Hasta La Gadget!

Electric cars hold the potential to eliminate your monthly gasoline bill, but if you want to go more than 100 miles or so at this point you’d better plan to make a bunch of lengthy pit-stops along the way. There are various solutions, like the Volt‘s on-board generator or Nissan’s offer to replace your Leaf with something a little more traditional for long weekend trips into the country. But, to us, battery swapping seems like the best plan. Better Place is the leader in this space but BAIC, the Beijing Automotive Industry Holding Company, is showing off its own solution, the charmingly named C71 EV that looks like what might happen if a SAAB and a Toyota spent a crazy night together in Shanghai. It’s a $45,000 car with a 60Ah floor-mounted battery pack that can be swapped in just five minutes, each delivering 150km (93 miles) of range and can naturally be charged by more traditional means (a plug) should you not be in such a hurry. The car is said to be available sometime next year, but we’ve heard that one before.

BIAC’s C71 EV has hot-swappable battery packs and a questionable sense of style originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 10 Nov 2010 03:36:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Tesla, schmesla. This, friends, is the electric vehicle that your garage has been waiting for. Designed by North Carolina’s own Li-ion Motors, the downright stunning INIZIO is being hailed as the world’s first all American-made electric supercar, and while the Roadster is definitely peppy, it ain’t got nothing on this. Using the company’s own lithium-ion battery technology and management system, the car can purportedly cruise for up to 250 miles on electricity alone, and it can hit a top speed of 170 miles per hour without breaking a sweat. Naturally, you won’t (legally) fit more than two humans into this thing at once, but those two individuals will enjoy adjustable, leather / suede Recaro seating with heating and cooling features, an inbuilt 12-inch subwoofer, digital surround sound system, integrated navigation system, DVD player and rotational doors that raise on a 90-degree angle. Oh, and they’ll probably drool a little after racing from zero to sixty in 3.4 face-numbing seconds. The company also adds that it emits no carbon emissions, can be recharged over 2,500 times and can go from drained to rejuvenated after just eight hours on the plug. It’s expected to launch in mid-2011 with a starting price of $139,000, or just a few pennies more than the current value of the wretched Carolina Panthers franchise.

Update: Just a heads-up before you throw down for a pre-order… you may not actually ever get your vehicle. Just another one to the list, really.

Continue reading Li-ion Motors INIZIO: all-electric supercar hitting 170 mph next year, all yours for $139k

Li-ion Motors INIZIO: all-electric supercar hitting 170 mph next year, all yours for $139k originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 01 Nov 2010 20:12:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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They made it. The team from Visilab, which left way back in July, has arrived in China and will now take its place among the various other random things going on at the Shanghai World Expo. As you may or may not recall, a gaggle of autonomous orange EVs left Italy three months ago on a trip that would take them through cities like Moscow and wastelands like the Gobi Desert, all thanks to an array of laser scanners, cameras, and of course GPS. It was a 13,000km journey (8,078 miles) that was made with minimal driver intervention and, thanks to the EV-nature of the vehicles, without stopping once for gasoline — though they were limited to about four hours of travel each day before having to recharge. Now, remember when you were impressed that Google’s autonomous car managed about 1,000 miles on its own?

Driverless electric van cruises 8,000 miles from Italy to China without stopping for directions originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 29 Oct 2010 07:07:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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26,000 people can’t be wrong, right? That’s the current tally of Leaf pre-orders that Nissan has collected from US and Japanese drivers excited by its all-electric hatchback. Yesterday, the car that’s built to plug into the same wall outlet as your toaster held its official pan-European launch party — with the UK, Ireland, Netherlands, and Portugal getting the first deliveries in early 2011 — and we were on site to grab a few closeup pictures and some precious time in the driver’s seat. American drivers should look out for a new set of keys in their mailbox this December, so there’s probably no better time than now to give them a preview of what they’re getting themselves into. Jump past the break for more on the Nissan Leaf.

Continue reading Nissan Leaf launches in Europe, takes us for a drive

Nissan Leaf launches in Europe, takes us for a drive originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 26 Oct 2010 07:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Seat doesn’t have much of a presence here in the US. In fact, we’re sure 10 out of 10 ‘Mericans would mispronounce the Spanish company’s name given the chance. (It’s “SAY-at,” for the record.) And that’s totally fine, because at this point Seat largely produces generally boring VW-based hatchbacks, sedans, and vans. The Ibe concept, however, is good reason to get a little more familiar with the brand. Unveiled at the Paris Motor Show, this curvaceous coupe offers 2+2 seating and a deliciously lithe 2,425lb curb weight, doubly notable due to the batteries required to spin its entirely electric underpinnings. The heart is a 102hp motor with 148lb/ft of torque, offering a top speed of 100mph, 81 miles of range, and a 0-60 time of about 10 seconds. Okay, so that’s performance more in-line with Honda’s CR-Z than Tesla’s Roadster, but the weight and torque should make it a blast to drive — assuming it ever sees production. If it does it certainly won’t be filled with the lovely white interior pictured after the break. Imagine trying to keep that clean…

Continue reading Seat’s Ibe concept is the electric sport coupe of our dreams we’ll probably never wake up to

Seat’s Ibe concept is the electric sport coupe of our dreams we’ll probably never wake up to originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 01 Oct 2010 09:04:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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