EV Weblog: Daily Links

If you are in the Santa Monica area this weekend be sure to swing by and check out the Alternative Car Expo in Barker Hanger, December 9th & 10th, with free admission. Among the exhibitors you’ll find the fully-electric Electrum Spyder. Drop us an email if you go.
A new world record has been achieved in solar cell technology: 40% efficiency. This using a concentrator set-up, where the sun is focused on a small section of solar cell by a larger lens. As a reference, current solar cells are in the 8-15% efficiency range.
The first street recharging stations for electric cars are going live in London.
Lithium Technology Corp developed a new Lithium Ion Battery system for the Hybrid Car Project. The base car was a Smart w/3 cylinder turbo diesel teamed up to 2 permanent-magnet electric motors powered by Li-ion batteries.

Since most of the Electric and Hybrid car news focuses on Lithium batteries I figured it’s time for a few lithium links: Is lithium-ion the ideal battery?, wiki lithium ion entry, operating principles of lithium batteries.
Genetically engineered blood protein might offer new technique for splitting water into hydrogen.
GM says its top priority is to build a plug-in hybrid they aren’t really saying when.
A bit dated, but Honda rolled out another concept hybrid car at the recent LA Auto show. Even if you don’t like hybrid cars all of this attention and product engineering can only mean good things for electric cars: improved technology and batteries, and presumably lower costs as they become more mainstream and more manufacturers are competing.

Secret battery info on how they power a Tesla Roadster to its 4 second 0-60mph performance. A good read about some of the battery choices they made and the trade-offs for performance/life expectancy.
Phoenix motors has started installing and testing their new lithium battery pack. No pricing mentioned, but someone in the comments hazards a guess (a wild one at that). More info on Phoenix Motors new All-Electric SUV.
This year’s Toyota Camry Hybrid has been named the Green Car of the Year at the LA Auto Show.
Be sure to head over and read Darren’s latest gas saving experiment, going alternator optional. As usual an excellent article with lots of data and information.

Samsung has developed a high contrast (1500:1) LCD for in-car dash instrument use.
Got an email from the folks at Peak Energy Solutions claiming they have a thermally stable, lightweight, high power density Lithium Iron Phosphate battery. No clue, from email or web site, on the size, availability, or pricing yet.
Mitsubishi is stepping up their electric car research. Looking at the diagram it shows a “household charger plug” along with a separate “quick charger plug.” To take advantage of the quick charge you, or your office, will need 3-phase, 50kW/200V.

A couple new electric cars in the news lately, both on the higher end of the price spectrum. There’s the Obvio! from Brazil featuring lithium batteries and a 200-240 mile range, which will be sold in the US by Zap for around $50k. And if you haven’t heard about the Tesla electric car then you probably haven’t been paying attention. Checking in from $80-$100k it purports to have sports car performance and (or?) 250 miles per charge. Nice looking vehicle created by Lotus. Oddly enough the gallery shows a photo of it with a gas cap on the side…for the plug? Still, you’d think a purpose built electric wouldn’t have a gas cap looking thing on the side…
Biofuels: Think Outside The Barrel – video presentation on biofuels with Vinod Khosla.
Speaking of which, Saab has unveiled their new bio-fuel hybrid prototype. (no news if they’ll ever make it though) ““A hybrid system is not cheap,” points out Mr Elliot.”

Record flight set in airplane powered by 160 AA batteries. The aircraft stayed in the air for 59 seconds and flew a distance of 391 metres (1,282 feet). (thanks for the link Jerry)
Over at OmniNerd they are taking an in-depth look at how to modify driving style, vehicle, and even fuel to optimize mileage (on a jeep).
Lengthy article entitled The Oil We Eat. Interesting perspective on crops as energy storage. “Every single calorie we eat is backed by at least a calorie of oil, more like ten. In 1940 the average farm in the United States produced 2.3 calories of food energy for every calorie of fossil energy it used. By 1974 (the last year in which anyone looked closely at this issue), that ratio was 1:1.” contrasted with, “In the 1940s we got about 100 barrels of oil back for every barrel of oil we spent getting it. Today each barrel invested in the process returns only ten…”
Not yet ready to slip into your car yet but work is being done on heat powered air conditioning.

TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Company) unveils their Electric Mini Car prototype. With specs such as, “A 346V battery pack powers the 40kW drive motor, and can recharge to 80% capacity in 15 minutes. The manganese Li-ion cells use lithium manganese oxide spinel (LiMn2O4) as the cathode active material, making the battery resistant to overcharging and providing high thermal stability.”
Kusnetz’s Mac Prius. Looks mostly for entertainment purposed right now, no mad unix scripts pulling in data from the prius sensors to make charts or tweak performance. Hey, I’ve got an old mini kicking around somewhere at home…
What did you do this weekend? Over at Random Foo he researched energy and power generation and came to the conclusion that the government could do a massive incandescent to fluorescent light bulb swap (at an estimate cost of $100M-$200M). This would save around 4 billion in energy over the lifetime of the incandescent bulbs (4.4yrs), almost a billion bucks a year.
Speaking of which, the EETimes reports that Cree has produced a white LED with the efficiency of 131 lumens per watt. Your typical incandescent checks in with a measly 10-20 lumens/watt while fluorescent ups that to 50-60 lumens/watt. (of course LEDs are still on the expensive side).
You convert your car to electric, replace the heavy factory seats with lightweight performance ones, and now you have a couple of extra car seats. What to do?

“Electric cars have a saintly image but do they work in the real world?” From a Times Online article/review on electric vehicles. Pictured is the Reva G-Wiz, the same car our friend at Danny’s Contentment drives. Saintly?
Speaking of news, last week’s “big” story was the Smithsonian removing the EV-1 from display just before the release of the movie, Who Killed the Electric Car. If you really have TONS of time to kill and want to read piles of wildly divergent opinions be sure to check out the Slashdot thread.
Not to fear you still may be able to see a working EV-1 at the upcoming HybridFest in Madison, Wisconsin the 22nd of July. Of course most of the current models of hybrids will be on display, including some plug-in models.
Ener1 will be talking to investors about advancements in hybrid batteries. This is good, we like seeing lots of companies with plans for new/better batteries. Gotta get us some of dem new carbon fiber nano tech super cap batteries.
High gas prices are renewing interest in bicycles too. Zeke and I have been walking the 3.5 miles to/from work a couple times a week…trying to regain our svelte, non-winter figures. ’:^)