Author: tsport100

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Electric car U.S. sales reach 40,000 in first half of 2013

U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz highlighted the continued growth of electric vehicle sales – doubling in the first 6 months of 2013 compared to the same period in 2012

Plug-in electric vehicle (PEV) sales tripled from about 17,000 in 2011 to about 52,000 in 2012. During the first six months of 2013, Americans bought over 40,000 plug-in electric vehicles (PEV), more than twice as many sold during the same period in 2012.

The latest numbers also show how the early years of the PEV market have seen much faster growth than the early years of the hybrid vehicle market. Thirty months after the first hybrid was introduced, monthly sales figures were under 3,000.

By comparison, PEVs – which were first introduced in December 2010 – report nearly 9,000 cars sold in the last month. At the same time, thanks to technology improvements and growing domestic manufacturing capacity, the cost of a battery has come down by nearly 50 percent in the last four years, and is expected to drop to $10,000 by 2015.

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Formula-E, Electric Racing for the Future – /SHAKEDOWN [VIDEO]

When IndyCar's Andretti Autosport announced itself as a team entry in the new FIA Formula E Championship launching in 2014, it's time for Leo Parente and ShakeDown to bring you up to speed on this global open-wheel racing series that will run on full-electric power.

10 races, 10 teams, 2 drivers per team, 4 cars - because rather than change tires or swap batteries, the 2 mandatory pitstops in each 1-hour race will see drivers swapping cars to keep racing [the other car recharges between stops]. Then, there is the RC car sound vs 'real engines'!

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Tesla forces GM CEO to consider electric threat

General Motors CEO Dan Akerson has reportedly assigned a team to study the threat posed to the automaker from Tesla, the electric sports sedan maker.

GM’s vice chairman, Steve Girsky disclosed the study in an interview with Bloomberg. “He thinks Tesla could be a big disrupter if we’re not careful,” Bloomberg quoted Girsky as saying.

But the greater threat to GM may be its own corporate culture, notes Forbes contributor Micheline Maynard.

After all, GM “once nurtured, and then killed, a $1 billion program to develop an electric car called the EV1,” Maynard writes. “The issue isn’t what Tesla threatens to do to GM. It’s why GM isn’t a place where such innovations can take place and more importantly, take root,” she added.

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Andretti to run FIA Formula E championship in 2014

Andretti Autosport announced Wednesday it has signed on as the third team to compete in the environmentally friendly FIA Formula E championship, which will feature electric cars racing in 10 cities around the world beginning in 2014.

Michael Andretti's two-car operation will join China Racing and British-based Drayson Racing as organizations already committed to a field that will have 10 two-car teams competing in each e-Prix.

"We're in the business of racing and we've been looking for opportunities to diversify, and when we were contacted about this we felt it was something we needed to look into," Andretti told The Associated Press. "The more we looked into it, the more interested we got. We like the relevancy of the series because one of the problems auto racing is starting to face — and is going to face more of in the future — is relevancy.

"I think relevancy is going to be addressed with the electric cars. It's a good way to hook our younger audience into racing, and I'm excited to be involved and be involved at the ground floor."

Andretti plans to run one car for the championship, while his second entry could be a "star car" that uses well-known drivers such as IndyCar reigning champion Ryan Hunter-Reay, Marco Andretti or James Hinchcliffe based on their availability.

The races will be held September 2014 to June 2015 for a "winter season" on street courses that run through the heart of major cities around the world. Alejandro Agag, CEO of series promoter FEH, said there will be stops in Miami and Los Angeles on the 10-race schedule, making it important to have Andretti involved in the series debut.

"Andretti is a great name in motorsport, and when we launched the championship, we said we wanted to have a geographically diversified grid and for us, the U.S and China are our two key markets in the world," Agag told the AP. "In the U.S., we really need a strong team to lead the way and we think there is no better name than that for America that Andretti. And globally because it's very American, but at the same time it's a world-known name.

"Everybody knows Andretti everywhere, so for us it was really a priority to speak with Andretti and invite them into the championship."

Andretti Autosport currently fields four IndyCar entries, and cars in Indy Lights, the Pro Mazda Championship and in the USF2000 National Championship. The team has won four IndyCar championships, to Lights titles, one USF2000 championship and its drivers have won two Indianapolis 500s.

Michael Andretti raced more than 20 years in CART and Formula One, winning 42 CART races, which ranks third in American open-wheel history. His father, Mario Andretti, ranks second with 52 victories.

In Formula E, teams will have two drivers and four series-provided single-seater electric cars in the first season. Renault has signed on as the car manufacturer, but Agag said series officials expect three to five manufacturers in the second season based on current conversations. Michelin is the tire supplier.

"A lot of the sponsors are saying we are looking for something that is going to tick the box on sustainability, and we're finding many big corporations are saying they need to go toward sustainability in sponsorship," Agag said of interest in the series.

The car batteries will last up to 25 minutes at a time, so drivers will have to switch cars during the race while their batteries recharge. The driver will enter the pits, then get out of the car and run 100 meters to get into the freshly charged car.

The cars will be based in England with teams arriving at the venues in advance of the race to prepare the cars for competition.

In an effort to keep costs down — Agag said the operating budget for a season is $3.5 million, money Andretti is seeking to cover through sponsorship — very little development will be allowed on the cars.

"They don't want to have a whole lot of development in the actual car, they want the development to go into the electric technology," Andretti said. "They are really going to control that side of it with the rules that you can't do a lot to the cars."

The final calendar for the debut season will be presented to the FIA in September for approval and also has planned stops in London, Rome, Beijing, Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Putrajaya, Bangkok and Berlin. Agag said the races will be around major city landmarks, and the events will be stand-alone and not held in conjunction with any other series.

"The main point is to be fully sustainable with zero emissions, so if you bring in combustion cars you are destroying that message," Agag said.

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SIX Porsche 918 Hybrid Spyder On the Road in Monaco [VIDEO]

While cruising around Monaco, Youtuber Marchettino stumbled upon a convoy of several Porsche 918 Spyders!

Technical data - 2014 Porsche 918 Spyder

  • Engine: two electric engines and a 4.6L petrol V6 with a total of 875hp / 750nm
  • Performance: 0-100 kph (0-60 mph) sprint in 2.8s and a top speed of 340kph (211 mph)
  • Curb Weight: 1675kg
  • Price: 781.000€ and limited to 918 units
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    Radical sets EV Lap Record at Sydney Motorsport Park [VIDEO]

    Ex-Australian Touring Car driver and multiple Australian Motorsport Champion John Bowe took to Sydney Motorsport Park to set an EV (Electric Vehicle) lap record in the ELMOFO (Electronic Motor Force) Radical SR8 - the first of it's kind.

    Bowe set a 1m 37.5s lap which stands as the EV lap record at the 3.9km circuit.

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    New all-solid sulfur-based battery outperforms lithium-ion technology

    Scientists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have designed and tested an all-solid lithium-sulfur battery with approximately four times the energy density of conventional lithium-ion technologies that power today’s electronics.

    A new all-solid lithium-sulfur battery developed by an Oak Ridge National Laboratory team led by Chengdu Liang has the potential to reduce cost, increase performance and improve safety compared with existing designs.

    The ORNL battery design, which uses abundant low-cost elemental sulfur, also addresses flammability concerns experienced by other chemistries.

    “Our approach is a complete change from the current battery concept of two electrodes joined by a liquid electrolyte, which has been used over the last 150 to 200 years,” said Chengdu Liang, lead author on the ORNL study published this week in Angewandte Chemie International Edition.

    Scientists have been excited about the potential of lithium-sulfur batteries for decades, but long-lasting, large-scale versions for commercial applications have proven elusive. Researchers were stuck with a catch-22 created by the battery’s use of liquid electrolytes: On one hand, the liquid helped conduct ions through the battery by allowing lithium polysulfide compounds to dissolve. The downside, however, was that the same dissolution process caused the battery to prematurely break down.

    The ORNL team overcame these barriers by first synthesizing a never-before-seen class of sulfur-rich materials that conduct ions as well as the lithium metal oxides conventionally used in the battery’s cathode. Liang’s team then combined the new sulfur-rich cathode and a lithium anode with a solid electrolyte material, also developed at ORNL, to create an energy-dense, all-solid battery.

    “This game-changing shift from liquid to solid electrolytes eliminates the problem of sulfur dissolution and enables us to deliver on the promise of lithium-sulfur batteries,” Liang said. “Our battery design has real potential to reduce cost, increase energy density and improve safety compared with existing lithium-ion technologies.”

    The new ionically-conductive cathode enabled the ORNL battery to maintain a capacity of 1200 milliamp-hours (mAh) per gram after 300 charge-discharge cycles at 60 degrees Celsius. For comparison, a traditional lithium-ion battery cathode has an average capacity between 140-170 mAh/g. Because lithium-sulfur batteries deliver about half the voltage of lithium-ion versions, this eight-fold increase in capacity demonstrated in the ORNL battery cathode translates into four times the gravimetric energy density of lithium-ion technologies, explained Liang.

    The team’s all-solid design also increases battery safety by eliminating flammable liquid electrolytes that can react with lithium metal. Chief among the ORNL battery’s other advantages is its use of elemental sulfur, a plentiful industrial byproduct of petroleum processing.

    “Sulfur is practically free,” Liang said. “Not only does sulfur store much more energy than the transition metal compounds used in lithium-ion battery cathodes, but a lithium-sulfur device could help recycle a waste product into a useful technology.”

    Although the team’s new battery is still in the demonstration stage, Liang and his colleagues hope to see their research move quickly from the laboratory into commercial applications. A patent on the team’s design is pending.

    “This project represents a synergy between basic science and applied research,” Liang said. “We used fundamental research to understand a scientific phenomenon, identified the problem and then created the right material to solve that problem, which led to the success of a device with real-world applications.”

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    Volkswagen XL1 achieves ‘only’ 160 MPG not 314 MPG [VIDEO]

    Volkswagen made big claims about the efficiency of their purpose-built XL1 diesel-hybrid. They claimed the car was good for 314 mpg, which equates to 0.9 l/100km in the Metric system. However, at a recent test drive event organized by VW, a handful of journalists were given the chance to drive the mid-engined XL1.

    The Automobile Magazine representative at the event averaged "only" around 160 mpg or 1.47 l/100km, which is still a hugely impressive figure but not the EU-certified314 mpg originally promised.

    It's not all bad news. Autocar were also at the event and report that on an early test drive, which including crossing a mountain range, the most economical drivers achieved a real 188 mpg and conclude there’s surely potential for 200 mpg on a long motorway run.

    The upshot is that the plug-in hybrid XL1 is probably still the most economical and most aerodynamically efficient production car of all time.