Listening to the hype coming out of the Geneva Motor Show one has to wonder where the global auto industry is headed. Every one of the major car makers released details of new hybrid and new all electric vehicles, admittedly some in concept form like VW and Porsche but still accompanied with some grandiose projections on sales figures down the road. None more so that Renault-Nissan the struggling French-Japanese group who’s chief executive, Carlos Ghosn is reported to have claimed they will be producing half a million electric cars by 2013-14. We hope they have a big enough field to park them all in. After being available for 13 years, hybrid cars made up just 2.8% of the US car market in 2009 according to Hybrid Cars.com, equivalent to about 300,000 vehicles. Renault-Nissan are starting from scratch with electric cars and yet they are projecting 500,000 in three years time. Of course it is possible Renault know something we don’t. Maybe the French government is about to launch a massive electric car subsidy scheme as a catalyst to encourage buyers to switch. Certainly Renault have identified some of the markets concerns. They propose leasing the battery packs to car buyers, not selling them as part of the vehicle. At the end of practical life they intend to recycle them as power storage units. Read More...
|
||||||
|
Fisker Automotive is expanding to accelerate development of its next generation plug-in hybrids,
The Progressive Automotive X-Prize, closing in on its May 2010 competition start date, held a technical summit of the participating 43 teams at the 2009 SEMA show in Las Vegas. Twelve of those teams brought along vehicles to display at the show, each one in varying degrees of completeness. This technical summit comes on the eve of the announcement that it will receive up to $5.5 million in funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, on behalf of the U.S. Department of Energy. The award outlines specific tasks for the Auto X Prize to follow including vehicle telemetry integration, technical assistance to qualifying teams and the addition of technical staffing. The locations for the acceleration, hill climbing, slalom and fuel economy competitions haven’t been announced yet, but we’ve heard that Indianapolis and Washington, D.C., will be two of them. We also hear Auto X Prize fans will be able to watch real-time videos of the $10-million prize competition online and even see instantaneous fuel economy and performance of the entries. Read More... Carmakers have realised the importance of using alternate fuels to power cars. Research and development is being done in this direction to come up with a technology so advanced that it is both efficient and economical. Read More... Smith Electric Vehicles U.S. Corp., a Kansas City, Mo.-based producer of zero-emission trucks for commercial shippers, could make its first foray into the East Coast with a 50,000-square-foot production and sales facility in the Washington area. Read More... MANCHESTER, England, March 11, 2010 /PRNewswire/ — Manchester City Council chief executive, Sir Howard Bernstein and Juergen Maier, Head of Industry at Siemens plc, took to the streets of Manchester today in an electric powered sportscar – looking to the future of a city using zero-emission electric cars. Read More... The Indian car market is growing rapidly. It has overtook Japan and emerged as the largest small car market. It is slowly becoming a hub for luxury cars as well. Moreover, in near future the Indian car market will witness a slew of electric and hybrid car launches. Most of these green cars will be displayed at the upcoming Delhi Auto Expo. Below listed are the electric cars and hybrid cars that will be displayed at the 2010 Auto Expo. Read More... The so-called “RV Capital of the World” may soon be able to bill itself the “EV Capital of the World.” What a difference a letter makes. Read More... Fisker Automotive CEO Henrik Fisker gave a presentation at the New Castle County Chamber of Commerce’s annual dinner Monday night about his compnay’s plans to build plug-in vehicles (PHEVs) in Delaware. Over 450 people from the community where Fisker’s new plant (and General Motors’ old plant) is located heard Fisker speak about the Karma and the upcoming Project Nina vehicle. Nina, of course, is the lower-cost ($50,000?) plug-in hybrid that Fisker wants to build in and export from Delaware. Read More... An electric car maker in the Bay Area has proposed a plan to build electric vehicles at Fremont’s NUMMI plant — but the proposal faces mammoth hurdles, including getting $1 billion in financing. Read More... ROCKVILLE, MD–(Marketwire – March 10, 2010) – MarketResearch.com has announced the addition of SBI’s new report “Electric Vehicle (EV) and Plug-In Hybrid Electric Vehicle (PHEV) Markets Worldwide,” to their collection of Electric Vehicles market reports. For more information, visit http://www.marketresearch.com/redirect.asp?progid=67618&productid=2496608 Read More... Back in January, it was reported that Mercedes-Benz will offer the next-generation S-Class with a plug-in hybrid variant. At the time, insiders said that with the help of weight reduction and aerodynamic improvements, the S-Class plug-in hybrid sedan will be able to return an estimated 67 mpg. Read More...
Shares in Tanfield are motoring after the group received a conditional offer for its electric vehicles business from its US partner. Read More...
Autopia Planes, Trains, Automobiles and the Future of Transportation Electric Car Race Slated For Barcelona |
||||||
|
Copyright © 2010 4EVRiders.org – Charging Locator and News on Electric and Plug-in Hybrid Vehicles - All Rights Reserved |
||||||
