Eco friendly cars

Cars powered exclusively with batteries will be produced on a large scale in the next years, being expected that in the following two decades to hold supremacy in front of the cars equipped with polluting thermal engines.

All known manufacturers with a name in the business triggered even declarative, the race for the electric car.

This kind of car is not a yesterday invention. But from tomorrow, it will be seen in all the streets or at least this is the big news from the automotive industry.
Until now, 100% electric powered cars were produced by exotic firms (see Tesla) and sold with prohibitive prices for most of the people.
Like any technology (relatively) new electric car will become available only after it is produced and sold in bulk. For this goal to become reality, some obstacles have to be overcome, which refers to the autonomy provided by batteries, infrastructure (power points) and the time required for reloading of batteries
Mitsubishi, Toyota, Mercedes, BMW, Renault, Nissan, General Motors, Mini, Audi, Opel and Smart-promoted extensively, especially in the first half of this year, ideas, concepts or even electric models that will provide over one, two or three years

Several producers and local authorities (cities of Europe, the United States and Asia) have concluded partnerships for pilot programs implementing electrical networks
Daimler is conducting such a project model for Smart battery with two major capitals, Berlin and London. Nissan will launch a similar initiative in the U.S. (Seattle, San Diego, Phoenix and Tucson) for the future compact Leaf Finally, Renault has initialed agreements with provincial government of Wuhan (China) and the governments of Israel, Denmark and Portugal to promote cars with zero polluting emission systems and building of specific supply facilities.

Only Israel is to establish a network of 500 dedicated points (basically, spaces equipped with sockets which can connect vehicles)

A viable recharge time: less than 45 minutes

In this stage of their development, batteries that equip electric cars are heavier (affecting performance), ensure a relatively low autonomy (imposing a significant travel limitations – this being close in relationship with the lack of infrastructure devoted to power) and, perhaps most importantly, requires a long period - several hours - for a full recharge.
Researchers ensure that the last two shortcomings will be better in an acceptable time horizon.
For example, a full recharge cycle will end up between ten minutes and three quarters of hour.

Even if home networks will not be able to sustain this goal, reaching it will make possible broad travel

A study conducted by University of California (Berkley)in this summer, shows that between 64 and 85 percent of cars sold in the United States in 2030, will be electric.

Although not referring in this connection, it can be assumed that the other developed markets - Western Europe, Japan and Australia - could evolve by the same trend.
Costs required by the achievement of the necessary infrastructure (power points and batteries changing - customers prefer, currently, an equivalent system with the cylinders of gas cooker: replaces the blank with an already loaded) could exceed 300 billion dollars.
The analysis further provides that the automotive industry and component suppliers will create 350,000 new jobs by 2030 by switching to bulk production of electric vehicles.

by Newencryptor

source: Eco stuff

Kind of old news but I meet some friends who didn’t knew about this.
I’m talking about the solar taxi . Louis Palmer, the inventor of the solar taxi, did a trip around the world using no oil, just electricity form the solar panel of his car.
53451 km,  534 days, 40 countries  during his journey.

The car reached about 55 mph and travel about 200 miles per charge. More details on http://www.solartaxi.com/ .

Luis Palmer plans to do another trip around the world, this time with 6 vehicles in 80 days, using hydro, geothermal and wind energy.

Belgian Xavier Van der Stappen will drive his “Veah” on the Paris-Dakar No Oil Race. Veah (Véhicule Electrique à Assistance Humaine) is electric car/bicycle invented by the belgian, realised all by ecologic materials. It has pedals, a horn and a battery which need to be recharged at 2 hours.

Van der Stappen hopes to make those 6000 km Paris-Dakar in 3 months. Iam really curios how this car will go throug the sand:)

The brown waste grease, known as FOG (fat, oil and grease) of San Francisco  will be converted into biofuel with a $1.2 million worth state and federal grants. BlackGold Biofuels and engineering firm URS Corp are going to do this, recycle the waste formed by oil, grease and used cooking fat.

Half of all San Francisco’s sewer emergencies are caused by grease blockages and cost the city $3.5 million a year in cleanings.

80 buses in Oslo, Norway will be modified (minor modifications) to use biomethane obtained from raw sewage. Two sewage plants in Oslo will be adapted to convert the sewage in biomethane.

Each bus will save 40 tons of carbon dioxide every year.  If this experiment will be a succes, all 400 buses from Oslo will be converted.

Oslo is trying to be the most ecological capital in the world, the target is 0 emissions of carbon dioxide by year 2050.

125 cars are running on a mix of diesel and vegetable oil in Westchester County in Upstate New York.  Another 7 cars are running exclusively on vegetable oil.

The county saves $25.000 for every 10,000 gallons of cooking oil. Restaurant owners are very excited and willing to participate to this program, because it saves them from paying money to have the used oil hauled away.

The county plan to convert another 350 vehicles, at least as a mix.

$4500 costs to convert a car to use just vegetable oil, and $1000 a system that process the  oil.

There is no new ideea in Michelin Active Wheels. From some time, wheels powered by electrical engines got the attention of green cars manufacturers. Michelin succedeed to do a first step with a first finished product and now tries to make it popular with Opel.

Obviously,  wheels with engines means heavier wheels. Subsequently, both suspension and  direction must be included in the wheel body. With an engine of 7 kg, each wheel will have about 43 kg . For testing ,an opel aguila was used.  The car was wheeled with these new wheels, with LI-ion batteries, weighting 900 kg, 75 kg less than the standard configuration. New wheels gave a constant power of 41 hp, but on short distances this can reach 82 hp . The car named Heuliez will reach 100 km/h in 10 seconds and a maximum decent  speed of 140 km/h.

Michelin will officially launch Heuliez Will in 2010 and in the next year  the car will be available in the market. The price will be around 20 000- 25 000 euros . Although not quite cheap, Michelin electrical car has a relatively accesible price.  For the start , there is no cost for fuel.

Opel was not the only choice for Michelin. They had disscussion with Venturi, the manufacturer of the  first serial  electrical  sport car  they intend to use this type of wheel for their next model.

This one I like it very much. A magnetic hybrid motorbike was unveiled in Japan. This magnetic motorcycle can run 112 miles with one charge. The maximum spedd is 93 miles/h, which is very good. The battery can be charged at home, like you charge a cellular phone. And, the noise is extremely low.
The energy efficiency is very high thanks to the magnetic motor, a hybrid between a electromagnet and a permanent magnet, and is a masterpiece. The motor, SUMO(from super moto), is built inside bike’s rear wheel, and the manufacturers said that is seven times more cost efficient than gas-powered scooters.
The company plans to start selling a mini-scooter version of the magnetic-powered bike in 2007.

Well, this is a very interesting project, I hope it will be a succes.
Here is the video with the magnetic hybrid motorbike, and with the scooter version:

This is an older post which got lost while we were moving the site to this new domain.