A team of twenty students at the Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands entered the Bridgestone World Solar Challenge 2013, a six-day solar race across Australia’s Outback, in the new Michelin Cruiser Class. Practicality was paramount for these entries, though energy use, payload capacity, and speed counted as well. The question to answer, according to Jordy de Renet, one of Stella’s drivers, was, “Do you want it in your daily life? Would you want to take it to get groceries?”
Inside the Audi R18 e-tron Quattro race car is a special electric flywheel that works as a regenerative braking system. Dubbed the GKN Hybrid Power Gyrodrive, the system is also used in the Audi R18 road car and Porsche 911 GT3 R Hybrid. But how does a system designed for high performance sports cars help a bus?
On Wednesday the 23rd of July, a team of UNSW students successfully attempted to break a 26 year old world speed record for the fastest electric vehicle over 500 kilometres. The team broke the record, but is still waiting for final approval from the world Motorsport governing body, FIA. The car averaged a speed of more than 100 km/h during the attempt, beating the previous world record of 73 km/h.
Well, this is one way to get things done. Businessman Zong Yi has set up China's first between-city electric-car charging route, Caixin Online reports. The route winds from Beijing to Guangzhou, covers 3,570 miles, and includes 20 charging stations Zong paid for himself.
The Porsche 918 can make a claim that other supercars can’t: It’s a blueprint for what everyday sports cars will be like in the next few years. Unlike models in the past, they won’t have huge engines with bad fuel economy. Instead, they will rely on electric motors and quick-charging batteries supplemented by smaller gas engines.
It may be another decade before most ordinary folks use self-driving cars to get around town. But some of us may have already seen them around town, at least: Over the past few years, car companies and other research groups have begun testing their autonomous car technology on public roads, in normal traffic. Here, we've collected news reports of public tests of self-driving cars. Germany's Autobahn and California's Pacific Coast Highway are just a couple of the world's roads that robot cars have traversed.
Should automakers be boasting of their environmental credentials? Or should they talk in a language people understand--money--and highlight the economic benefits? Maybe it's all about silence and refinement? Rarely mentioned is just how fun electric cars can be to drive. So we've taken a primal, quantitative measure of driving fun--the 0-100 km/h acceleration sprint--to rank each battery-electric vehicle on sale today, or on sale soon. At the very least, it'll serve as a handy list of which cars not to try and beat from the next green light...
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