The Croatian-built Rimac Concept One electric sports car has been exhibited at the Top Marques Monaco motor show. The manufacturers claim that it could do 500 kilometres an hour but they have limited to 300 kilometres an hour for safety reasons. It will do 0 to 100 kilometres per hour in 2.8 seconds and has a range of 600 kilometres on a single charge – and will cost $US 980,000.

Following the success of Paris’ bicycle sharing programme, Velib, the city is to get an electric vehicle sharing programme, Autolib. It is eventually hoped to have 4,000 electric vehicles allowing one-way trips between charging stations all over the city, beginning in December. Production of the first 700 Autolib cars has already started in the Italian city of Turin. The bubble-shaped blue cars will be about the size of a Mini and it have a range of 250 km. They will be powered by lithium polymer metal batteries produced by Bollore and will take about four hours to fully charge.

North Carolina-based Li-ion Motors has announced the first all-American made electric car. The company says that the Inizio will have a top speed of up to 170 mph (275 kilometres per hour) and will accelerate from 0 to 60 mph (96 kilometres per hour) in 3.4 seconds – beating the Tesla Roadster’s 3.7 secounds. In comparison, Ferrari’s latest street racer, the 599 GTO will do 0 to 100 kilometres per hour in 3.32 seconds. But to save that fraction of a tenth of a second, you will have to pay $US461,000 for the Ferrari compared to $US139,000 for the Inizio. … Continue Reading →

Initial results from a year-long, 110-car trial being conducted by the Technology Strategy Board in the West Midlands of the UK have indicated that electric cars are more than meeting drivers’ daily range requirements and are cheaper to charge than previously thought. The results from the first six months of the trial in Birminham and Coventry are that drivers typically use less than 30 per cent of their total charge daily, charging the vehicles overnight whether the battery is almost full or nearly empty, as they do with mobile phones. An average charge time of just under two hours costs … Continue Reading →

Korean car maker Hyundai Motors has unveiled its first production all-electric vehicle. The car is an electric version of the Hyundai i10 hatchback, named the BlueOn. According to Hyundai, the BlueOn can be driven up to 140 kilometers on a single charge and has a maximum speed of 130 kilometers per hour. The car will fully recharge from a 220-volt outlet in six hours or charge up to 80 percent capacity in 25 minutes from a 380-volt fast-charging station. The BluOn is powered from a lithium-ion polymer battery made by Korean battery maker SK Energy. The car has a telematics … Continue Reading →