Life Alternate » Electrical Cars

Electric Car Nissan Leaf Entering Market

Wispa — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 07:34:07 +0000

Nissan’s Electric Vehicle is about to enter the market in Japan and in the USA. This month we can expect to see the Zero Emission vehicle on our streets alongside their soon-to-be-redundant gas guzzling polluting combustion engine driven cars.

One hurdle that can cause the New Electric Cars problems is recharging. The combustion engine car has had decades upon decades to create an infrastructure of Gas Stations around the world. Any new gas powered car that comes on the market already has this available.

For Electric Cars the “Charging Stations” that are used to top-up the batteries are still not as commonplace and this will slowly be overcome as the number of cars increases.

Nissan dealers in Japan are kick starting the charging by providing over 2,000 charging station some of which can “Quick Charge” your new Nissan Leaf’s battery to 80% of its full capacity around 30 minutes. That’s about the time needed to grab a coffee.

It’s still not as quick as just topping up a gas tank. On the other hand Charging Stations can be practically anyplace. Anyplace you park your car could be used and are already are. Many workplaces are installing charging points in their parking lots and as a double green factor a few of them are solar powered.

As of today I see the price of oil is starting to rise again and this is going to be soon costing you more as fill up. If you think of how far you can drive on each gallon and compare that to the Leaf’s equivalent of nearly 100 miles per gallon then you can see an obvious benefit in your pocket.

Roll-out in European markets is expected to follow in 2011 and will be available worldwide by 2012. Other car makers are following with their own Electric Vehicles and I’m sure we cam make an accurate prediction that by 2020, or sooner, most cars on the road will be electric.

This change will have quite long reaching benefits both locally in less pollution, cleaner environments and much quieter cities and towns. Globally we could see less oil politics and the problems associated with it.

Your next car does not have to be a Nissan but there is a good chance it will be Electrically Powered.

Test Drive an Electric Car

Wispa — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 09:32:30 +0000

We all want one, a brand new Clean Electric Car, but are still not sure about this new technology coming on our roads. One tempting solution might be to Hire an Electric Car for a personal test drive.

The Car Rental Company Hertz are equipping their fleet with these new electric vehicles and this gives a great opportunity for the prospective buyer to have their hand on the wheels to see how it all performs.

Hertz plan to spoil you for choice with a large range of cars on offer. These will include the Nissan LEAF, the Coda Sedan along with the Mitsubishi i-MEV and the Toyota Pirus hybrid. A good selection for us consumers to try out before we decide to finally purchase one for ourselves.

We can expect other hire companies to follow this example and start offering clean Electric Vehicles in their range for hire. This is just going to give a good boost to the associated infrastructure of charging stations.

Mria Electric Vehicles Breaks Records

Wispa — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 06:05:54 +0000

Electric Vehicles have, currently, a large off-putting factor and that is the distance that the car can travel on a single charge. The Mira EV has now shown that not to be a problem by breaking the distance record not once but twice.

Using a modified Mira EV equipped with a staggering 8,320 batteries on board the car achieved a record breaking distance of 555.6 KM on a single charge. The journey took place on November 17, 2009 and traveled between Tokyo and Osaka.

The distance is quite amazing compared to electric vehicles currently on the market that have ranges of around just 100 km. What is puzzling is it is stated that the batteries used were provided by Sanyo and have a type number of 18650. These batteries appear to be AA size that would be more at home in a TV remote control.

Not content with just over 500 km, the team set out to break their own record. Between May 22 to 23 and using 17 different drivers the record was smashed and a distance of 1,003.184 KM was achieved. Keeping a speed of 40 kilometers per hour the team kept the car going for over 27 hours.

The distance, which is over 630 miles, is quite amazing considering it is not an experimental car. Although charging up all those 8,320 AA batteries in your home charges is going to take some time.

Electric Vehicle Battery Efficiency Improves

Wispa — Mon, 17 May 2010 06:34:25 +0000

The Electric Car may be in for a performance boost as the technology behind the battery packs sparks into life. Manufacturers have been erring on the side of caution and limiting their performance to increase the life span.

The massive pack of batteries in Electric Vehicles is probably the most expensive component in these new forms of transport and this has put the breaks on their performance to increase their usable lifespan.

Lithium Ion batteries, the same material that is used in your portable devices like cameras and notepads, does degrade under extreme usage. The main factor here is what is called the “Deep Discharge”, using the batteries until their capacity is nearly zero.

Electric Vehicle Manufacturers have implemented limits on the amount of discharge the Lithium Ion battery is allowed. While the life of the battery is extended this means the performance, and specifically the driving mileage is reduced before you have to pop in to the nearest charging station. Can you imaging filling up your combustion engine driven car and only being able to use half a tank of gas before you need to fill up again. This is the situation for electric.

That is the bad news, there is good news of course. Using the data from the usage of the current electric cars manufactures have realized that they can release some of the limits imposed on the battery packs. The outcome is two fold here, the first is that using the same battery pack, your electric vehicle will be able to vastly increase their range. Secondly if range is not a factor then the size and weight of the battery can be perhaps halved.

The packs are costly and heavy, being able to reduce cost means much cheaper cars on the road and the added bonus means less eight that your car has to carry around. Those early generation vehicles like all first generation goods will lead the way to much better descendants. We just have to think about the performance and size of recent electrical devices like television screens and computer specifications. The battery packs will improve vastly and who knows how far our electric car will take us in the next decade.

Electric Cars Need Energy

Wispa — Wed, 05 May 2010 06:02:18 +0000

The electric vehicle is not a new concept and has been used for specific purposed for many years. There have been some demonstration and experimental cars but not is the time for them to go mainstream.

These truly electric vehicles may look the same on the outside but under the hood they are quite different altogether. The most obvious and important difference is the internal combustion engine is gone and replaced with an electric motor. you do not have a gas tank but instead your have a bank of batteries for power. Ignoring those big differences then it just looks like and ordinary car and should drive just as well.

Now that the fuel has been replaced with electivity for many new vehicles coming on to our roads we will start to notice and be aware of a few changes.

Probably the most important one is pollution. Cleaner air mean much more that being able to see bluer sky. Long term health will improve for not only us humans but also for the plant and animal life. Buildings will look cleaner all that dirt and grime will be less and overall a better feeling will take place of the fumes.

The replacing of gas based fuel with electrical power will put more of a demand on the energy grid. Ultimately this extra energy will need to be produced and this would mean more polluting power station fueled by coal or oil. So it may seem like we are just shifting a problem from one place to another. This is true to some extent but no matter how we hate them power station are much more efficient at produce power then gas driven vehicles. By replacing all the cars with electrical vehicles then we would only need around 1/4 of the oil to generate the extra electricity.

The extra power can be reduced even more by smart charging. Vehicles can be plugged into the grid overnight but only charged when there is an excess of power available. This happens quite often through the day as energy demand rises and falls. This could reduce even more the need for extra power stations. A further alternative is for renewable energy powered charging stations. These are sprouting up more and often come in the form of solar parking lots. These take all their power from photovoltaic solar panels that can often act as sunshades for the vehicles parked below.

A lot of those solution will not totally remove the need to extra generation power but in comparison to the benefits of the removal of, hopefully, all those combustion engines from our roads will be far greater.

Electric Cars The Nissan Leaf

Wispa — Tue, 04 May 2010 07:08:31 +0000

The world is on course to make driving electric and its something everybody should be charged up on. Nissan is going full swing with their LEAF which is an acronym for Leading, Environmentally Friendly Affordable Family Car.

Electric cars have been here for quite a while and have always had their problems. Mainly battery capacity that would not allow performance and range along with the problems of recharging. This kept vehicles extremely close to home and unviable. The LEAF hopes to change that not only with a fairly usable performance for a family car but also with the implementation of a network of recharging station.

Ideally suited for small local trips taking the kids to school or heading down to the supermarket these cars will be performing just as well as gas powered cars. For anything that requires long travel times then you may still have to wait a while. The battery capacity is still not adequate for journeys over 100 miles and would require frequent stoppages to recharge is your were going across state. For city and urban commuting then the future is here now.

The benefits are quite obvious here, inner city pollution is a problem no matter what country you live in and as electric car produce no exhaust fumes they would cut down the toxic air dramatically.

Nissan Plans to produce 50,000 cars in the first year of production and has already received over 6,000 pre production orders which should be hitting the streets in December 2010. The cost of the car is expected to be around US$32,000 which is quite a large amount but for US customers there are State and Federal incentives that could reduce the cost to you by up to US$10,000. That is quite a saving and other countries should have similar incentives available as the push to electric transport gathers speed.

For charging the car can be basically plugged in to your home and topped up over night while you sleep. For those that live in apartment blocks then this is not practical especially if your live on the 24th floor. In parallel with the development of the Nissan car there is a collaboration of companies to implement Charging stations around cities and should be as common as gas stations. Gas Stations have safety consideration and the hazards of the inflammable fuel put restriction on the locations of the pumps. With electricity the restrictions are much much less, for instance every parking space could be a charging spot. When your are pushing your trolley around the supermarket your parked electric car could be charging up outside. Eventually charging stations should become more abundant than gas stations.

Those quick charging station could have your LEAF charges up to 80% capacity in around 30 minutes. At home it will take a little longer and expect around 8 hours here. These are from completely flat batteries and in reality the time will be shorter if your using your family car for shorter journeys.

Speed wise you can push up to 140 kmph or 87 mph which is more than enough for urban transport.

The electric car does bring in a whole host of new problems the most obvious one is the extra demand for electricity but this far outweighs the effects of pollution caused by the combustion engine. This may just be the start of the end of the gas powered vehicle. Lets hope so.

Image via wikipedia

Razor E300 Electric Scooter

Wispa — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 06:06:47 +0000

The media is currently full of storied about electric car and the approaches taken by the journalists often vary from “for” to “against”. Reducing pollution in cities is a necessity where those seen and unseen exhaust fumes are concentrated. Switching from gas powered vehicles to electrical powered is really and obvious advantage for our long term health even if that was the only reason. Cars are not the only transports you can think about. Something smaller like an Electric Scooter provides a bit of fun for the family, from kids through to adults.

Razor is a company based in California that has been producing Scooters since the year 2000 and offer a various range of models. The E300 is one model that is beefy enough for adults to enjoy some fun.

Giving a top speed of 15 miles per hour which is a speed that won’t be breaking any records but that is not what this is about. Slow enough to be safe for kids and fast enough to be a bit of a thrill for the adults the scooter will give at least 40 minutes of enjoyment before the batteries need recharging. This might seem like a short time and it is when compared to electric vehicles. For enjoyment the operation time should be enough and maybe for those little trips about the community.

Recharging will take around 12 hours to being the scooter back to full capacity and that can easily fit into an overnight charge. The scooter features pneumatic tires and front wheel suspension to give it a comfortable ride over those occasional bumps and the high torque motor bring in a sporty feel of power.

For saving the environment then obviously this has to score low and wont help reduce the problems of concentrated pollution in cities and urban areas. We still think this is a great idea, especially for children as a device for education. Having the next generation already familiar and happy with the idea of electrical transport and the needs for keeping their vehicles powered up will allowed them to embrace the idea of electric transport as something normal when they get older. The adults, well they can still enjoy the fun to be had with electric scooters and maybe they are not too old to embrace the idea.

Remember the safely side here and suitable head protection should be worn especially for the adults who thing they know better. You don’t look silly and you`ll be on the first wave of embracing the inevitable changes that is coming to transportation.

The Razor 300 Electric Scooter should cost around US$260 wither other models such as the E100 costing as little as US$150.

Solar Powered Golf Carts

Wispa — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 07:42:23 +0000

Golfers spending time on the courses are always thinking Green, the Putting Green. Fortunately unknowingly they may also be driving around the links while being environmentally green in a Solar Powered Golf Cart.

Electric vehicles are going to be more common whizzing quietly down our streets in this decade. On the Golf course they have been in action for years. Commonly now both for environmental and cost reasons solar energy is making and impact.

The electric golf buggy still needs a power source and this was achieved by plugging-in to the grid. Some far away coal power station was churning out electricity and pollution as well as charging the course owners for the energy.

Fitting solar panels to golf carts is simple as nearly replacing the canopy as a kit fitted onto the existing buggy or a specifically designed solar cart if buying new. The result is massive saving on energy costs. Courses in Hong Kong have already retrofitted their fleet of golf buggies and are showing large reductions in charging costs. Anytime a buggy is exposed to sunlight they are powering themselves up for absolutely no cost.

Not only the golfer can enjoy these carts. The are commonplace in hotels and resorts. Heavy use of these carts will mean they are not totally charged by solar and will need additional charging. Sunny climates and moderate use could see the total elimination of the costs of charging the vehicles.

While 100% solar powered vehicles may not be commonplace on our roads already many cities are turning to electrical powered vehicles in a bit to reduce inner-city pollution.