Electric Vehicles 101

Announcement from www.milesev.com:

We are down to our last remaining inventory of our New 2009 ZX40ST Truck Sale.

With the new year coming upon us we need to sell the last of our new 2009 Trucks. Our new price reduction should allow us to sell the remaining 2009 trucks before we bring in our new 2012 trucks.

All vehicles have the standard equipment listed in our specifications, plus:

1.       New batteries with 18 month prorated warranty

2.       Standard Warranty – 12 month Bumper to Bumper

3.       Spray on Bed Liner

4.       Spray on Undercoating

Price for our remaining new 2009 ZX40ST Trucks is $9,900.00 per truck plus $895 freight.

Price is good for P/O’s received  by January 15^th 2012.

Miles Electric Vehicles  LLC
Dan Christy
C – 916-796-3901

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If anyone is generous enough to allow fellow EV drivers to charge up at their house there’s now an app for that.

If you have an iPhone or iPod touch you can create an account with your phone number and address so a fellow ev driver in need can get enough electrons to get home.

As of this moment, there are 5 standard plug locations in the twin cities area!

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Swiss win round-the-world electric race

A Swiss team riding a futuristic two-seater electric motorbike has won an epic 80-day round-the-world solar race that ended in Geneva on Thursday.

The Zero Race, organised by Swiss teacher Louis Palmer who in 2008 circumnavigated the globe in a solar taxi, was intended to raise awareness about climate change, mobility and renewable energy.
“We made it,” shouted Swiss globetrotter, Tobias Wuelser, team leader of the victorious Zerotracer bike punching the air while riding up the “Aisle of Flags” at the United Nations headquarters in Geneva.

“The vehicle runs; it was really amazing we didn’t have a single breakdown, there is electricity everywhere. It was a great adventure,” his teammate Frank Loaker told swissinfo.ch.

…

The race involved 80 days on the road, each day covering 500km, and two months on the high seas, as the vehicles were shipped between continents.

Palmer is already planning his next electric race: a two-week event across Europe in September 2011 with around 20 participants.

Read more: http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/news_digest/Swiss_win_round-the-world_electric_race.html?cid=29577916

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“Still, it could make its mark: if BYD clears the regulatory hurdles, its F3DM plug-in hybrid would be a frontrunner in the race to become the first production car in American showrooms from a Chinese automaker — arriving as soon as next spring, the company says.”

…

“Think of the F3DM as a Chevrolet Volt with a Wal-Mart price tag, a car with a large-capacity battery — that delivered 31 miles of uninterrupted pure-electric driving for me — as well as a gasoline engine that gives it the ability to go an additional 300 miles.

“General Motors, however, loaded up the Volt with a powerful electric motor, an iPod-like console and a luxury feel that help to justify a $41,000 price tag (before state and federal tax incentives). The F3DM — which does have an auxiliary audio input jack and a parking sensor — is expected to sell for less than $29,000. Incentives could drop the price closer to $20,000.

“My drive of the F3DM started with the 16-kilowatt-hour battery charged to 95 percent of its usable capacity. Instead of babying it to see how close I could get to the 60 miles of E.V. range BYD claims, I punished the F3DM with a succession of pedal-to-the-floor freeway merges and herky-jerky speeding and slowing, all with the air-conditioning going full tilt.

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RMI’s Project Get Ready partner cities already ahead

On the heels of President Obama’s reiteration of his 2008 goal to put more than 1 million plug-in cars on the road by 2015, Vice President Joe Biden recently announced a plan to make this commitment a reality.

Most notable is a proposal for a competitive grant program offering 30 communities up to $10 million each to become early electric-vehicle adopters and ramp up infrastructure investments.

Luckily, some U.S. cities have had a significant head start, due to initiatives like Project Get Ready and others that connect communities to put them on the EV fast track.

“Thanks to big investments by automakers and local leaders, we’ve helped drive significant advancements in EV readiness in more than a dozen cities across the U.S.,” said Matt Mattila, a Rocky Mountain Institute transportation consultant. “Now, attention is shifting towards capturing data and lessons learned from these early rollouts.”

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To: future-fuels-and-vehicles
Sent: Tue, Jan 18, 2011 10:14 pm
Subject: [future-fuels-and-vehicles] Wikipedia Purging EV Articles

Hello All,

One of Wikipedia’s greatest strengths is its open format. Anyone can edit. Unfortunately, this strength can become a weakness in the hands of unscrupulous editors. I remember that my ex-wife, a publicist, used to try to “pitch” her clients on Wikipedia by posting praise of these clients in there own Wikipedia articles and in other articles as well. Of course, she was well paid for her efforts by her clients.

I don’t know if the anti-EV forces on Wikipedia are being paid, or if they are just people who don’t like electric cars. Whatever their motivations might be, a small but determined group of Wikipedia editors is trying to eliminate nearly all articles on electric vehicles in Wikipedia. There most frequent tactic in doing this is to take an article on an EV and merge it with another article. Once merged, they dismantle the section on the EV, saying that it makes the other article too long or that the subject matter is unimportant.

This tactic recently reached its most absurd point when editors suggested that the article on the BYD 56DM EV be merged with an article on the BYD 56 gas vehicle, EVEN THOUGH NO ARTICLE ON THE GAS VEHICLE EXISTS AS OF THIS POINT!

We need to fight back to make sure EVs are represented in Wikipedia. If you’ve never edited Wikipedia, here is your chance to start. There are a number of discussions underway in which the editors mentioned above are trying to eliminate EV articles. We need to get as many people as we possibly can to contribute to these discussions to make sure EV articles are not “Blacklisted” on the world’s most frequently visited encyclopedia.

Here are links to some of the discussions currently underway:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Automobiles#Mitsubishi_i-MiEV

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To find a chargePoint charging station go to www.mychargepoint.net , choose “Find a Station” under the Drivers tab, type St. Paul, MN in the address field and hit filter.

Click on the pin displayed on the Google map and it will show you the address, the type of station, whether it is in use, and give you directions from your current location.

The same holds true for all Coulomb stations located throughout the US and Europe.

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Minnesota has it’s first real electric vehicle station that charges EVs in 20 minutes, not 8 hours. The public stations are a quick charge at 440V. A home 240V station will take 6-8 hours to recharge the LEAF while a std 120V outlet will take 14-16 hours.

Gas prices in Minnesota is practically $3.0/gal now.

Electric Charging Station

November 30, 2010 5:51 PM
(credit: CBS)
By James Schugel, WCCO-TV

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) — Minnesota is getting ready for the newest trend in cars — electric.

General Motors and Nissan Motor will be releasing their electric cars within weeks, in the auto industry’s most prominent attempt at mass-producing vehicles that shift away from petroleum.

With new cars comes the need to fill them up, and not fill them up with gas.

Minnesota’s first electric charging station just went in. It is in downtown St. Paul, inside the parking ramp at the First National Bank Building.

“We’re going to plug in the vehicle first,” said Paul Axt, whose company, ElectriCharge Mobility out of Bloomington, owns this charging station.

The pump looks dramatically different from what drivers are used to.

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Test your electric car knowledge by taking this fun electric car quiz:

http://planetgreen.discovery.com/games-quizzes/electric-car-quiz/know-your-electric-car-trivia.html

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Utilities thrilled and worried about electric cars
Published: Sunday, 21 Nov 2010 on CNBC.com

NEW YORK – The first mass-market electric cars go on sale next month, and the nation’s electric utilities couldn’t be more thrilled — or worried.

Plugged into a socket, an electric car can draw as much power as a small house. The surge in demand could knock out power to a home, or even a neighborhood. That has utilities in parts of California, Texas and North Carolina scrambling to upgrade transformers and other equipment in neighborhoods where the Nissan Leaf and Chevrolet Volt are expected to be in high demand.

Not since air conditioning spread across the country in the 1950s and 1960s has the power industry faced such a growth opportunity. Last year, Americans spent $325 billion on gasoline, and utilities would love even a small piece of that market.

The main obstacles to wide-scale use of electric cars are high cost and limited range, at least until a network of charging stations is built. But utility executives fret that difficulties keeping the lights on for the first crop of buyers_and their neighbors_could slow the growth of this new niche.

“You never get a second chance to make a first impression,” says Mike Rowand, who is in charge of electric vehicle planning at Duke Energy.

Auto executives say it’s inevitable that utilities will experience some difficulties early on. “We are all going to be a lot smarter two years from now,” says Mark Perry, director of product planning for Nissan North America.

Electric cars run on big batteries that are charged by plugging into a standard wall socket or a more powerful charging station. A combined 30,000 Nissan Leafs and Chevrolet Volts are expected to be sold over the next year. Over the next two years, Ford, Toyota and every other major automaker also plan to offer electric cars.

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EPA: Nissan Leaf Is Tops in Fuel Efficiency, Gets 99 MPG Equivalent

Nissan’s Leaf–the first mainstream, affordable all-electric car–just got the thumbs-up from the Environmental Protection Agency. Not only is it best in the midsize vehicle class for fuel efficiency, but the EPA gave the Leaf a whopping 106 miles per gallon for city driving and 92 mpg on the highway, for a combined rating of 99 mpg equivalent.

How does the EPA calculate the miles per gallon of a vehicle that doesn’t contain any fuel? Green Car Reports explains that the energy content of 1 gallon of gasoline is 33.7 kilowatt-hours, and the Leaf uses approximately 80% of its 24-kWh battery pack. The EPA put the Leaf through five-cycle tests using a number of different driving conditions and climate controls.

http://www.fastcompany.com/1704873/epa-nissan-leaf-is-tops-in-fuel-efficiency-gets-99-mpg-equivalent

The real world figures are not 100 miles/charge as I thought I read, but 73. That would be using 80% of a full battery charge. Looks like it’s close to 1 mile per 1% of full charge.

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Chris Paine the director of Who Killed The Electric Car will be at University of Minnesota, Duluth on Nov 29th and 30th.

Winter 2010 Sustainability Fair at UMD
Sustainability: The New Business As Usual

Featuring Chris Paine, Director of WHO KILLED THE ELECTRIC CAR? and the
upcoming REVENGE OF THE ELECTRIC CAR
Monday & Tuesday, November 29 & 30 at UMD

Join UMD students, faculty, staff and community members as we explore the topic of sustainability in business during our Winter Sustainability Fair on Monday & Tuesday, November 29 & 30, 2010.

Chris Paine, director of WHO KILLED THE ELECTRIC CAR? will present a lively presentation titled How many lightbulbs does it take to plug in an electric car? at Weber Music Hall on Mon. Nov. 29 at 7 pm, free and open to the public. He will then kick-off the Fair at 11:00 a.m. in

Kirby Ballroom on Tuesday, November 30 with a talk titled “”Science, change and the art of storytelling”, that will venture through the business, environmental, and societal impacts of electric cars.  Chris’ talks glide through the politics, personalities, and cold hard cash reasons for return of the electric car.  He shares his role as the filmmaker who caught GM and others destroying thousands of this “disruptive technology” in 2003.  Seven years later, he’s documenting the incredible return of electric cars for his 2011 doc “Revenge of the Electric Car”.   Chris will also include a preview of the upcoming documentary release REVENGE OF THE ELECTRIC CAR.

The Sustainability Fair continues into the afternoon, and UMD Kirby Lounge will be filled with engaging panels, presentations, and tables in the UMD Kirby Lounge.  Learn which Duluth area businesses are working on sustainability- including a panel discussion at 1:00 p.m. in KirbyLounge. At 2:00 pm, Mindy Granley, UMD Campus Sustainability Coordinator, will discuss what sustainability means to UMD’s bottom line.  Stay for an encore showing of WHO KILLED THE ELECTRIC CAR? at 3pm.  In addition, local businesses will be tabling all afternoon throughout the Kirby concourse.

Chris Paine Background
Chris Paine is the writer/director of Who Killed the Electric Car?. The
film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2006 before its release
by Sony Pictures to become one of the most successful documentaries of
the last ten years. His next documentary is Revenge of the Electric Car
due in 2011.

Previously, Chris executive produced the motorcycle racing film Faster
with Ewan McGregor and No Maps For These Territories about cyberpunk
author William Gibson.    On the entrepreneurial front, Chris co-founded
Internet Outfitters, an early player on the web and Mondo-tronics a
materials provider for the Mars Pathfinder mission.

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From an email I received from the Rocky Mountain Institute :

Some cities in America have prepared for plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) for years, but the PEV transition will soon affect much of the U.S. With the first wave of vehicles shortly upon us, initial PEV fleets will hit specific areas where, for a number of reasons, readiness and appetite is highest.

The path of the subsequent nationwide rollout of PEVs will be driven by a “chicken-and-egg” dilemma of city readiness and charging infrastructure.

Luckily, pioneering cities are helping make the roadmap to PEV readiness much clearer and shorter for those who are less prepared. It is not too late for newcomers to the game to join the next wave of PEVs by learning from the leaders how to more rapidly “get ready.”

In the report, “Electric Vehicles in America,” Roland Berger Strategy Consultants and Rocky Mountain Institute’s Project Get Ready identify which of America’s 50 largest metro areas are currently most prepared for PEVs.

Report findings were shared last week by RMI’s Matt Mattila at The Business of Plugging In conference in Detroit.

Learn how your city measures up.

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Swiss solar plane flying high in crucial test

GENEVA – An experimental solar-powered plane took off from western Switzerland on Wednesday for a 24-hour test flight — a key step in a historic effort to one day circle the globe using only energy collected from the sun.

The plane with its 207-foot (63-meter) wingspan left Payerne airfield shortly before 7 a.m. after overcoming an equipment problem that delayed a previous attempt, the Solar Impulse team said.

Clear blue skies on Wednesday allowed the prototype aircraft to soak up plenty of solar energy as it flew over the Jura mountains west of the Swiss Alps. The big question, however, was whether the plane’s 12,000 solar cells could fill up its batteries with enough energy so the plane could fly through the night.

The flight is going “extremely well,” said team co-founder Bertrand Piccard, a record-breaking balloonist whose father and grandfather also accomplished pioneering airborne and submarine feats.

“The goal of the project is to have a solar-powered plane flying day and night without fuel,” Piccard said. “This flight is crucial for the credibility of the project.”

By late afternoon, pilot Andre Borschberg had his oxygen mask on and was cruising at almost 29,500 feet (9,000 meters), having earlier dodged low-level turbulence and thermal winds that are frequent in the mountains.

Read the full story: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100707/ap_on_hi_te/eu_switzerland_solar_adventure

Find the Solar Impulse official site here

Commentary:

This is not the first nor the last electric airplane. NASA had similar planes, and you can find consumer planes here that are electric: http://www.electraflyer.com/

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A month ago the Karma by Fisker was in Minnesota, here some shots

A well-built vehicle

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The fancy and pricey Tesla roadster was in MN!

Title: Electric car turns heads in Minnesota

from: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38081493/ns/local_news-minneapolisst_paul_mn/

KARE11.com

EDEN PRAIRIE, Minn. – You could serve hot dogs to attract customers to your car dealership. Or you could do what Kurt Bublitz did on Friday: offer rides in a $109,000 electric car.

Bublitz’s dealership, EurocarsUS, recently purchased the Tesla Roadster as a marketing tool. “We think it’s kind of the wave of the future,” he said.

California-based Tesla has sold more than 1000 electric cars since its two-seat sports car went on sale in 2008. But it’s about to get some competition. By year’s end Nissan plans to release the fully electric Leaf, a compact car priced just over $25,000 -after a $7500 federal tax credit is applied. Chevrolet is also on track for a late 2010 rollout of its plug-in hybrid Volt.

“It’s like everything else,” said Bublitz, “as the technology gets adopted and so on, it will become more affordable.”

Tesla – which is planning a more affordable electric sedan for 2012 – boasts a range of 244 miles between charges for its roadster.

Full story

updated 7/3/2010 5:45:18 PM

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The Fisker Karma is a plug-in hybrid luxury sports sedan revealed on 14 January 2008 at the North American International Auto Show.  It is the first car from Fisker Automotive, a joint venture of Quantum Technologies and Fisker Coachbuild, LLC, announced on 5 September 2007.

Fisker Automotive plans to have Valmet Automotive manufacture 75-100 cars for testing in 2010 with mass production in February 2011. The car is anticipated to have a PHEV-50, 50-mile (80 km) all-electric range.

The Karma is powered by Quantum Technologies’ Q-Drive technology, an innovative petrol engine/electric motor combination; Q-Drive is a series hybrid system meaning that the engine is mated with a generator to provide an electrical connection to the motors and also recharge the batteries and as such the electric motors are the only mechanical driving force connected to the wheels.

As a factory option the Karma can be fitted with a solar paneled roof not only to aid in the recharging of its Lithium-Ion batteries but also to aid the cabin climate control system. The solar roof is capable of generating a half kilowatt-hour a day[6] and is estimated to provide up to 4 to 5 miles (6.4–8.0 km) of additional range a week assuming continuously sunny days. Additionally, the car will offer a set of solar panels for the garage/house which may charge the Karma entirely ‘off the grid’.

Although Fisker Automotive has yet to release solid statistics regarding Karma’s fuel economy, the company estimates the average driver will only have to refill the fuel tank annually provided they do not drive more than 50 miles (80 km) a day. Fisker Automotive has also suggested that when in ‘sport-hybrid’ mode the Karma will be capable of 100 miles per US gallon (2.4 l/100 km) of fuel consumed for a range of 300 miles (480 km). Despite its eco-friendly background the Karma features a 125 mph (201 km/h) top speed and is capable of reaching 60 mph (97 km/h) from a standstill in 5.8 seconds.

The Karma’s two 201 brake horsepower (204 PS) motors produce 1,300 newton metres (960 ft·lbf) of torque, more than the Bugatti Veyron at 1,250 N·m (920 ft·lbf).

In January 2009 Fisker previewed the Karma S ‘Sunset’ at the North American International Auto Show, the world’s first plug-in hybrid convertible, with a folding hardtop.

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Under-reported story: Reports that OIL is leaking from multiple locations in the seabed, thus the well is leaking oil underground into seabed sideways.

BP continues to lie and hide the true magnitude of this BP-created disaster.

How much exactly is gushing? the initial claim was of 1k , then 5k, 10k, then it was 25k barrels a day, and now it is 40k barrels. When will this stop?

There is almost no independently owned news media. The “news”, the things you are allowed to hear and not allowed to hear – are completely managed and controlled. The talking heads on TV yell at each other as if they were arguing about something, but that is for show.

The two parties depend on exactly the same sources of funding. There is no appreciable difference in policy at all.

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Racing Green Endurance is a project of Imperial College students who intend to build an electric super car with a record breaking range of up to 500km. To proof the endurance of their high-tech wonder they want to drive the 26’000km long Pan-American Highway from Argentina to Alaska. The start of the expedition is scheduled for May 2010.

Claudio von Planta, the director / cameraman of Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman’s motorbike TV series ‘Long Way Round’ and ‘Long Way Down’ will use the Racing Green Endurance event as an opportunity to film a ‘green’ version of the ‘Long Way Up’

The World’s Longest Road: The Pan-American Highway

Our project aim is to turn around the public perception of electric vehicles as slow, unattractive and of limited range. So, is there a more perfect challenge than tackling the longest road on the planet in our electric supercar?

From Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay, to the world’s southernmost city, Ushuaia, we will become the first electric car to travel the full 26,000km of the Pan American Highway!

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EVO Electric Limited (www.evo-electric.com) develops and manufactures advanced electric machines, drive systems and other integrated products for a wide range of transportation and mobile power applications. Our core competence is the development, design and integration of high torque electric motors and generators based on Axial Flux technology, an ultra efficient, low weight alternative to conventional radial flux machines. Axial Flux motors and generators are particularly relevant to hybrid and electric vehicle applications, enabling automotive OEMs and systems integrators to cut the cost, weight, size, complexity and power requirements of electric powertrains.

EVO is backed by Imperial Innovations plc (AIM: IVO) which creates, builds and invests in pioneering technologies. Imperial Innovations supports scientist-entrepreneurs in the commercialisation of their ideas and has exclusive access to scientific and technological developments coming out of Imperial College London, one of the world’s leading research institutions.

Currently EVO’s product range includes:

• Electric Motors
• Electric generators
• Electric drive systems
• Generator sets
• Custom products

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