Electric vehicles

Bladon Jets is leaving 2012 with a modified and improved device as it is developed to perform satisfactorily. It is still intended to be an electricity source in rural India and an electric vehicle range extender, with investor Tata seeing it in the Tata Jaguar electric supercar in due course, though a Williams racing engine will be used initially in this vehicle.

Exactly what goes inside advanced lithium-air batteries as they charge and discharge has always been impossible to observe directly. Now, a new technique developed by MIT researchers promises to change that, allowing study of this electrochemical activity as it happens.

Carbon nanotubes can be mounted upright in dense forests to maximise porous area in elecvtrodes for supercapacitors, supercabatteries and, it is thought, for some batteries as well.

Start-up company, California Lithium Battery, has announced the record-setting performance of its new GEN3 silicon graphene composite anode material for lithium-ion batteries (LIBs).

A fully electric Cessna 172 has successfully flown multiple times powered by Panacis' advanced lithium batteries.

At the "Utility Vehicles and Buses" session of the eCarTec conference in Munich, Dr Ulrich Piotrowski of Daimler EvoBus revealed more about the high stakes game being played by many of the major automotive companies in introducing fuel cells as range extenders in on-road vehicles.

At its simplest, higher voltage in a vehicle means more efficient power transfer and it became cost effective not long ago as high voltage motors became feasible and viable high voltage battery packs.

Professor Dr Gesa Husi of the Electrical Engineering and Mechatronics Department, Centre of Arts, Humanities and Sciences of the University of Debrecen in Hungary tells us he has patents for sale in the control of alternating current drives using frequency converters.

Solar powered aircraft are old news. However, if we benchmark what is happening with other electric vehicles such as Autonomous Underwater Vehicles AUV, then multiple energy harvesting should be the order of the day, even with aircraft.

At the recent eCartec exhibition in Munich, Webasto showed a roof for the range Rover Evoque that is transparent to the extent that there are large gaps beteen the small crystalline silicon panels.

At eCarTec in Munich, Prof Dr-Ing E. Jobson of Volvo Bus Corporation illustrated the contribution of energy harvesting in electrodynamic braking as part of the many other improvements over the years.

Leading analysts IDTechEx provide this view of the recent eCarTec event in Munich Germany.

Leading analysts IDTechEx provide this view of the recent eCarTec event in Munich Germany.

Acetonitrile is used as electrolyte in some EV batteries and most EV supercapacitors. It is a very nasty substance, being volatile, flammable, carcinogenic and, according to recent research causes birth defects.

The large urban bus has gone from having a very large, noisy, polluting piston engine to parallel hybrid, series hybrid with slightly modified internal combustion engine, series hybrid with specially designed small internal combustion engine and then pure electric all in the space of ten years.

Sunskeer are seeking additional funds to complete their solar powered airplane.

IDTechEx's Chairman, Dr Peter Harrop provides a snapshot of his insight into eCarTech held in Munich this week.