Category: Electric Car News

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Zoox Reveal Autonomous Bi-directional Electric Vehicle Concept

Meet The Boz; it's not really a car - it's what might come after the car - a vehicle design based entirely around autonomous driving.

Inside the Boz, the experience would be like sitting in a train. Drivers become passengers, or "commanders." Without needing to focus on traffic and road signs, they would be able to use the commute to do some work or watch a video or have a snooze!

Just as the internal combustion engine enabled the car to replace the carriage, Zoox believe autonomous technology will replace the car, and in doing so create a new class of mobility known as 'Level 4'.

Level 4 is a term taken from a policy statement the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration released on May 30, 2013. This document outlines a spectrum of mobility systems from the fully manual Level 0, through to Level 4 which is fully autonomous.

From a design perspective, the first element you may notice is what's absent: the front and rear windshield. This is not to say L4s can't have them — certainly those designed for tourism would — but this vehicle makes the statement that you now have an option.

Firstly, it gains thermal, aerodynamic and acoustic efficiencies. The thermal load lost through the windshield is significant, requiring energy intensive climate control systems, as well as a number of ancillary systems to keep the glass clear. These inefficiencies are removed.

The entry profile of the vehicle is aerodynamic as a near teardrop, unattainable in a car due to the requirement for driver vision. The low profile roofline and absence of glass further lends itself to superior acoustic insulation. The side windows are thin, but double glazed, which enhances these properties.

Because the requirement for the passenger to be situationally aware of their exterior environment is removed, external sound and light can be shielded to enhance a sense of serenity and safety. This is a superior environment for interacting with voice-activated systems, watching video or conversing.

You can be in the middle of a bustling city, but when the door seals, you are in your own world.

The next point of observation may be that there is no hood. This is because there is no internal combustion engine — behind each wheel sits an electric in-wheel motor. The body language has been changed to reflect this setup, moving each wheel to its outer corner with minimal overhangs to maximize vehicle stability and interior volume.

Finally, the L4 is symmetrical in its X and Y axes — there is no differentiation between back or front. In fact, each quadrant of the vehicle is mirrored and identical.

Source: Zoox

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Mitsubishi Drop 2014 i-MiEV Price to $12,995 in California

Mitsubishi Motors North America have announced the 2014 Mitsubishi i-MiEV electric-powered production vehicle not only receives an expanded standard equipment package but also sees a considerable price reduction of $6,130 over the previous 2012 model year vehicle.

The 2014 model year Mitsubishi i-MiEV ES model including CHAdeMO DC quick charge port, battery warming system and heated side view mirrors now starts at only $22,995 – an astonishing $6,130 price reduction from the previous generation. After factoring in the Federal tax credit of $7,500, the net MSRP of the 2014 Mitsubishi i-MiEV drops down to only $15,495.

With a net MSRP of only $15,495 after factoring in the available EV federal tax credit of $7,500 and, for example, with the California state EV financial incentive of up to $2,500 (other generous financial incentives are available through numerous states and municipalities), residents in California can obtain the technologically-advanced 2014 Mitsubishi i-MiEV for as low as $12,995.

To date, more than 30,000 Mitsubishi i-MiEV and i-MiEV-based production vehicles have been sold around the globe. In such diverse markets as the U.S., Europe and Asia, the i-MiEV has proven to be a safe, convenient and utterly reliable eco-friendly form of personal transportation in any market in which it is sold.

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Norweigian Electric Car Sales hit 12% market share in November

Electric car sales in Norway have set yet another record. According to OGV battery electric vehicles sales increased sharply with 1434 new EVs being sold in November giving them an 11.9% market share amongst passenger car sales. This is a 357% increase on the same month last year when EVs accounted for only 2.6% of the market.

After topped the list of new car registrations in Norway in September, the top selling electric car for November is the Tesla Model S with 527 sold, accounting for 4.4% market share on it's own and second over-all of all cars sold behind the VW Golf.

After leading the market for the first time last month, the second most popular EV is the Nissan Leaf with 512 sold and 4.2% market share.

In fact EVs are so in demand in Norway another 249 used EVs were imported in November bring the total to 1683 electric cars.

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BMW-Toyota making big steps in EV Battery technology

BMW’s head of marketing, Ian Robertson, has said the partnership between BMW and Toyota has already heralded “big steps” in battery technology,

“We’ve been genuinely impressed by the speed and quality of the learnings,” said Robertson. “The teams are working very well together. We are making some big steps, especially in battery performance and efficiency. We are now looking at how we can use the learnings together, because there’s no question they will make electric cars far more attractive.”

The two firms announced they would jointly research a lithium-air battery back in January. A lithium-air battery has its anode filled with lithium, and cathode with air. Theoretically, the battery can store more than 5,000 watt-hours per kilogram. (A123 M1 cells are around 120 wh/kg).

Ian Robertson was quoted as saying during the launch of the BMW i3 he expect the i3 to be powered by a 320 km (200 mile) range Lithium-Air Battery by 2017.

Source: Autocar

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On Holiday in Hawaii with the Nissan Leaf

During a recent holiday in Waikiki, a beach front neighbourhood of Honolulu in Hawaii, EV News took the opportunity to rent a Nissan Leaf for the day. Having scanned the available cars on the Enterprise Rent-A-Car web-site and noticing they had Nissan Leaf available and for approx the same price as others in the same bracket I couldn't resist test driving one.

We picked up our Silver 2013 Leaf with 544 miles on the odometer with a full charge and only a vague idea where we were going. Earlier in the week we'd hired a 3rd generation Toyota Prius to lap the Island of Oahu a couple of times. (I've driven a Holden Volt and a Mitsubishi iMiEV, but not a Prius so I had to tick that box)

Having just hopped out of a Prius the controls in the Leaf were immediately familiar. It wouldn't be a wild guess to say the mouse-shaped gear selector in both could be from the same supplier. The start procedure in both is almost identical too, put the wireless key in the centre console, foot on the brake pedal, push button to start, select 'D' on the 'mouse', foot parking brake off, push the throttle and start moving forward - silently.

Aside from the steering wheel being on the wrong side of the car and having to drive down the wrong side of the road, (we're RHD here in Australia) we were still a bit navigationally challenged after only a few days in Hawaii. For a start, we hadn't been able to source an old fashioned paper road map of the place and being cheap skates (read: having a strong aversion to being ripped off) neither my better half nor myself had set-up International roaming on our iPhones so consequently they only worked when-ever WiFi was avaliable. Infrequent checking of Google maps required a quick visit to the nearest McDonalds to use their free WiFi.

Of course, the Leaf has GPS as standard built into the dash but a) you can't type in an address unless stationary (which frustrates the passenger no end) b) the address look-up isn't as good as Google and more often than not failed to return a result so it becomes a two device routine to actually find the route to any particular land mark.

I soon discovered range anxiety is real, at least within the first hour of being in a unfamiliar car. Like any typical Hawaiian day it was 30c so having driven out of the hire car lot and straight onto an expressway with the air conditioning on (i.e. maxium possible energy consumption)... the range indicator started to fall rapidly. Obviously if you owned a Leaf you would soon grow accustomed to it's range capabilities, but in unfamiliar terrain and in an unfamiliar electric vehicle, straight off the bat, it's all an unknown.

When we got the keys the range indicator said 84 miles (134 km). We hit a few outlet stores, hill climbed the 1,186 feet (361 meters) elevation to the Nu'uanu Pali Lookout, depleting indicated range to less than 20 miles - which we regenerated back up to 37 miles (60 km) by the time we returned to our hotel by late afternoon.

Fortunately Hawaii has plenty of accessible public changing stations, which most of the time are very popular. (see above) Even though the parking itself isn't free, the charging is and as luck would have it, there was a charging station within 5 mins walk of our hotel. It was not being used when we arrived with our Leaf (although it had been ICE'd by a minivan – who promptly moved and starting asking questions about the Leaf) and after a quick 3 hours plugged in we set off for dinner with the dash showing 100 miles (160 km) of range.

When confined to level ground, city driving, as opposed to expressways and hill climbs, the Leaf consumes amazing little energy. What you use during heavy acceleration is mostly regenerated while pulling up at the next set of traffic lights. The leaf has the same blended brake set-up as the Prius and Volt so any use of the brake pedal kicks in more regeneration as opposed to dissipating energy through the friction brakes.

In fact, having driven 2 full laps of Ohau in a Prius, I now understand why Prius owners are often quoted as saying brake wear is minimal even after 200,000 km as like the Volt, the Prius uses full regen braking most of the time. Incidentally, on a recent trip to Darwin to cover the World Solar Challenge it was interesting to note 80% of the taxis in Darwin are Prius – frugal on both fuel consumption and brakes - sounds like a perfect combination for a taxi.

From a drivers perspective, due to the “pedal feel simulator” in most hybrids and electrics, it's hard to tell the difference between regn and friction braking based on pedal feedback alone. The tell-tale is watching the dash displays and how they ramp up to full any time the brake pedal is pressed while the vehicle is at speed.

For urban driving the Nissan Leaf is a great choice. It's surprisingly big for a 'small' car, costs virtually nothing to run, takes only a few hours to get back to fully charged on a 240v outlet and as we have seen with DC fast chargers it can easily cover 500 miles (800 km) in a day.

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400 km Range Nissan LEAF Could Become Reality

One of the unique features of the Tesla Model S is the option to order different battery size packs. You can order it with with a 60kWh or 85 kWh battery pack, the later offering real world range close to 500 km (NEDC) per charge.

The larger the battery pack, of course, the more expensive the car, but as Tesla is finding out, a lot of its customers are opting for the larger size and greater range, a trend that hasn't gone unnoticed at Nissan, makers of the LEAF all-electric car.

During an interview with Plug-In Cars at the recent LA Auto Show, Pierre Loing, vice president of product and advanced planning and strategy at Nissan, hinted that his company may offer a similar multi-pack size option.

At present the LEAF is rated at 200 km (NEDC) per charge, doubling the size of the pack to nearly 50kWh would push this to 400 km, although the price of the car would increase as well; either the sales price or monthly battery rental cost, if that option were offered.

Nissan employees working at the company's Barcelona Technical Centre recently ran a modified Nissan LEAF with a 48 kWh in ECOseries motorsport events.

Loing did not explain how and when Nissan might offer this option, nor what it might do to pricing, which is currently one of the lowest priced all-EVs available today, especially in the United States, where the company introduced a $6,000 price cut earlier this year and saw sales explode.

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Auto sector adds spark to Japan’s electronic components industry

Japanese electronic component makers are looking beyond a fickle smartphone market that once lured them with rocketing growth, tying their fortunes more closely to the most resilient of Japan's big industries: automobiles.

Component makers such as Murata Manufacturing Co Ltd and TDK Corp are capitalising on rising demand for electronics like those that make cars safer with automatic braking or less polluting with engine controllers.

In contrast, Murata and others are having an up-and-down ride shipping components for Apple Inc's iPhones, while declining smartphone orders were a factor in January when TDK slashed its full-year operating profit forecast.

The auto industry offers a stable alternative, especially because of the enduring prominence of compatriot automakers such as global leader Toyota Motor Co. The value of electronic components per car will grow 26 percent over the decade to 2022, according to Fuji Chimera Research Institute.

But the payoff may not be as quick and will favour those with a longer history in the business.

"TDK and Murata were early to start working in automobiles and are strong there," said Manabu Akizuki, executive director at Nomura Securities. "Moving into automobiles is not so difficult but it takes 10 years to bear fruit."

Murata is the world's largest maker of ceramic capacitors used to control power supplies in electronic gadgets. It gets 40 percent of its sales from smartphones, including the iPhone for which it has been a major supplier since 2010.

Orders were hit earlier this year when Apple curbed output of the iPhone 5. It now aims to rely less on smartphones and boost autos' share of sales to 20 percent from 15 percent.

"Once we have products in place to expand our sales of power-supply parts, we expect to be able to generate growth that can match (that of our components for) smartphones," President Tsuneo Murata said in an interview last month.

Global smartphone demand is growing 30-40 percent a year, but this is likely to slow to 10-20 percent after about two years, he said.

Others in the industry also bemoan smartphone volatility.

"In December, (orders for the iPhone) were cut in half," said one senior executive who declined to be named. "Then they fell by half again. At that time, I thought: 'We'd be better off not doing this. The inventories just pile up.' It took four or five months to work them off. A smaller company would've gone under."

Murata has acquired several companies to bolster its position in autos, including Finnish microelectro-mechanical sensor maker VTI Technologies, bought in 2012 for 20 billion yen ($200 million). The sensors, which detect a car's movements, are used in stability control systems to prevent skidding that can cause accidents.

HYBRID AND ELECTRIC CARS

Hybrid and electric vehicles such as Tesla Motors Inc's all-electric Model S have multiplied the opportunities for electronics manufacturers, especially battery makers Panasonic Corp and Hitachi Ltd.

Batteries, motors, car navigation systems and other electronics account for 50 percent of the value of an electric-powered vehicle compared with 20 percent for a gasoline-powered car, according to estimates from the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry.

"The value of electronic materials and parts per vehicle will increase by factors of 10 with electric-powered vehicles," said Moritaka Kamiya, head of TDK's auto sales division.

TDK, which began supplying magnets for windshield wiper motors in the 1960s, bought German electronic parts maker Epcos for 200 billion yen in 2009. That saddled it with a declining business supplying parts for Nokia Oyj mobile phones, but also gave it sensors for car air conditioners and expertise in component modules, which offer higher margins than parts sold separately.

Other electronic components makers targeting the auto sector include Rohm Co Ltd. It increased its share of revenue from autos by 2 percentage points to 25.6 percent in the fiscal first half, and in September announced a tie-up with Freescale Semiconductor Ltd's Japan unit to boost its overseas business.

Nidec Corp, like TDK, has seen its hard disk drive component business shrink because of declining PC demand. In consequence, it has shifted focus to automotive uses such as windshield wipers and power steering.

The investment necessary to enter the market is substantial, says Nomura's Akizuki, but the stakes promise to be considerable.

The total market for automotive electronics will almost double to 26 trillion yen in 2022 from 14 trillion yen in 2012, according to Fuji Chimera Research Institute.

"There isn't the sharp growth and contraction that smartphones have, but it will steadily increase," said Shoji Sato, executive director at Morgan Stanley MUFG Securities.

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VW e-Up priced from £19,250 [VIDEO]

Volkswagen has opened order books in the UK for the new all-electric VW e-Up, pricing the model from £19,250. That figure includes a £5000 government grant.

The e-up! is powered by a 60 kw electric motor with maximum torque of 210 Newton meters is available immediately with the first revolution. It accelerates from 0 to 100 km/h within 14 seconds and reaches a top speed of 135 km/h.

The lithium-ion battery integrated in the underfloor area has a total energy storage capacity of 18.7 Kilowatt-hours (kWh); this means that the car can cover up to 150 km (per NEDC) on a single charge thanks to its low vehicle weight of 1,185 kg.

Deliveries of the first e-Ups are expected from February. A three-year warranty is standard, which can be extended up to five years. The battery warranty is eight years / 100,000 miles.

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BMW to Electrify entire model range

BMW product chief Herbert Diess says “Electricification will be a central thread in what we do, be it plug-in hybrid, hybrid or full electrification".

Diess told Autocar "all BMW models will soon need to be sold with some form of electrification - be it in hybrid form or pure electric drive" as it is the only way of meeting stringent emissions regulations in the future.

“We are planning to have a plug-in hybrid in each and every model series,” BMW’s head of production for large vehicles, Peter Wolf, told motoring.com.au. “So far we have the 3, 5 and 7 Series as full hybrids, and at the other end of the bookshelf the i3 and the i8. We are planning to work on that with the X5 eDrive, but at this stage, the plug-in is a completely new concept, and the battery is very specific [to the X5].”

Diess explained that European customers are likely to see most of the new electric-drive technology first, as regulations here are stricter than elsewhere.

“The i8 shows what’s possible even below 50g/km, but we will also offer all standard models with entry-level electrification. We will try to use the modular kit developed for the i3 and i8 on a kit basis.”