The nation of Bhutan is seriously considering replacing all of its government-owned and -run fleet vehicles and taxis with electric vehicles. Prime Minister Tshering Tobgay is in ongoing discussions with Renault-Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn to import Nissan Leaf electric vehicles (EVs) by the handful, as well as installing charging stations throughout the grid. Tobgay has […]
Going green spans a wide range of endeavors from unusual and offbeat to unique and conservative, and not to be left out of the mix, Ford has been working on its own various environmentally-friendly projects. In its latest move, the auto maker has teamed up with Coca-Cola in a partnership to use the latter company’s […]
Facebook’s soon-to-be-opened data center in Altoona, Iowa will be 100% wind-powered, the company has announced. Electricity will be supplied by MidAmerican Energy in nearby Wellsburg, IA. It will be Facebook’s fourth proprietary data center. The wind plant is being built concurrently with the data center. Originally, MidAmerican was going to build a nuclear facility, but […]
Data centers are some of the most power-hungry pieces of infrastructure that exist today, but Microsoft has plans to make them a little greener—by powering its racks with built-in fuel cells.
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Electric vehicles are pretty great since you don’t need to hit the gas station and drop $50-$60 on a tank of gas every week (depending on how much you drive, of course), but charging times for electric vehicles are the trade-off to not paying for gas. For some EVs, it take all night to completely charge a dead car battery, but Tesla is aiming for much faster times than that.
Tesla CTO JB Straubel says that the company is attempting to cut down on recharging times for its cars down to “5 to 10 minutes,” which is almost unprecedented. Currently, Tesla’s Supercharger stations can charge a Tesla Model S battery halfway in only 30 minutes, but the company says that’s still too long.
Basically, Tesla wants to cut the time down so that it’s not any longer than the amount of time it usually takes to pump a full tank of gas in a traditional gas-guzzler. However, the challenge is optimizing the charger’s power of delivering juice to the battery fast enough without overheating the battery and frying it.
Of course, though, Straubel notes that it could be awhile before Supercharger stations can charge a Tesla Model S battery in as little as five minutes, but it seems the method is very much possible, and Tesla is looking for a way to make it happen. Of course, there’s also the super-quick battery swapping technique.
The battery swap only takes a couple of minutes, and Tesla is looking into that if drivers don’t want to wait for their battery to recharge. However, if the company can get charging times down to under 10 minutes, it will most likely completely change how we look at electric vehicles and could change the minds of many EV naysayers.
SOURCE: MIT Technology Review
Tesla targets 5-minute Supercharger recharges for Model S is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2013, SlashGear. All right reserved.
Ford is dropping the price of their new 2014 Ford Focus Electric by a whopping 10%. In what appears to be an effort to stay competitive in the electric vehicle market, Ford dropped the price of its 2014 Focus EV down to $35,200. The car previously had a sticker price of $39,200, making that a $4,000 drop in price.
In a statement from Ford, the company said that “the new starting MSRP of $35,200 keeps us competitive in the marketplace and is an important part of our commitment to provide customers with a range of electrified vehicles to choose from.” Affordability is a huge factor when it comes to buying any new car, and electric vehicles certainly can’t be a part of the exception if companies want them to fly off dealer lots, but Ford says they’re “really committed” to electric vehicles, and making lower-cost EVs is a big goal of theirs.
Car companies are getting desperate and want to sell their electric vehicles before they end up making too many and have tons of inventory on the back burner. General Motors announced plans back in May to cut the price of the Chevy Volt plug-in hybrid by as much as $10,000. This is despite the fact that GM is actually losing money on every Volt that it sells.
Nissan also dropped the cost of its 2013 Leaf by a cool $6,000, bringing its price below the $30,000 price point, which Nissan says is the lowest-priced five-passenger electric vehicle sold in the US. It doesn’t take much convincing for drivers to pick electric vehicles over gas-guzzling ones, but the price is still a huge concern for most people.
Of course, Tesla Motors is doing a decent jobs at spreading awareness of electric vehicles. The Model S definitely isn’t a cheap car, but it has convinced drivers that electric vehicles don’t have to be tiny compact cars, but also mid-sized four-door sedans that can fit the entire family.
VIA: PC Mag
2014 Ford Focus Electric gets a 10% MSRP reduction is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2013, SlashGear. All right reserved.
This certainly isn’t the first electric car rally that has occurred, but the BC2BC-2013 Rally, which took place last week, gave electric cars the opportunity to strut their stuff. Not surprisingly, the Tesla Model S dominated throughout the race, as did the Tesla Roadster, with four Tesla cars finishing in the top 5.
The race consisted of four segments and a number of checkpoints, and each segment was timed, so the overall winner was the driver who had the fastest combined time of the four segments. There were also pauses between each segment that allowed the slower cars to catch up in order to all start together again in the next segment.
In total, eight electric cars and one electric motorcycle took part in the challenge and traveled from British Columbia in Canada, to Baja, California. The event included a Tesla Roadster, a Zero S electric motorcycle, Toyota RAV4 EV, Mitsubishi i-MiEV, two Nissan Leafs, and three Tesla Model S cars.
Tesla ended up dominating the competition, mostly thanks to the Model S’s and Roadster’s long range and fast-charging batteries. The Model S can recharge in about an hour using Tesla’s proprietary Supercharging stations. As for the Nissan Leafs, they performed well, but slow charging was the bane of their existence during the race.
While all but one of the cars successfully arrived at the finish line, the journey revealed major weaknesses in the infrastructure of electric vehicle charging. Despite promises that California would be part of the West Coast Electric Highway, the CHADEMO chargers used to charge Nissan Leafs stop at the Oregon border, which resulted in one of the Leaf drivers to get stuck in California for 15 hours charging at 120 volts.
VIA: PluginCars
Tesla Motors destroys competition in 1,500-mile race is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2013, SlashGear. All right reserved.
Electric vehicles are becoming all the rage these days, and Ford is looking to make a dent in the market with their own offerings. They have a small variety of hybrid vehicles, but I ended up checking out the 2013 Fusion Energi and giving it a brief test ride around one of Ford’s test tracks at their headquarters in Dearborn, Michigan. One of the big features that the company is touting is the inclusion of gamification, which aims to encourage drivers to drive more efficiently on the road by providing a drive score.
This was my first time behind the wheel of any kind of electric vehicle, so I was a bit nervous at the start, which is odd since there was nothing to really be nervous about. It mostly came down to the fact that I wasn’t sure what to expect out of an electric vehicle, but I came to find out the car handled almost exactly like a normal car does.
However, one of the most obvious differences is that the Fusion Energi can run off of a battery, so when you start the car up, there’s no cranking of the engine or the all-too-familar whirring noise of an idling vehicle. Instead, when you start it up, you’re treated with absolute silence, making you wonder if the car even turned on. Indeed, it did, and off I went.
Handling of the Fusion Energi wasn’t all too different from a traditional gas-guzzling vehicle, although the brakes were extremely touchy – something that I find to be the case for a lot of newer cars, especially from Ford. In this case, it’s partially down to the regenerative braking in the Fusion Energi, meaning that the kinectic energy caused by braking is converted and used to power other portions of the vehicle.
As for acceleration, it was pretty superb, and the lightest touch of the gas pedal sprung me forward a few miles-per-hour for every time I applied more pressure to the gas pedal. I didn’t get it up quite to highway speeds during my drive, but I felt that the Fusion Energi would be more than a good option for daily commutes at the least.
On the inside, you have a comfy interior, and the center console includes your usual set of controls, and the touch screen up top allows you to adjust a number of settings with the tap of a finger, as well as get turn-by-turn directions and all sorts of media options. The instrument panel also includes some digital displays as well, with one that shows you how much battery you have left, as well as your mileage.
This display also gives you your drive score and brake score during your drive. You have a brake score that gives you a score out of 100% that’s based on how efficient your braking was. For instance, taking your foot off the gas, coasting, and then slowly applying the brake until you come to a gentle stop will most likely score you in the high 90% range, while stopping suddenly and creating a whiplash effect will give you a very low brake score.
The drive score is an overall score based on your driving habits. It accounts for braking, acceleration, top speed, and even interior features that use up energy, such as the air conditioning. Drivers are more likely to earn a high score for accelerating and braking gently, as well as keeping their top speed at the speed limit. However, the overall drive score is much harder than getting a good brake score. I was able to earn the best brake score out of all the other test drivers that day, but I found that getting a good overall drive score was a lot harder than I anticipated.
Essentially, Ford is encouraging drivers to drive more efficiently on the road using this clever gamification system. It’s proven that human beings love statistics and having the best score, whether that’d be through video games are other forms of activities. Adding a video game-like experience to everyday tasks makes them not only more enjoyable and engaging, but it can also make you better at these activities by attempting to do the best job you can in order to score points and level up, so to speak.
Ford says that their new Fusion Energi can go up to 620 miles on a full charge and on a full tank of gas, with a rated fuel mileage of 100 MPGe. The price is where reality sinks in, however. The Fusion Energi starts just short of $39,000, but it’s on par with its competition, with the Chevy Volt also priced in the $39,000 range. Then again, the only question you need to ask yourself is if the higher cost is worth the investment, seeing as you won’t need to fill up the gas tank as often.
2013 Ford Fusion Energi test drive: Ford does gamification is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2013, SlashGear. All right reserved.
We’re already aware of one record that was broken today, and that was the fastest overall time of the Pikes Peak Hill Climb done by Sebastien Loeb in his Peugeot Sport 208 T16, but as far as motorcycles were concerned, the fastest of the bunch ended up being an all-electric variant, beating out the next-fastest
A new world record for the fastest electric car on the planet has been set by Drayson Racing, who took a Lola B12/69 EV Le Mans race car and topped it out at a quick 204.2mph, beating the previous record of a measly 175mph that was set in 1974 by Battery Box General Electric. Last
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