By: TOM
You’d be interested to know that there are different types of hybrid vehicles in the market. There are even more different types of hybrid cars being worked upon and they are expected to arrive soon. If you are looking to buy such an automobile, you will have to do a lot of research before [...]
A University of Michigan researcher thinks we can triple the fuel economies in our petroleum-powered vehicles in the next 25 years. All we need to do is replace horsepower with brainpower.
John DeCicco, a lecturer at the School of Natural Resources an…
By: Hilal Abdelwali
Hybrid cars are considered as the car of the future. It is able to effectively conserve fuel and at the same time, it only produces low levels of toxic fumes. Because of these benefits, hybrid cars are now growing in popularity every single day. Many people are now considering getting rid of their [...]
When the Chevy Volt concept first materialized a few years back, there were a lot of questions surrounding America’s first mass-market electric car. While answers to most of those questions dribbled out over the last few years, GM remained mum on on…
Without a doubt it’s an interesting idea, and as such the company has poured 1.5 million euros into developing the concept into a working prototype. According to the company, solar panels on the roof could deliver enough power to propel a single three-seater 12.5 miles before the other power source needs to kick in, and its small design would certainly make it no less viable a city car than the Smart Cars that dot the curbs of many European burgs. But a car that docks with other cars? The benefits are dubious, to say the least.
To answer (or not) a few of your questions: we’re not really sure exactly how this automotive merging is supposed to take place (nose-to-tail? side-by-side?). And we’re not really sure if the car will be sold as a set of two or as individual three-seater units. But now we’re getting ahead of ourselves; we’d actually be pretty surprised to see something like this go to market, Voltron-esque style points notwithstanding.
The concept of vehicle-to-grid (V2G) integration would do away with simply considering hybrid electric cars as energy consumers that require stations or places to plug into the electric grid and recharge their batteries.
“Cars sit most of the time,” said Jeff Stein, a mechanical engineer at the University of Michigan who leads the NSF-funded effort. “What if it could work for you while it sits there?”
Such future vehicles would essentially double as mobile holding tanks for electricity while sitting unused in their garages. That could prove especially useful if the electric grid begins to rely more on renewable sources of energy such as solar or wind power, which provide intermittent energy that requires storage.
But major challenges lie ahead for this vision. Stein’s team has made some progress in understanding how battery health and life is affected by constant charging and recharging, because “what’s good for the battery isn’t necessarily good for the grid,” and vice versa.
The engineers also want to understand how future ownership of hybrid electric vehicles affects the electric grid, and specifically the reliability and stability of the grid. Our advice — take a look at Google’s project to create “smart charging” software for electric cars.
[via ScienceDaily]
A retooled Nissan factory is expected to create up to 1,300 jobs in the U.S.
The 2011 Nissan Leaf won one of PopSci’s “Best of What’s New” awards last year, and for good reason. Nissan’s vehicle may is the first truly mass-market electric car aimed at commuters, with a 100-mile range on its lithium-ion batteries and a price tag supposedly under $30,000. A PopSci test drive showed that the small car is surprisingly highway-worthy. And Nissan plans to eventually ramp up production to 150,000 electric vehicles annually.
Nissan represents the third vehicle manufacturer to sign a DOE loan agreement — Ford and Tesla Motors each received $5.9 billion and $465 million, respectively. Ford has its electric Focus lined up for next year, and Tesla has also been working on its Model S electric sedan for a 2011 debut.
The DOE also throws in the fun fact that Nissan’s loan-backed efforts should save 65.4 million gallons of gas per year, or about six times the oil spilled by the Exxon Valdez back in 1989. But somehow that leaves us just feeling mildly angrier about the oil spill rather than inspired by the fuel savings … at least until we can ditch the hybrids.
For years, it has been a common perception – or misperception as the case may be – that Japanese cars, particularly Toyota and Honda, were of better quality than their American counterparts, Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler. Don’t get me wrong,…
A smaller but surprisingly less depressing North American Auto Show features a shaken industry seeking a fresh start
At last year’s show, it was far from certain that Detroit’s Big Three would still exist in early 2010; they’re still with us. Ford and GM are building impressive new cars. Chrysler, which essentially had nothing but repainted versions of existing models on display, is another story. And this year it became obvious that the growing call to electrification won’t fade away anytime soon; nearly every automaker has now announced plans (some credible, some less so) for the launch of hybrid or pure-electric vehicles in the coming years. Altogether, the show gave the impression of a shaken industry thrilled for the chance at a fresh start.
So much for American cars being unable to shake their “not good enough” image!
Kicking off what it hopes will be a strong year, Ford won both the Car and Truck of the Year awards at the 2010 Detroit Auto Show. The Ford Fusion Hybrid won Car of the Year, while the Ford Transit Connect van [...]