Entries Tagged 'electric vehicles' ↓

Shai Agassi plans to sell purely electric cars to people unwilling to pay one red cent extra for anything green. His company, Better Place (BP), will be fully set up in Israel by 2011, he says, in Denmark about six months after that, and in Australia about a year after Denmark. San Francisco’s mayor, Gavin Newsome, who has just bought a Tesla Roadster, hopes to bring Better Place cars to his city. The cars, though, need a dense network of special battery-swap and charging stations to work. San Franciscans might not want a car that can’t be driven far from home. Once a driver has passed the last electron-filling station, she can only drive 50 miles (80 km) before turning back for a refill.

Required to be Better

The Better Place car looks sensible on an island, where drivers will feel constrained by geography, not their batteries. The island must have high taxes on internal-combustion cars, a supplier of electricity willing to communicate often with the electron filling machines or their masters, and drivers who will accept a bossy electronic nanny in their car. More such islands exist in the world than one might first guess.

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by Rhona Mahony. See the EV Finder. It lists cars, trucks, motorcycles, and three-wheelers. They include new vehicles, used vehicles, and hobbyists’ conversions. There are many more electric vehicles on sale today than most people know.

See Plug In America for lots of general information and recent news about electric vehicles.

by Rhona Mahony. This Saturday, September 6, the Silicon Valley chapter of the Electric Auto Association (EAA) showed off scores of innovative, all-electric vehicles in Palo Alto, California. Companies brought their electric cars, trucks, motorcycles, mopeds, and electrically-assisted bicycles. We could also take turns driving them around a test track in the Palo Alto High School parking lot. The biggest thrill was how sleek and colorful the cars were. The designers have a terrific sense of form and color. The second thrill was that these vehicles really were silent. It was eerie. It was a joy to see them rolling and to not hear them. The lesson that I learned was that there are many, many more electric vehicles on sale now than I have been hearing about. A little digging will reveal lots of options. A good place to start: the EAA’s Web site and its monthly newsletter.
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