Electric vehicles

BAE Systems has just agreed to speak at IDTechEx event "Future of Electric Vehicles" in San Jose December 7-8.

It can only fly for 15 minutes but it is a breakthrough all the same. Improved batteries have finally made a manned electric helicopter a reality.

TESLA MOTORS, INC. (Tesla) and TOYOTA MOTOR CORPORATION (TMC) have signed an agreement to initiate the development of an electric version of the RAV4 as announced in May of this year by Elon Musk and Akio Toyoda.

Coulomb Technologies unveils first ChargePoint America Electric Vehicle charging stations in San Jose, California

Davind Seesing has created a vehicle that uses double glazing as a conduit to allow air to flow through to generate and store energy in the vehicle.

In 2008, GE and the C-MAR Group partnered to develop new hybrid technology for tugboats.

For more than 26 hours, André Borschberg expertly piloted the aircraft with its 64 meter wingspan. The plane was up in the air for the whole day, then through the entire night, flying solely on solar energy.

Hero Electric, the leading Indian electric bike and scooter manufacturer, made over 70,000 e-bikes in 2009.

About one million cycle rickshaws ply the Indian roads carrying about 3-4 billion passenger-km/year.

Mahindra will probably offer the first production diesel hybrid in a light duty application in the USA. So far the only diesel hybrids on American roads are the big transit buses now running many cities.

Mahindra has sold over 50,000 microhybrids. These conventional cars automatically stop the engine when the vehicle is not moving and start it when the accelerator is pushed again, thus reducing pollution.

A consortium led by micro gas turbine company Bladon Jets recently secured investment from the UK Technology Strategy Board to develop an Ultra Lightweight Range Extender (ULRE) for next-generation electric vehicles.

There are already many manufacturers of traction motors in India and a huge nascent market for everything automotive. In the next twelve months at least ten new electric vehicles will enter production in India, from buses, rickshaws and bikes to forklifts.

Using lead acid batteries, many electric boats have been plying waterways in Europe since 1890, when electric cars were also popular.

Many companies are now developing zinc air batteries and fuel cells and some actually have them in production. Most hope to make traction batteries this way sooner or later.

The term micro hybrid is not familiar to the general public but a high proportion of next year's cars will be micro hybrids.

This month, Japanese manufacturer Itochu has made an initial $5m investment in Think, expanding their partnership to market and distribute the Think City model and drive system in Asia.

Major electronics manufacturer Toshiba has partnered with Mitsubishi Motors to develop the "super-charge ion battery," SCiB rechargeable lithium-ion battery for electric vehicles which can charge to 90% capacity in 5 minutes.

Germany is the strongest trading nation in Europe with the broadest and deepest automotive activity. However, the strategy of the German government and its automotive industry has been deeply flawed.

In our article More Power from Bumps in the Road we described work at MIT on energy harvesting shock absorbers where one such device on a truck can generate as much as one kilowatt electrodynamically.