!! The Special Edition Tesla will be making twelve stops in the US to include Las Vegas, Houston, Baton Rouge, Orlando, Miami, Savannah, Raleigh, Washington DC and New York.
Legislation approved by a Senate committee on Wednesday, passed 19-4 in favor, was one of several bills cleared by the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee that might be folded into a broader energy and climate bill Democrats are struggling to bring to the Senate floor.
The bill approved by the committee would pour nearly $3.9 billion over 10 years into selected communities to build infrastructure to charge electric cars, conduct research and provide incentives for consumers to buy plug-in vehicles.
NUMMI (New United Motor Manufacturing, Inc), a partnership between General Motors (GM) and Toyota operated a manufacturing facility in Fremont from 1982-2010. It focused on efficiency and shedding outdated methods. It represented a future that GM almost got, but couldn't hold on to.
Tesla, who far better represents the future, has bought one of the three parcels that made up the former NUMMI facility (without any of the machinery) for a cheap $42 million.
Just days after the record for manned solar flight was broken, the unmanned Zephyr from Qinetiq launched under FAI (Federation Aeronautique Internationale) observation and has made the current record of 30 hours 24 minutes irrelevant as it has proven it can stay aloft indefinitely. The plane has been aloft more than 8 days as I'm writing this. It will be landed after flying two weeks. See the Flight Duration Clock on the Qinetic main page.
President Obama gets it! Battery technology is a major key to the introduction and success of the electric vehicle. In such, he has made a place for the US to be part of the battery manufacturing industry instead of the ever famous American way of farming business and manufacturing abroad. The US can play a major role in the advancement of electric vehicles by taking the bigger steps, the necessary steps to build infrastructure, manufacturing and trust in the EV movement, by simply investing and promoting it the way President Obama has set forth to do.
"Finally!" I thought when I first saw this press release. Every time I see my mail delivery person in their gasoline mini-van I wonder why such a great application for electric vehicles has been ignored.
However, it's not a contract to electrify the Postal Service fleet, it's only a test contract in the hope that funding will be past. Still a very positive move, but not as conclusive as I had hoped.
General Motors defends their stance as an Electric Vehicle Supporting Corporation as if they have nothing in their closet. They attack, to some degree the "little guys", Tesla Motors and others by comparing big versus little, as in David and Goliath.
With the rapid growth of new electric cars being released, Germany's Auto Motor und Sport magazine (in German) decided to create an electric car rally, the E-Auto-Rallye.
The Wall Street Journal sadly argues that GM should abandon the Volt and focus solely on it's most profitable, best-selling cars.
The Wall Street Journal's embarrassingly short-sighted vision ignores all benefits other than economic and is exactly the attitude that encourages corporations to seek profit at the expense of far worse effects.
Famously creative inventor Shai Agassi has a new plan: Sell electric cars without batteries and rent the batteries the same way that people rent propane tanks.
You no longer have to charge your vehicle - just drive to the station and have your battery switched out!
His plan is to decrease the cost of ownership and make electric vehicles an economical choice rather than just a personal environmental decision.
Better Place is the name of the Palo Alto based company formed for this purpose. Tests already underway in Israel, Denmark, and Hawaii are proving successful. The Renault Fluence Z.E. will be the first vehicle available to the public that uses the Better Place charging system
