Electric vehicles

A sleek outer space looking solar powered catamaran is heading for Miami

Pelican Bay is a private community located just north of Naples in Florida, USA, and includes over 60 residential condominium and homeowner associations, three hotels, shops, 750 acres of conservation area and over 40 acres of parks and nature trails. The Pelican Bay Foundation has recently unveiled their new solar/electric tram system from Eco Trans Alliance and Cruise Car to reduce their transportation carbon footprint and to provide over 800,000 rides to residents and visitors annually.

Researchers in the US have made a graphene-based supercapacitor that can store as much energy per unit mass as nickel metal hydride batteries - but unlike batteries, it can be charged or discharged in just minutes or even seconds. The new device has a specific energy density of 85.6 Wh/kg at room temperature and 136 Wh/kg at 80 °C. These are the highest ever values for "electric double layer" supercapacitors based on carbon nanomaterials.

Researchers at Purdue University are creating a system that harvests heat from an engine's exhaust to generate electricity, reducing a car's fuel consumption.

Germany's power grid could already handle 1 million electric vehicles. Smart grids are a reasonable medium-term objective.

Yamada-Denki Co., Ltd. (Yamada Denki) and Mitsubishi Motors Corporation (MMC) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to start trial sales of the i-MiEV electric vehicle (EV) in Yamada Denki retail stores and sales(1) will begin from today at total of 17 stores, including Tokyo, Kanagawa and Saitama prefectures.

GE and its venture capital partners have announced a collective investment of $55 million in leading power grid technology companies as part of the $200 million "GE ecomagination Challenge."

KleenSpeed Lite EV Power System enables conversion of most light cars/trucks to electricity.