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News Archive
Wednesday, July 28, 2004
Electric cars that pay
News from The Christian Science Monitor:
by: Mark Clayton
So, you're thinking of buying one of those gas-electric hybrid cars like the Toyota Prius or Honda Insight. They're trendy, conserve fuel, and reduce pollution. But to really go "green," some entrepreneurs and academics say, you should try a Volkswagen Jetta.
Not just any Jetta. A dark blue one that a California electric-car company has modified so that it not only uses electricity but generates it for other purposes. So, once it's parked, you plug it in and sell excess electricity to a utility.
It sounds like a good way to meet car payments. But don't start counting the cash just yet.
Neither big auto-makers nor utility companies have yet seized on the idea, known as "vehicle-to-grid," or V2G. Still, V2G is an idea waiting to happen - and the push toward hybrids today is making it ever more likely, say scientists, entrepreneurs, and economists.
"As electric-drive hybrids begin to penetrate the auto market, you now have distributed power generation on wheels," says Stephen Letendre, an economist at Green Mountain College in Poultney, Vt. "You also have an asset that's sitting idle most of the time - just waiting to be connected."
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Monday, July 19, 2004
Battery-power cars far from dead
News from Washington Post:
[...] The media declared the electric car dead. They were wrong.
Overlooked were the noble, continuing efforts of a company now simply known as ZAP (Zero Air Pollution), headquartered in Santa Rosa, Calif. ZAP had been around in one form or another since its inception as ZAP Power Systems in Sebastopol, Calif., in September 1994.
The company, which started out making electric bicycles and battery-powered city scooters, has never made money. It went through a brief Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization in 2002. But when it comes to electric cars, ZAP has a better idea -- one that could get some high-voltage retail juice flowing through the struggling electric-vehicle industry and generate sustainable profits.
ZAP is pushing the idea of neighborhood electric vehicles (NEVs), and that makes perfect sense considering that most electric cars and trucks still fall short of their fossil-fueled counterparts in load-influenced driving ranges, refueling times and dollar-for-value expectations. [...]
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Friday, July 16, 2004
Ford Plans to Crush, Recycle Think Electric Cars as Leases End
News from Bloomberg:
Ford Motor Co., the second-biggest U.S. automaker, plans to crush and recycle Think City electric cars being returned from leases because the low-pollution vehicles don't meet U.S. safety standards.
The automaker, which sold the Think unit in 2002, got a waiver from U.S. regulators for the cars only for the lease period, said Vicki Northrup, a former Think manager now in Ford's internal communications section. Ford leased about 300 of the cars in New York and California for as long as three years.
Ford shifted its emphasis for fuel-efficient, low-pollution vehicles to gasoline-electric and hydrogen fuel-cell models, and sold Norway-based Think to Kamkorp Ltd. Electric motors and related parts from the cars being scrapped will be salvaged and sent to U.K.-based Kamkorp, Northrup said in an interview.
Some customers, who leased the cars as an alternative to gasoline-powered vehicles, are unhappy that they can't keep the Thinks. ``They're going to take my car in a month and there's nothing I can do,'' said Marc Geller, a San Francisco free-lance photographer who leased a City for 34 months.
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Friday, July 09, 2004
Car to be built in Summit
News from Beacon Journal:
by: Jim Mackinnon
New firm to assemble electric vehicles, custom-build gas-powered ones
Initially, only 78 more Sparrows are planned for production -- all that is left from inventory in California. Once the Sparrow is finished, a larger, roadster-type vehicle called the Vision is scheduled to begin rolling out the door, Blakesaid. The Vision, based on a Corbin Motors concept called the Merlin, will be powered by aHarley-Davidson gasoline engine, but an electric version is being planned, too, Blake said.
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Thursday, July 01, 2004
Charge her up, please
News from Trinidad & Tobago Express (Trinidad and Tobago)
By keeble mcfarlane
[...] In the meantime the gap between today's cars and the true electric car is being filled by what are called hybrids, using a small, clean-burning and extremely efficient gasoline engine linked to a motor-generator which can drive the vehicle from energy stored in its battery, and then charge that battery. [...]
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