Click above for more images of the SAM from Cree Ltd.

There is a new all electric three-wheeler in Switzerland known as the SAM, produced by Cree Ltd. Featuring a power pack made up of six individual batteries which produces 168 volts, the 15kW motor, which also produces 80Nm of torque, is capable of propelling the SAM to speeds of up to 85 kilometers per hour (about 53 mph). Acceleration is fairly leisurely, but that's not really the point with this particular machine, is it? The range is not stellar, just 60 kilometers, or 37 miles. The price, though, would make this an extremely attractive machine to many: just $10,000.

In terms of design, SAM looks pretty good, with its aluminum backbone chassis and independent front suspension with a transverse leaf spring -- like the Corvette. The weight comes in at 695 kilograms, or about 1,500 pounds. Safety measures include three-point seatbelts along with an integrated roll bar. This is exactly the type of vehicle we'd love to see come to the U.S. as a replacement for the ZAP Xebra, which proved that there is in fact a market in the states for alternative transportation such as this.


[Source: Cree Ltd. via Faster and Faster]

The Los Angeles Times has an article taking a look at the the four most prominent California-based electric vehicle start-ups and the difficulties they face. The article touches on Phoenix Motorcars, Zap, Fisker and, of course, Tesla. A lot of what the article covers has already been discussed around these parts on numerous occasions but for those playing catchup, it's a decent primer on the difficulties of creating a new car company. Building any new car that meets modern customer expectations, regulatory requirements and is reliable and durable is an extremely daunting task. All of that needs to happen before you even think about actually making money on the whole deal, which few car companies seem to be able to do. The technical issues of integrating all the powertrain electronics, safety, body and entertainment systems is extremely costly and time consuming but must be done if you expect people to actually big bucks for an electrically-driven car. If you don't accomplish all of that, you may sell a few cars to rich early adopters and enthusiasts, but you won't have a sustainable business. One correction to the article: the author states that Tesla plans to build 1,000 cars this year, that number is closer to 600 and even that may prove to be a stretch.

[Source: Los Angeles Times]

Toshiba is entering the electric vehicle battery market next March with the release of the Super Charge ion Battery, or SCiB. According to the company press release, the battery charges 90 percent full in 5 minutes, can last 10 years and loses less than 10 percent efficiency after 3,000 recharges. The only applications mentioned in the press release are electric bikes, electric motorcycles, construction machinery, and fork lifts with future plans for providing batteries for hybrids and full electric cars. Toshiba vice president Toshiharu Watanabe says;

The excellent performance of the SCiB will assure its successful application in industrial systems and in the electronic vehicles markets as a new energy solution.

Toshiba's hopes to have 10 percent market share or a global sales target of 100 billion yen (895 million dollars) by 2016. Toshiba's general manager overseeing the project, Shoshi Kawatsu, won't comment on if they are in talks with automakers but he did say this;

Toshiba will ride with the trend set by automobile companies. When hybrids and electric cars become prevalent, the SCiB will probably be applied to them.

Watch out Ener1, A123 and all the other small EV battery companies, the big boys smell profits in the EV battery market water.

[Source: Toshiba via Engadget]

There was a big push for electric cars in the '70s because of energy concerns. There was another big push in the '90s because of a California law. The two videos below the fold are of the two iconic cars from those bygone decades: First, the triangle on wheels, aka the CitiCar City Car. In a 1974 video, we get a look at the batteries, which were located directly under the seat. Second, is a video from 1990 all about the GM Impact (later renamed the EV1). The Impact videos tells the story of how Paul inspired GM to make the car. Hopefully, 10 and 30 years from today, we'll have more than old videos of the current crop of electric cars, and those that should be coming out very soon.

[Source: YouTube]

Recently, we wrote that Tesla's director of communications enjoyed crashing the company car in Project Gotham Racing 4. How about a taste of the real thing? Below the fold is a video from Gadgetoff 2007 of co-founder and ex-CEO of Tesla, Martin Eberhard, showing crash tests of the Tesla electric sports car. At the beginning of the video, Martin says these videos are the difference between Tesla and companies that make a "three wheel imaginary car that would never be safe on the highway." Could Martin be talking about Zap?

So how much does all this fun footage cost? Martin says the cars cost $350,000 to build and the tests cost another $100,000. The Tesla sells for $100,000 but the cars in the crash tests have equipment added to measure the damage done to the crash test dummies. Martin says Tesla has done about 8 tests; So the video is about a million dollars a minute, give or take a million. These are, of course, hand picked videos done by Tesla but the car looks amazingly safe. Air bags are "freaking amazing" as Martin points out.

[Source: YouTube]

The product of the Zap-Lotus agreement, the Zap-X, a normal looking, electric, four door sedan, just might be "months" away from mass production. China.org.cn is reporting China's Youngman Automotive Group, the guys making the car for Zap, said they could deliver a test car to Zap by the end of this year and after testing by Zap, the sedan could go into mass production as little as two months later. Here is the quote:

"The sample vehicles will be finished at the end of this year or next January. Two or three months after testing, the electric-powered sedan under the Lotus brand will be the first to go into mass production."

Zap has not announced a release date (surprise!) but if things go as Youngman hopes, the Zap-APX could have a release date of Summer 2008; the earliest release date that we know of for any of the new, normal electric cars like the Miles Javlon. While a summer release date would give Zap the honor of being first to market with a normal electric car, the price and range are the more complicated issues. They have not given a price and the range is said to be 350 miles.

Whatever the release, price and range, the Zap-X looks like it will be an amazing car, should it ever be more than vaporware: in-wheel electric motors by PML FlightLink, a top speed of 155 mph, and 0 to 60 MPH in 4.8 seconds. While, I don't think anyone expects all of that to remain true, for an affordable car anyway, I am glad to hear that things are at least currently on track on Youngman's end for the Zap-APX. AutoblogGreen remains skeptical, as you know.



[Source: China.org.cn and tipster Domenick]

The Chinese car maker, BYD Automobile Co Ltd, plans to mass produce a hybrid gas-electric car the second half of next year. BYD showed a full electric car, the F3e, a car based on its F3 sedans, at last year's Beijing auto show. I assume BYD's planned hybrid is based on the F3 sedan as well. The battery for BYD's hybrid and electric car are iron based, which BYD says is better than lithium-ion batteries.

"The iron battery proves to have better safety performance and larger capacity. The cost could also be lowered by using abundant resources and affordable raw materials," says BYD in an e-mail. BYD's first car, the F3 sedan, started production in 2005 and sold 51,000 units in 2005. In 2006, BYD sold 60,000 F3s and they expect to sell 100,000 this year.

The Chinese government is really encouraging its carmakers to develop clean cars. Do you think China could take the lead from American and European car makers on hybrids? What about the Japanese?

Related:

• Chinese electric Smart Clone coming to the US market?
• Chinese electric cars go for Miles
• Electric car plant under construction in China
• Chinese academy develops big electric motors - 50,000 electric cars might come soon

[Source: Shanghai Daily]

V2Green, a Seattle start up, is writing software for power companies to manage the charging of electric cars. There are not that many electric cars right now but V2Green thinks there will be between 500,000 and 1.5M by the year 2015 from companies like Tesla and Chevrolet. V2Green is currently generating revenue from a number of tests and will announce a deal with a utility later this month. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer interviewed the CEO and co-founder of V2Green, David Kaplan, about the need for and potential future of smart charing. Here are some quotes from that interview:

"The driver may simply come home, plug the car in at 6 p.m. and you just need it to have a full charge by 8 a.m. the next day ... That's a 14 hour window in which we can decide to get you an amount of electricity that may only take three, four or five hours to deliver. Our system can juggle that sort of calculation across thousands and thousands of cars to create a smooth load profile for the grid operator, so they are not experiencing power spikes or having to bring on back up sources of generation."

"I am doing this because it is a business. There is money to be made here ... It is a longer-term build business than something like a typical technology business, no question about that. But when this market kicks in, it is going to be a very significant hockey stick."

A hockey stick? OK. Now, what do you think of Kaplan's comments?

[Source: Seattle PI]

It's kind of a joke to say Wal-Mart sells everything. Does Wal-Mart sell electric cars? Well, this Christmas... they do sell electric cars! Sam's Club, a unit of Wal-Mart stores Inc, will sell an electric car in a Christmas promotion November 8 through December 29. The car is the Mercedes-Benz Smart and it's actually on Sam's Club front page right now below a pre-order of Guitar Hero.

For the low, low price of $35,000 you also get lithium-ion batteries from Hybrid Technologies, bringing the car's range to over 100 miles per charge. That bouncy, yellow, happy face is not done with you yet: Along with being the only owner of the Hybrid Technology's Smart, you also get a trip to the Kennedy Space Center! The Sam's Club site says this is a Once-in-a-Lifetime offer "you won't get a second chance at."

[Source: Wall Street Journal (Subscription Required)]

We just wrote about Nissan's new electric concept car Pivo 2. Below is a gallery with a few more pictures of the new R2D2-like robot companion (above) for Pivo 2. Below the fold, are two videos all about the design of the Pivo 2 and two videos about Pivo 1 which had monitors inside the car that augmented your view of the outside world. The monitors seem to be missing in Pivo 2 and I am not sure an in-car robot distraction is such a good idea. Maybe I will grow to like the little guy when we see more of him at the Tokyo Motor Show, starting October 27.

[Source: Nissan]

Call off the search. Host of the Colbert Report and master roaster Stephen Colbert has admitted to killing the electric car. You can watch his hilarious admission of the murder in the video above. Chris Paine, director of "Who Killed the Electric Car," was unavailable for comment. In another video below the fold, Colbert explains Gore's true plans for fueling the cars of the future.

[Source: Comedy Central]

There were a lot of cool bikes at AltWheels Boston 2007. The video above is all about the New Amsterdam Project (or NAP), a delivery service in Boston that uses bikes. NAP uses the same bike as the Royal Mail service, the largest fleet of bikes in the UK. The bikes are made by Cycles Maximus and can carry 600 pounds with the help of an electric motor. Below the fold is a video of more bikes at AltWheels; folding bikes, recumbent bikes, electric scooters, and more.

Over at the blog Celsias.com, writer Craig Mackintosh has a pretty good write-up on plug-in hybrids and battery powered cars. The article touches briefly on the failure of the EV market in the '90s, and then gets into the future. He discusses the Wrightspeed X-1 sports car, and its performance capabilities as well as the potential benefit of plug-in hybrids to the electric utility companies. Large numbers of PHEVs plugged in at night could act as a buffer to absorb unused energy such as that produced from wind farms. The article is definitely worth a read.

[Source: Celsias.com via Hugg]

The fact that the sales of hybrids, diesels and other alternative-fuel vehicles are increasing shouldn't be news to readers of AutoblogGreen. However, the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers have offered some real numbers in a recent press release. According to figures reported by R.L. Polk & Co., there are now 9 million alternative-fuel automobiles in the U.S. The Alliances states that auto manufacturers are well on their way of reaching their goal of selling 1 million alternative-fuel cars in 2006 and believe they will reach their goal of selling 2 million in 2008.

There are currently 46 alternative-fuel cars and trucks available to Americans. A list can be found at www.DiscoverAlternatives.com, an off-shoot of the Alliance's main website. The list conveniently categorizes the vehicles by type: hybrids, diesels/biodiesels, E85-capable, electric, and natural gas.

For the perennial skeptics who are wondering why the 9 manufacturers (BMW Group, DaimlerChrysler, Ford Motor Company, General Motors, Mazda, Mitsubishi Motors, Porsche, Toyota and Volkswagen) are promoting their gas-saving vehicles through a large lobby group, a partial answer may be found in the "about" page on the Alliance's website. Among its listed goals is "[t]o promote market-based, cost-effective solutions in preference to mandates on public policy issues." Makes sense, so where's Honda?

[Source: The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers]