All-Electric Mini Officially Unveiled!

BMW just officially revealed the new electric Mini, that was already known to exist, with some spy photos posted on this blog way before.

Autopia brings the news story:

BMW's finally pulled the wraps off the 204-horsepower all-electric Mini it is bringing to America and says the car could be here as early as next year, although just 500 people will be lucky enough to get their hands on one.
BMW says it will lease the Mini E two-seater to "select private and corporate customers" in California, New York and New Jersey under what is essentially a big R&D project to develop EVs through its Project i. "Putting some 500 cars on the road under real daily traffic conditions will make it possible to gain widely applicable hands-on experience," BMW says. "Evaluating these findings will generate valuable know-how, which will be factored into the engineering of mass-produced vehicles."

Autopia

New Toyota Prius Leaked

The 2010 Toyota Prius has just been revealed, before the autoshow, with leaked photos that originally appeared on priuschat.com

Whether it was a leak or one of those clever viral marketing campaigns, we’ll likely never know, but photos of the 2010 Toyota Prius have shown up online months before its planned unveiling at Detroit's North American International Auto Show in January.

Leaked Photos

BMW's Electric Mini

Autopia just posted more news about to future BMW's Electric Mini, with no Tail Pipe!

Details are scarce, but Autocar says the Mini EV will use a lithium-ion battery, have a range of 100 to 135 miles and a 0-to-60 time of less than 9 seconds.
Last we heard, BMW planned to build just 500 electric Minis and bring them all to California to help meet the Golden State's zero-emissions vehicle mandate that requires automakers to build 7,500 non-polluting cars by 2014.

Autopia: electric Mini Spied!

The Original Poster of this Spy Photo was caranddriver.com here

General Motors - Chevrolet Volt

The Chevrolet Volt is one of the first serious contestants, by General Motors, to be one of the leading electric cars in the world.

The vehicle is designed to run purely on electricity from on-board batteries for up to 40 miles (64 km), or about half the range of GM's first electric car, the EV1.
Unlike many other competing cars, the Volt can actually carry 4 people, unlike many other electric cars already in the market, and when the batteries run out a small internal combustion engine starts generating electricity to resupply the batteries, the vehicle's range is potentially increased to 360 miles (579 km) on the highway.



And an improvement over the EV1 with a top speed increased from 80 miles per hour (130 km/h) to 120 miles per hour (190 km/h). The battery pack size has also been reduced between the two, from about 300 L in volume in the EV1, to just 100 L in the Volt.
There might even be an upgrade to the Volt's batteries, making it go 80 miles (128 km) running only on batteries, in a near future.

The Volt is actually ahead of schedule for it's release in 2010 and General Motors will unveil a new photovoltaic roof option at the Detroit Auto Show in January. The roof will be able to charge the battery from 1/4 to 1/3 over 3 hot blazing days of sun, such as in an airport parking lot, and could function keep the A/C on when parked on hot summer days, avoiding battery draw to cool up the car when the driver gets in.

In the United States, the Volt will qualify for $7,500 tax credit. And in Europe it could get a tax cut in many countries, like the Hybrids are, if General Motors releases the Volt outside the US. The predicted cost of this car will be around $35.000

Limited Lithium Supplies Could Restrict Electric Car Growth

If it is undoubtedly premature to say that lithium is the oil of the new century, this raw material is still the subject of sudden interest, shown by the increase in its price from about $350 a tonne in 2003 to nearly $3,000 today.

The explanation is tied to developments in battery technology. For a long time these have functioned with lead: heavy in weight and low in energy. Good at starting engines but not to power them. In the 1980s nickel cadmium batteries reduced the weight but not sufficiently to ensure the success of electric cars, several thousand of which were launched in France. The breakthrough came from batteries using lithium, a very light metal that can hold a lot of energy. In particular, lithium ion batteries “for the same energy occupy half the volume of a nickel cadmium battery”, explains Franck Cecchi, operations director at JC-S, a company that specializes in this technology.

http://www.evworld.com/article.cfm?storyid=1544

Audi Electric Car is in the works

Audi joins the Electric Car Race:

Audi will apparently be joining the ever-growing all-electric car contingent in the near future with an ultra-small car of its own, reports Autocar. During an interview at last week's Paris Motor Show opening, Audi board member Peter Schwarzenbauer confirmed that engineers at the brand's Ingolstadt headquarters are working diligently on the brand's first all-electric city car.

Audi Electric car in the works

The Race For The Electric Car

The race for the electric car, in CBS News, 60 minutes, an interesting read:

The price of oil is up, gas guzzling cars are out, and a race for a fuel-free, practical electric car is on.

It includes the usual suspects: Detroit, Japan, and Germany. But as correspondent Lesley Stahl reports, a surprising newcomer with no experience at building cars has entered the race: Silicon Valley.

The jury is still out on whether electric cars can ever be really practical, but the computer geeks in California are betting that their inventiveness can beat out Detroit's cumbersome bureaucracy in producing a viable e-car.

The Race For The Electric Car

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