Electric vehicles

From Spring 2009, Italian car designer Pininfarina and French battery/supercapacitor manufacturer Bolloré have begun accepting orders online for its four-passenger, five door hatchback Bluecar.

Some of the new electric cars generate at least some of their electric power from solar cells on the vehicle - In future, they may generate electricity in part from shock absorbers, transparent solar cells over windows and thermoelectrically from the engine and exhaust in hybrid.

Having started by looking at piezoelectrics and faced with what it saw as their present day limitations of reliability and sometimes high internal resistance, Perpetuum follows the more proven route of electrodynamic harvesting.

Printed electronics is used in several forms of energy harvesting, so we thought we would share this dramatic opportunity with you although it is not yet clear what technology is involved. A shock absorber that harnesses energy from small bumps in the road could save a company such as Wal-Mart $13 million a year in fuel costs by converting its fleet of trucks.

In Sweden, Micromuscle AB relies on ionic effects in polymers whereas the acrylics and silicones of Artificial Muscle Inc of the USA, that can be stretched to 1000 times the area, rely on the electroactive forces in a capacitor-like structure with around 1200 volts applied.