EVs – Page 2 – Aminorjourney

Playing the mileage game.

Former CMO of Tesla Motors Darryl Siry, (now a Senior Analysist of Cleanteach at Peppercom) has called for auto makers to be more clear about the abilities and range of their electric and plug-in vehicles. It’s a subject I‘ve touched on in the past, but felt it worth revisiting considering the excellent article.

It’s a common problem with all EVs on the market today. Like their petrol-powered counterparts, sales teams just can’t help themselves when it comes to providing optimistic range figures for their vehicles. It’s common practice, but as Darryl eloquently argues, it could jeopardize the very heart of the EV industry before it’s fully got off the ground.

The public don’t like being made to feel that they are being lied to. And while, on a purely technical level, no car company is lying when it claims a car can do 56 mpg on it’s urban cycle, or that the range of that funky new EV is a salivating 200 miles. But at the same time the auto industry doesn’t like to tell you the full story.

Just what is a real-world mileage figure?

More after the jump.

Drive up. Switch out. Drive on. Is it that simple?

Project Better Place have just released a video of a Nissan Crossover SUV EV at a Yokohama facility, switching out a discharged high-power EV battery pack for a fully-charged replacement. The EV then drives off on it’s merry way. It takes less than two minutes to complete. It’s an impressive video.

But is the future of electric vehicles dependent on fast battery switching, or is it an unnecessary complexity?

Let’s look at the things which we’d need to satisfy in order for a high-power battery switch out station to become a reality.

More after the jump.

Zero % Scooter 100% motorbike.

I’ve just got back from the UK launch party for the two hottest electric motorbikes to hit the European market this year. (Zero launched the Zero X electric dirt bike in 2008, but we’ve not had the chance to get our leather-clad hands on them yet.)

Today however, the UK arm of Zero motorcycles launched the Zero S and Zero X to the UK market. For the small, select bunch of people gathered there there was only one reaction. WOW.

Unlike some of the electric ‘motorbikes’ which came before, the Zero S and Zero X are actually real motorbikes. There’s not a hint of scooter about them, unlike the Vectrix Maxi Scooter, which has for a long time had to deal with criticism from the biker community that it was nothing more than the plaything of rich commuters.

In fact, the Zero S (The road-legal version of the Zero Motorbike) is about as far removed from the Vectrix as you can get. Small, nippy and surprisingly fast, it’ll do up to 60 mph and has a maximum range of 60 miles. Although, I have to admit, if you’re going to have as much fun as the people trying them out today at the launch, perhaps that range won’t quite bit that far. Thanks to the incredibly low weight of the road bike (102.1kg) it’s got a phenomenal accelration and while I didn’t ride it myself (I had strict instructions from my partner and my family to never get a motorbike) I could see the grins on those who did take it for a spin on the quiet Hampshire lanes surrounding the launch venue.

The Zero S is one sexy electric motorbike.

More after the jump, including some photographs of the Zero X being ridden off-road

Shell won’t plug in to electrics. Their loss

The CEO of the Shell fuel company, Jereoen van der Veer has recently been heard to be mocking electric vehicles, calling them “Milk Floats

Worse still, van der Veer made his comments at a Shell sponsored Eco-rally in Germany, where the primary goal is to travel as far as possible on as little fuel as possible. Many eco rallies even have electric vehicle entrants. The CEO of Shell claims instead that biofuels are the way to go. (At least he’s no-longer advocating hydrogen eh?)

Van der Veer claims that electric vehicles have old technology, which have barely moved on since the days of the milk-float. He also claimed that the support infrastructure needed to run electric vehicles would be extremely costly to set up. Perhaps the Dutch don’t use electricity to run their homes, but last time I checked every home (with a few exceptions) has access to electricity. In fact, electricity is more widely disseminated than petrol, so you could argue that the infrastructure is LESS.

Charging infrastructure is so expensive that shopping malls offer free charging for EVs and PHEVs... No, Wait...it can't be THAT expensive...

More after the jump

No post – but a video from today’s EVcast

I’m not posting today, but here’s a video from today’s EVcast If you have a subscription to the mp3 podcast, you’ll find it appears in the next two days or so. But the recorded live video from the show is below. The sound quality isn’t as good as that in the mp3 file, but should…

Renault’s new EV likes to dance

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.

It's not only laptops with cool charge-meters

Some exciting news!

I’m off to the UK launch of the Zero electirc Motorcycle. I’ll be doing an exclusive interview and a bit of a peek around the latest zero-emissions motorbike to hit the UK streets too. It happens on Monday, so expect something very soon afterwards on www.aminorjourney.com! I’m also hoping to cover it for EVcast. Talking…

When you’re wrong, it’s good to say “Sorry”

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.

Apparently I was wrong. The Citroen C1 Evie DOES exist, at least in prototype form. — Apparently I was wrong. The Citroen C1 Ev'ie DOES exist, at least in prototype form.

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.

A plea to all EV makers. Learn how to sell a car…

If you’re wondering about the title of this post It’s quite simple. I’m fed up dealing with all the excuses that car companies make when trying to sell EVs. It’s not going to make them popular. Plus it gives the Jeremy Clarksons of the world ammunition in their mission to hate anything without a V8 and a huge exhaust. And who can blame them. When so many in the EV world make silly claims about their cars or silly excuses about how they perform.

I’ve been thinking about this post for quite some time, ever since I went for a test-drive for an EV in London and found that the company offering the test drive were about as professional as buying a car from a dodgy guy in a pub car-park. Why? It was poor organisation, delivery and knowledge. Oh, and a car which was nearly empty. Not good publicity. (They’ve since improved greatly).

Remember that new EV? The DVLA thinks that it’s petrol-powered, too.

Remember that new “Evie” Citroen C1 conversion I posted about seven hours ago? The one which was being formed and run by former Motor Industry execs? The one which suddenly appeared on the radar in the past few days? The one we’ve not heard anything about until a huge press-launch yesterday? The one with the…

Category: EVs (page 2)