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More Electric Cars In London Next Decade!

Friday Nov 27, 2009

London could be awash with Electric Cars by the middle of the next decade, as PSA Citroen admitted it is targeting the capital in a big sales drive for its new IOn C-zero models - but only if the Government offers good enough subsidies for motorists to buy them.  The french motor giant said that it intends to put its first mainstream electric cars in London motor showrooms by this time next year.

The companies research and manufacturing chief, Guillaume Faury, told the Evening Standard that a three year, £2.7billion ramp-up will see Peugeot Citroen aiming for 25,000 sales in Europe by 2015.

“We will be targeting big cities with congestion chargesand emission zones, ” said Faury.

“London is nauturally an important place for us. ” The IOn and C-Zero which are being developed with Mitsubishi of Japan will have an 80-mile range on a single charge.  The most expensive parts of the cars are their lithium-ion batteries costing around £10,000 each. Peugeot Citroen is making it plain that its electric cars will not be comercially viable unless there are substantial government subsidies. In the UK, Government incentive schemes being talked about could provide up to £5,000 to ubuy a new car.

“Incentive schemes will make or break this technology,” said Faury. “We are saying on price that in pay-per-monthfinance package the cost of an electric car will be no more expensive than running a conventional car on finance.

citroen-peugeot-c-zero


The Future - Electric Cars

Friday Sep 11, 2009
Desial Davidson asked:


The green brigade has precisely touched most of the industries; Automobile can be left as the fuel consumption is the highest in this sector. Efforts have been made in the past to promote electric cars but the end result has not been impressive to many. Electronic cars launched previously had few draw backs like their top speed not exceeding 20 miles per hour, long recharge hours, expensive and two seating capacity. Though they make no noise and are pollution free vehicles it didn’t made any difference.

A lot of time and money has been put in developing these electric cars and make them more lucrative to the buyer.

UK is coming up with a Electric car which will be a four seater, can run up to 70 miles without bothering to be recharged. It’s a Citroen C1 based car, which is joint venture by Peugeot, Toyota and Citroen. It shall take only six to seven hours to charge and can be charged in a 13a normal socket. Subsidies are also being discussed with British government to encourage people to go in for a Citroen C1. By 2011 Citroen C1will hit the market.

Up till now the designs of any of the previous launched electric cars have not tempted most of them to buy one. They are expensive no fancy features or designs and they could not accommodate large families either. Hope fully the scenario will change in the near future.

Another such product, which is with an electric motor running on three wheels, is an Aptera. It’s quite pleasing to eyes and pollution free.

Aptera 2e is originally manufactured in California, USA. Mostly to be launched by the end of 2009. Aptera 2e can run 100 miles without bothering to be recharged. This is a two seater car with comfortable space for luggage. A Navigation system, an air conditioner, Side and front airbags, Power locks and electric windows are few features of the Aptera2. You can go 0 to 60 in less than 10 seconds which is commendable for an electric car. Such features are not present in any of its present counterparts. You can plug it in to any normal outlet of about 110v which will be cost you about 50c. A test drive of the Aptera 2e shall be an experience you had been waiting for.

Aptera 2e will be launched in California initially then Florida followed by Texas. Only by 2010 or2011 it will be available in other parts of the US. With all the state of art facilities, saving a lot of your hard earned money on fuel and being an eco friendly vehicle it will surely be a treat to drive.

Our future lies in these cars. They only do well to the environment and also to your pockets. You might feel it on an expensive side initially but the amount of money you shall be saving on fuel in the long run is remarkable.




Will Electric Cars Be The Future Of Driving?

Monday Sep 7, 2009
Over the past few years, the automobile industry has seen a rise in the popularity of electric cars. This is largely due to greater awareness of the environmental issues caused by cars and emphasis on how we should all be trying to reduce the impact cars have on the environment.

In the past, electric cars were perceived as inferior to traditional cars in terms of performance and style. This is changing slightly now with companies such as Tesla bringing out more modern styled, high performance electric cars. The Tesla Roadster sports car was released in July 2007 and has seen sales steadily grow as electric cars become more popular as attitudes change and the drivers become more environmentally conscious.

The performance of electric cars, in terms of speed and miles per charge has always attracted negative reviews. However, perceptions are changing thanks to cars like the Tesla Roadster which can drive for 244 miles on a single charge of battery and can reach 0-60 in 3.9 seconds.

This performance has helped to reposition electric cars as a more realistic option for many motorists around the world, with consumers now warming to the idea of more environmentally friendly motoring. Gas and fuel prices now mean that we could all save a considerable amount of money if we switched to an electric car.

The United States of America as well as the United Arab Emirates has seen an increase in the volume of electric cars on their roads and we will probably see the same here in the UK. Tesla has a partnership deal with Lotus which results in the building of the cars in the UK. This could be great for the UK economy.

Electric cars are becoming increasingly stylish and when you combine this with the fact that you could considerably help the environment by cutting down massively on your CO2 emissions, means that we should all consider electric cars as the cars of the future.


What Does It Take To Bild Your Own Electric Car?

Sunday Aug 9, 2009
Richard Caring writes:

The Basics Of How You Can Build Your Own Electric Car

With the cost of gas these days, some consumers have decided that having and operating an electric vehicle will be more effective and cheaper in the long run. If you decide to build your own electric vehicle, there are whole lot of resources available to assist you understand and work through the process of changing a gas vehicle to an electric vehicle.

If you have a long commute everyday, an electric vehicle might not be your best choice, since on average, electric vehicles can run from 30-70 miles each day. This is totally dependant on the driving conditions, the weight of the vehicle and the battery quality. Also consider how you will be recharging the batteries. If you live in an apartment complex with no garage, it may be impossible to charge the car’s batteries every night.

Important Considerations

First you have to decide what type of car you want to use to build your own electric vehicle. Smaller cars will usually be ideal, but larger vehicles can be used as well. You will most likely want to use a car that has a manual four or five speed transmission, since manuals are more efficient. Interestingly, since electric motors are so efficient, shifting up and down constantly won’t happen as much as it does in a gas fueled engine.

When you build your own electric vehicle, the additional systems can add anywhere from 200 to 500 extra pounds to the total weight of the car. So, when choosing the car you want to work with, make sure that the total weight of the car with the modifications isn’t completely ridiculous and is within reason.

A few things that are optional and not used often when you build your own electric vehicle are power steering and air conditioning. The power steering would require another motor to make the power steering pump work. Air conditioning drags on the batteries, but you can hook up air conditioning using a special magnet system to work the compressor.

If you want to build your own electric vehicle, there are plenty of resources out there to help you do the job right. As time passes, electric vehicles and hybrids will become more and more popular simply because the price of gas seems like it is going to stay fairly high and for many people, gas is almost not affordable. Take a look and decide if you want to build your own electric vehicle; you might be surprised at how fairly easy it is to convert your gas guzzler into an electric vehicle.

Best regards
Richard Caring

Electric Cars and Rising Gasoline Prices

Saturday Aug 8, 2009
Novyar asked:


Rising gasoline prices may just make other forms of alternative means of transportation become more attractive. One of the ways not to be affected by the rising prices of gas is to have an alternative means of travel. Of course, saving up on gasoline use may help in some way, but such actions may still leave one affected with the rising prices of gas. A better way would be trying to use a mode of transportation aside from one that makes use of fuel aside from gasoline. One such example is the use of an electric car.

An electric car is one type of an alternative vehicle. It makes use of electricity as its primary power source. Instead of an internal combustion engine, the electric car, also commonly called as an EV or electric vehicle, has an electric motor to make the vehicle move. It is an alternative fuel vehicle that does not use refined fossil oil for fuel.

Electric cars get electricity for power by means of electric battery packs built on board. One of the advantages of using electric vehicles or EV’s is that they are environmentally friendly. Unlike fossil fuel that emits a number of pollutants into the air when being used, the use of electricity for power does not do so, except that the power plants that may produce them do. But with using electric cars, the emission of harmful pollutants may be reduced substantially. Less cars using fossils fuel and gasoline would help make this possible. And someday, when more electric power is sourced from nuclear, solar, wind and hydro-electric power plants, pollutant emissions will even be reduced more.

Performance-wise, electric cars offer smoother and noiseless operation that cars relying on gasoline. Electric cars provide stronger acceleration and the electric motor requires lesser maintenance than the internal combustion engines of cars using gasoline and other fossil fuels. By using electricity through batteries, energy conversion is more efficient. Electric motors makes use of 75 percent of the chemical energy converted into electricity to run the car. Internal combustion engines or ICE’s only are able to make use about 20 percent of the energy stored in gasoline to power the vehicle.

If most think that the electric car is a recent invention, then they are mistaken. The electric vehicle is in fact one of the earliest vehicles known to exist. Small electric powered vehicles even predate the development of the diesel and gasoline engines. The earliest electric carriage was built between 1832 and 1839. The development of other electric cars also increased for some time during the 1860’s along with the improvement of the storage battery. It was even the electric cars that held many of the speed and distance records during this time. But unfortunately, the advent of the internal combustion engines came during the early 1900’s, which led to the decrease in the use of electric cars.

With the appearance of the more powerful and affordable diesel and gasoline powered cars starting in the early 1900’s, the market for electric cars slowly disappeared. Although there were still electric cars being made, those that do exist were being produced for specialized applications. One of the most common use for the electric vehicle today may be found in the golf carts as a primary mode of compact transport in golf courses. But because of the rising gasoline prices as well as the worsening pollution, there has been an renewed demand for the less polluting alternative electric vehicles in recent years.

 NOVYAR




How Electric Car Works

Thursday Aug 6, 2009
Max Info asked:


Electric cars are shown up in the news nowadays. The hybrid vehicles and especially the electric cars are talk of the town. The electric car is the best alternative for the petroleum cars. The reason for this includes many statements. The electric cars have a lot of advantages over the old fashioned petroleum cars. The popularity of the electric cars has reached almost all over the world. We are taught in schools about the alternative sources of energy. The alternative sources of energy are solar energy, gas energy, electrical energy, etc. The electric cars are the cars which can run on electricity. Actually the petroleum cars can also be converted into electric cars. It is very easy to convert a petroleum car into electric cars. Most of the petroleum cars are being converted into electrical cars as electrical cars is cost cutting.

It is almost not difficult to understand how an electric car works. The architecture of the electric car is quite different then the petroleum car. A electrical car is consist of lots of wiring. The electrical car has following main components:

Electric Motor

Motor Controller

Batteries

An electric car is powered by an electric motor while a petroleum car is powered by a petroleum engine. This is how an electric car defers from the petroleum car. Instead of a petroleum engine an electric motor is placed inside the electric car. The electric motor gets power from the controller. Number of rechargeable batteries provide power to the controller.

The controller gets the power from the batteries and gives it to the motor. The accelerator pedal is tied with a pair of potentiometers (variable resistors), which provides the signal for the controller how much power it is to to deliver.

The 300 volts dc current is inoput to the controller from the battery and  controller converts it into a maximum of 240 volts AC, three-phase, and  sends to the motor. Inside the controller there is a transistor which turns onand off rapidly. A connector connects these two potentiometers and the padal, when you push on the gas pedal, The controller gets information about how much power to deliver to the electric car’s motor from the potentionmeters. There are two potentiometers for the sake of safety. The controller checks the readings of the both potentiometers to be equal. If they are not, then the controller stops operating. When accsilator is pressed, the controller turns the switch on, and when it is removed, it would turn it off.

The batteries are the main sources of power for the electrical car. Number of rechargeable batteries provide power to the controller. The motor can use both AC and DC batteries. Batteries  run by chemicals such as lithiuem. You can recharge the batteries by just plugging in the wire to the electric socket.

In this article we discussed about the architecture and working of electrical cars. Hope that this information increased your knowledge about the electrical cars.