Hybrids and electric vehicles

City buses, streetcars, and regional rail lines all over the world run on electricity, garnered from overhead lines. Now Siemens wants to apply the same technology to long-haul trucking with its eHighway concept.

Siemens, an industrial and automotive supplier, contends that the majority of vehicle pollution comes from big diesel trucks transporting goods over many freeway and highway miles. Its eHighway would eliminate tailpipe pollution from these trucks for the majority of those miles.

On a test track in Europe, Siemens has been running trucks using its diesel-hybrid drive technology. Conductors on top of the trucks make contact with overhead … Read more

Toyota showed off its RAV4 EV, the electric version of the RAV4 compact SUV, as a concept about a year and half ago at the 2010 Los Angeles Auto Show. The wraps came off the production version of this new electric car this week, showing some speedy automobile development indeed.

More impressive is that the deal between Toyota and Tesla to develop the electric RAV4, on the heels of Toyota's decision to sell Tesla its NUMMI auto manufacturing plant, came less than two years ago. This is a car with a completely different drivetrain than that of the car on which it is based. Most model updates take longer to put into production.… Read more

Audi proved the worth of its diesel engine technology with a win at the 2006 Le Mans, breaking new ground for the legendary endurance race. This year, Audi ups the ante with two cars using hybrid diesel-electric drive systems.

The drive technology, branded by Audi as e-tron, uses a V-6 turbo-diesel engine on the rear axle, and an electric motor on the front axle. Similar to Kinetic Energy Recovery Systems (KERS) being deployed in F1 racing, the Audi R18 e-tron quattro captures braking energy in a flywheel. The car can then convert the energy of the spinning flywheel into electricity, … Read more

Automakers have endorsed a connector to charge electric vehicles in as little as 15 to 20 minutes, a technology which promises to make public charging stations more compelling.

German and U.S. automakers Audi, BMW, Chrysler, Ford, General Motors, Porsche, and Volkswagen yesterday issued a statement saying they will support the same charging interface.

Called the Combined Charging System, the standard can charge electric vehicle batteries with alternating current from a home outlet, direct current from a home outlet, or "ultra-fast" direct current from public stations. The system will be demonstrated next week at the International Electric Vehicle … Read more

Toyota will officially unveil the RAV4 EV next week, an all-electric SUV that could be an important indicator of electric vehicles sales overall.

The company earlier this week sent out a notice that it will debut the RAV4 EV on Monday May 7 at the International Electric Vehicle Symposium (EVS26) in Los Angeles, an important conference for EVs.

Toyota has shown off concept RAV4 EVs already, but important details such as price and availability have not yet been disclosed.

The all-electric SUV is the fruit of a partnership between Toyota and Tesla Motors, which is supplying the electric powertrain for … Read more

Ever since hybrids became popular, with the second generation of the Toyota Prius, the question arose of whether the fuel savings justified a hybrid car's higher price. The extra expense for a hybrid car has been called the hybrid premium.

The extra cost for a hybrid car comes from the additional equipment in the driveline. Along with the gas engine, hybrid cars have an electric propulsion motor, a high-voltage battery pack, and a power control module, this latter component determining how to feed electric power into the drive system.

Now, with many automakers offering some type of hybrid car, … Read more

Ten years from now, range anxiety for electric cars could be a thing of the past.

IBM today announced two partners for a project aimed at building a lithium air battery able to propel an electric car 500 miles. Scientists from Asahi Kasei and Central Glass with expertise in membranes and electrolyte chemistries will join IBM researchers on the initiative.

Called the Battery 500 Project, the goal is to design an "air-breathing" battery that will use oxygen from the air to drive a new type of battery chemical reaction and, in the process, deliver a big jump in … Read more

A study has found that cars with very high gas mileage are less polluting than electric vehicles charged up in coal-heavy regions.

The Union of Concerned Scientists released a report today called "State of Charge" that finds that on average plug-in cars are less polluting than gasoline-powered vehicles in the U.S. But the greenhouse gases emitted from electric vehicles depends on the sources of electricity.

The study centers on a heated discussion in auto circles. Automakers have sometimes referred to electric vehicles as "zero emissions," which is misleading because most plug-in drivers charge their cars … Read more

To a computer company like IBM, plug-in electric vehicles just look like more nodes on the network.

IBM tomorrow is expected to announce a demonstration project with Honda and California utility Pacific Gas & Electric to charge a fleet of Honda Fit EVs without disrupting the grid.

The smart-charging project will also test smartphone and Web-based apps for consumers, giving them an estimate of charge time and location of charging stations.

The power grid as a whole has the capacity to accommodate millions of plug-in vehicles, say experts. But if there's a concentration of electric cars charging at once, … Read more