One of the personal projects that keeps me busy is my own plug in car – my 2004 Toyota Prius. I converted the car from a regular Prius to a plug in Prius earlier this year. After a few initial hiccups with a bad battery causing one of the additional battery packs to die prematurely I’ve had a few months worth of plug in hybrid driving. But at the end of the day I have a driveable PHEV Prius, which I have the satisfaction of knowing I converted.
Today I filled up my car after finishing the second full tank of gas since converting the car to a plug in. The last time I filled up was on April 3rd. Today is May 8th. Admittedly, I was away for seven days during this period, but keeping up with this I’ll be only filling up once a month.

More after the jump

Renault France unveiled it’s new electric vehicle yestrday. Okay, so it’s only a prototype at the moment – but it’s an electric version (or Zero Emissions, as Renault like to say) of the new Renault Kangoo Be Bop
The Be Bop itself doesn’t immediately grab my attention. I’m not a fan of the MPV platform. Yes, they may be versatile, but they tend to look like the love-child of oversize family cars and a van. Which, quite frankly, is what they are.
But in this case, it’s rather cute. See, when you look beneath the surface the new Kango Be Bop (which has just gone on sale in Europe) has some pretty neat features such as a sliding tailgate, allowing the whole rear of the car to be open. (This isn’t the first time that this kind of trick has been pulled – Honda did something similar a few years back with one of their trucks – but it’s certainly the fist time in an MPV.)
Still, it’s not that which catches my eye. It’s the specs of the Electric version – and some of the interesting features it sports.

Read more after the jump.

And thus I will for my attacks on the Ev’ie electric Citroen C1 last week.
It appears that there is in fact a fully electric Ev’ie out on the streets of London. (Shame the DVLA still think it’s petrol, but still, it IS electric. Or certainly, it is now.

It seems that my little worried post about the car being nothing but hype wasn’t truly accurate. While the photos I complained about last week are quite clearly photoshopped and don’t quite match up with what ECC PLC were saying, it’s probably more a case of them having not got a vehicle to use for publicity when the shots were taken than it being a complete out-and-out fake.
So I was wrong. I apologize. How do I know? It appears that WhatCar? have been given the first test drive of the converted C1 Ev’ie prototype. Now that’s more like the behavior you’d expect from a car company with big names on the board of directors.
They even have a Youtube Video of it, which proves that the car exists and is driveable. Although there did appear to be some issues with the prototype while WhatCar? were driving it.
Video and continued post after the jump.

Since the UK government announced that they plan to launch a scheme in 2011 to give new car buyers up to £5,000 towards the purchase of a fully electric or plug-in hybrid car there’s been quite a lot of press coverage for electric cars. Some good, and some bad.
Amongst those who seek to discredit the environmental, economic and social impact of electric vehicles there have been many who have tried to scaremonger the general public that a nation of electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids will cause mass power outages of a scale big enough to rival the famous brown-outs of the East Coast United States of the early part of this century. If these naysayers were to be believed a whole country of electric cars plugging in would be catastrophic for the rest of society.
Well, guess what? A study, conducted by LandRover-Jaguar, Ricardo, Amberjac Projects and E.O.N, has concluded that the UK PowerGrid is capable and ready to support a large amount of electric and plug in cars already. So next time you plug in, you know you’re not denying anyone some much-needed electricity and causing mass brown-outs. That’s nice, isn’t it?

Read more after the jump.