Top Electric Cars in 2009

Are you researching electric cars? You are definitely not the only one! If you’re in the mood to buy an electric car, I have a five-car, must-see list. They’re all available in 2009 in America, all completely electric (no gas), none of them are simply conversions of a different company’s car, and all can go at least highway speed! I felt that these were very good qualifications, as there are too many sites out there listing concept cars and cars that won’t be distributed in America (not to mention cars that are only hybrids).

“Tesla Roadster” is a name you have probably heard already. It’s the most well known electric car out and about today. It can go from 0 to 60 in only 3.9 seconds. It also has a top off speed of an impressive 125 mph. It beats all other full electric cars in range, which is 220 miles. The biggest flaw is its pricing – 109k a pop.

There’s also a much less well known model called the NMG which is “No More Gas”. It sells for the relatively cheap price of 29,995. Not too bad when compared to other cars, but this one’s a one-seater. It can get to 45 miles, and can reach speeds of around 76 mph. It has 6 cubic feet of space, a seat, AM/FM/CD/MP3, and power windows. It runs on lithium. A 2-seater is supposed to come out later this year.

The MINI E, which is not quite for sale, rather leased this year to only a select few applicants from NY, NJ, and LA for only 850 a month. It gets up to 150m of range, and goes from 0 to 60 in 8.5 seconds. Unfortunately it doesn’t have a back seat due to the battery pack. Then again, they also have all the benefits of a green car.

Commuter Cars’ ‘The Tango’ is certainly a strange attraction, even by green car standards. George Clooney famously owns one of these tandem two-seaters. It keeps its passengers safe with its race car roll cage. Its acceleration almost matches the Tesla’s, and has a top speed above 120. Due to the thought put into the car, it takes a long time to make just a handful, and the 108k price tag is no surprise.

Though quite delayed, the Aptera 2e is due out this Fall. The very odd looking craft has been laid out to be as efficient as it possibly can, in order to properly squeeze 120 miles out of its onboard batteries. The performance is supposed to be 0-60 in less than 10 seconds, and have a top speed of 95. It’s suspected that the price will be in the mid 20ks.

Nissan Aims to produce Cheap Electric Cars

Even without the nifty bonus of government subsidies, Nissan’s Chief Executive Carlos Ghosn said that they fully intend to go through with the making of advanced batteries for full-electric cars at a competitive price to consumers. Chief Executive Ghosn spoke to a rather tiny grouping of reporters in the Chinese capital, giving an estimated timeframe of only about 3 years for the ultimately cost-cutting attempt, though he did admit that the price of oil would hugely impact their effort’s success.

Rightfully so, the executive admits that Nissan fully believes that the urge for fully electric cars is only going to keep increasing. He also admitted that by getting a head start over competition, they will likely be able to bring affordable full electric cars to consumers before others. With their various developments, the costs of producing lithium-ion batteries as well as high-powered motors and other newfangled technologies will decrease dramatically.

Despite competitors’ many scoffs and skepticism, Nissan plans to make a huge, world-wide push for battery cars (especially their own), beginning later next year. The Leaf, which is a hatchback, is planned to be available to corporate customers in Japan, Europe, and the US. While Nissan’s competitors invest in plug-in hybrids, Nissan is staying ahead of the curve by going all-out electric. Nissan even plans to release the Leaf in China by 2011 as a test-market. Unfortunately, only government agencies and other such customers in Wuhan will be able to enjoy the new bad boys.

During the first run, Nissan wants to make the Leaf’s price not only comparable to, but competitive with gas-fueled cars. This will heavily rely on government incentives for private customers, and the fact that the battery will be sold separately. They will lease out the battery, charging monthly rates that would be similar to the amount of money spent on gas per month. If gas prices were to suddenly drop, however, Nissan might find themselves suffering. But no one’s too worried about that, as the CE and many others believe that gas prices will remain high for years to come.

Nissan Plans to Recycle Electric Car Batteries

Many people are speculating that Nissan’s electric car battery recycle program may give the manufacturer an advantage over other electric car companies. If Nissan joins up with the famous Sumitomo Corp. the prices of their cars a likely to become much more affordable, which will indeed give them a leg up against competition. How exactly will it help? The trade in worth of the electric car batteries, of course! It’s definitely a smart and beneficial approach to the electric car. Not only will the environment benefit, so will costumers’ pockets! I’m willing to bet that it won’t be long before many other electric car manufacturers jump on that bandwagon.

It has been said that over the next ten years, the Ford Company plans to ‘electrify’ a large portion of their fleet. They hope to make anywhere from ten to twenty-five percent of its products (around eight-hundred-thousand to two-million cars, trucks, and SUVs) either hybrid (gas-electric) or full electric by the year 2020. Their first fully electric “Focus” is expected to be released in 2011. 2012 is expected to bring us bigger batteries and travels as far as thirty miles in electric mode.

Plug-ins aren’t that far off, either. Toyota is gearing up for a little hands on review of its plug-in prototypes a little later this year in Japan, Europe, and the US. Toyota plans to release five-hundred Prius plug-ins around January 1st, using their latest lithium-ion batteries rather than their old nickel-metal hydride currently faceted in the existing Prius.

It will mark a 3 year long endeavor by the auto company to get a realistic collection of data on the cars, and how they’ll do out in “the real world”. They want to know more realistically how the batteries will charge, how long they will last, and what kind of mileage we can expect to get. After that, engineers for the company will take the data and use it to make an even better and more widely available version.

How polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells work

Fuel cells are electro-chemical energy conversion devices which are highly efficient in converting the chemical energy derived from renewable fuel into equivalent electric energy. Significant development and research activities have been focused on the process of developing proton-exchange membrane fuel cells which have a polymer electrolyte membrane, composed of an ion exchange polymer, and is disposed between a cathode (positive electrode) and an anode (negative electrode).

The role of polymer electrolyte membrane is to provide a means for the transport of ions and for separation of the cathode and the anode compartments. More particularly, the proton-exchange membrane fuel cells traditionally have a polymer electrolyte membrane lying between two gas-diffusion electrodes, a cathode and an anode, each often containing a metal catalyst and supported by an electrically conductive material. These gas diffusion electrodes are exposed to the reactant gases, the oxidant gas and the reducing gas. At each of the two junctions or three phase boundaries, an electrochemical reaction occurs, where electrolyte polymer membrane, reactant gas and one of the two electrodes interface.

The electrochemical fuel cells occurring in case of hydrogen fuel cells during its operation at both electrodes i.e. cathode and anode are as following:
Anode: H2→2H++2e−; Cathode: ½O2+2H++2e−→H2O; Overall: H2+½O2→H2O.

During the operation of fuel cell, hydrogen permeates through the anode, interacts with metal catalyst and produces electrons and protons. The electrons are then conducted via an electrically conductive material to the cathode through an external circuit, while the protons are transferred simultaneously via an ionic route to the cathode through a polymer electrolyte membrane.

Oxygen on the other hand permeates to the catalyst sites of the cathode, gains electrons and then reacts with proton forming water. Consequently, the products of the reactions of proton-exchange membrane fuel cells are water, heat and electricity. Current is also conducted simultaneously through electronic and ionic route in the proton-exchange membrane fuel cells. Efficiency of these proton-exchange membrane fuel cells is said to be largely dependent on their ability to minimize both electronic and ionic resistivity.

An important role is played by Polymer electrolyte membranes in proton-exchange membrane fuel cells. The polymer electrolyte membrane has two main functions: (1) it acts as the electrolyte providing ionic communication between the cathode and the anode; and (2) it also serves as a separator for the two reactant gases (e.g., O2 and H2).

In other words, the polymer electrolyte membrane, while being useful as a good proton transfer membrane, must also have low permeability for the reactant gases to avoid cross-over phenomena that reduce performance of the fuel cell. This is especially important in fuel cell applications in which fuel cell are operated at elevated temperatures and the reactant gases are under pressure. If electrons are able to pass through the membrane, the fuel cell is partially or fully shorted out and the produced power is either reduced or even annulled.

Electric Auto Conversion: How do Electric Cars Work?

Not many people are aware that most of the on-road electric cars today are the “home-brew” conversion vehicles i.e. people, interested in electric cars convert their existing gasoline powered cars to electric ones in their garages and backyards. It can be done easily as there are many websites that tell you about the phenomenon like where to get the parts and how to do the whole process etc.

DC motor and a DC controller are used in the typical conversion. The people involved with the conversion decides the voltage that car will be run at, which can be anything between 96 to 192 volts. The number of batteries needed and what sort of controller and motor will be used by the car is controlled by voltage decision. A normal gasoline-powered car is the donor vehicle which acts as the platform for conversion and usual involves manual transmission. There are also lot of options available in case of battery technology. The person doing the conversion can choose from Golf-cart batteries, marine deep cycle lead acid batteries, sealed high performance batteries etc. And having made the decision about controller, motor and battery,
the conversion can commence with the following steps:

1. Engine, exhaust tank, radiator, clutch and gas tank should be removed from the donor vehicle. Some controllers contain air-cooled transistors while others have water-cooled.

2. An adapter plate should be attached to the transmission and motor should be mounted which usually requires custom mounting brackets.

3. As the electric motor usually needs a reduction gear for maximum efficiency, it can be easily created by pinning the existing manual transmission in second or third gear. Once this is done, controller should be mounted.

4. Find space and build brackets to safely hold the batteries and once done, install them. Sealed batteries offer an advantage here of getting turned on their sides and fitting themselves into all sorts of crannies and nooks.

5. Now wire the controller and the batteries to the motor with #00 gauge welding cable.

6. If there is power steering in the car, an electric motor should be wired and mounted for the power steering pump; and if there is air-conditioning then an electric motor for ac compressor should be wired up and mounted too.

7. Now comes few installations: Install an electric water heater and plumb it into existing heater core or you can use ceramic electric space heater, instead. Install vacuum pump to operate brake booster, in case car has power brakes. Install a charging system and a DC-to-DC converter in order to power the accessory battery. In order to detect the state of charge in the battery pack, you can install some volt-meter which replaces the gas gauge. Similarly, install potentiometer, after hooking them to accelerator pedal, connect it to the controller.

8. Most home-brew electric cars with DC motors use reverse gears built into the manual transmission. However, AC motors having advanced controllers simply run the motor in reverse order and hence just needs a simple switch to send a reverse signal to the controller. Some sort of reverse switch and wire to the controller, hence, needs to be installed depending on the conversion.

9. A large relay, also known as contactor, carrying hundreds of amps that is able to break 96 to 300 volts without carrying an arc needs to be installed to connect and disconnect battery pack to and from the controller. This relay is what turns the car “on” when we want to drive it.

10. The ignition switch now needs to be rewired to turn on all the new equipments including the contactor.
One all this is installed and then tested, the new electric car gets ready to be driven!

Water hybrid car scam

When everyone talked of water run cars people just couldn’t believe their eyes and eyes. In these of skyrocketing fuel, petrol and oil prices it comes as a boon if it really works. But already many people are converting their cars into hybrid cars even though some people are quite skeptical about this. This is because how could so many scientists couldn’t find out this technology during all these years.

The car runs on water when H2O is combusted in water. If a person builds this system on his own, it costs him a mere $150. Many people argue that it is extremely impossible to extract any form of energy that is powerful enough to make a car run. Some people say that it may be possible but for doing so a huge amount of water is required. Many people question if any one can run a car on water why major automobile giants are wasting their time and energy in the production of hybrid cars.

Water hybrid cars are hybrid cars are the worst polluters contrary to the advertisements. The rechargeable battery label says that it can’t be disposed off. The battery contains toxic and heavy metals that pollute ground water. The battery is heavier and weighs around 600 pounds. If a hybrid car meets with accident along the riverside, it contaminates the entire water supply that can be disastrous. 20 years from now, hybrid cars become extinct and all their batteries in the garage will be continuously leaking heavy metals into the soil.
It is true that rechargeable batteries can be recycled. But hybrid cars use batteries made of nickel metal hydride. Nickel metal hydride batteries become obsolete as all the companies are replacing them with lithium ion batteries. Sure usage of water is good, but the oxygen content in it is minimum.
The usage of hydrogen results in emission of steam. Hydrogen is extremely dangerous. Cars with high hydrogen content are a concern to mankind.
So people should think twice and take into consideration all the above-mentioned facts before coming to the conclusion that water hybrid cars is an alternate energy consumption source.

Electric Cars and their conversion kits

If someone told you that you can convert practically any gas-driven vehicle on the road, into an electrifying form, pun intended, you have to convert to a believer. And it’s really as easy as that- as switching faiths. But why electric cars?

At the turn of the century, the world started realizing, a world-in-a-world rather, that gasoline is not going to stick around for long. And even if it does, you can’t possibly be driving through fog-ridden continents. The pollution levels will go through the roof. So when the going got tough, the tough got going. Electric cars were introduced, and over the years, impacted heavily under the cover of a green eco-friendly system, and relieving people of all their gas. Although said to have been experimented upon and discovered somewhere in the early 1830s, the uncovering of oil reserves in Middle-eastern Asia- a big story beginning with the 20th century- concealed all that was thought of, or heard of, about electric engines. But the resurgence was faster than expected.

A very popular Electric car is the REVAi, produced in India, and distributed all over the world. And the reason is the economy (0.008 US cent/km), and that it runs for 50 miles on an 8-hr charge. Then there are electricity-run variants of some Porsches, some Volkswagens. This along with many prototypes and concept cars, what really gets you head over heels, is the fact that it can all be done at home. What you need is an electric conversion kit.

There are many kinds of kits, ranging from various categories- AC or DC, general or specific, custom or deluxe. After getting the registration done, and giving your car some legal airs, the easiest way to perform the conversion, is to get a kit for your particular car, in all its exactness. This snips out the extra hours, and fits into your system like a plug-n-play thing. All the tools you need, and how to use them, aren’t really much of a problem. They have a wonderful step-by-step method all laid out on an instruction manual, and with a little bit of common sense, you could have a charged-up demon awoken, in a matter of hours.

New Electric Cars in the market

The whole market of cars segment around the world is suddenly boomed up as the popularity of electric powered cars have increased on a huge level. People are looking for alternative fuel solution and that is making them turning towards electric powered cars. There is a lot more action you can notice in electric car market these days as it is all over in news channel as well. Regarding growing popularity of electric cars and huge demand from all over the world and different countries, many new electric cars companies are planning to launch their electric cars version. Companies from Germany Italy and china are more prices on this segment as they have huge market of their cars and electric car sub market will be a huge bonus for them as government would certainly like to launch electric powered cars and on the other side consumers and common people will get benefited as well.

Recently companies like Segway, GM, Tesla Motors, Its and Toyota launched their electric cars version in the market and suddenly they noticed huge demand from their customer. The reason behind this is simple, as all car owner loves to save money on their fuel budget and on the other side electric cars are pretty much affordable as well nowadays.

Well, on the other side if we notice then surely electric cars are the future as fuel resource are dying and we will have to look for alternative sources. It couldn’t be better for electric cars market as many big companies like Tesla Motors, Hero Honda, Audi etc have already started working on their electric cars plant and we all people around the world can soon expect sizzling stunning electric cars launch for sure.

 Well, if you are looking to buy an electric car, then this is the perfect time plan up your budget because according to the electric cars market many cheap electric cars companies from china are looking to launch their cars in mid 2010, and that would be an ideal time for you to invest your money on the right product.

Benefits of Hybrid Electric Cars

Hybrid Cars are based on dual car power mechanism as they can run on two alternative power sources and aside that they run on both at the same time and that increases their value even more, when they are compared to gas powered vehicles or cars. The most important aspect of hybrid cars is that they are quite affordable and require very less maintenance as well and that makes them pretty much a wise choice for any car owner.

Hybrid cars are also known as HEV which means “Hybrid Electric vehicles” or you can say Gas electric Hybrid cars, and that is the reason why they are becoming more popular day by day among many care owners. Hybrid car’s growing popularity are liked by car owner because we all want better gas or fuel mileage, and some people are concerned about eco friendly environment so they prefer electric powered cars, and in both situation hybrid cars are the best choice for these cars owners.

Some reason why hybrid cars on hype these days:-

Well people love to save money on fuel as gas prices are increasing everyday and hybrid cars are an excellent alternative for all of us, because it will save us money for sure.

Hybrid cars are pretty cheaper when it comes to maintain these cars as they require minimal monthly expenditure for basic care and maintenance and on the other side any common man can afford them to have as well.

There is a huge buzz around at the moment regarding global warming and eco friendly car mechanism, and that case hybrid cars fit perfectly in the whole scenario.

Hybrid cars are environment friendly and reduce the level noise and air pollution, which is a great cause why people should go ahead for hybrid cars.

To save our earth natural resources we have to act now and as we can see fuel, oil and natural gas resources are used every day and they are dying with every single second pass away.

How to Make or Convert Electric Cars

It sounds like a huge task or a process to follow up, but with basic knowledge about car mechanism anyone can make or convert an electric car from a gas powered electric car. It’s not really difficult to learn that how to make an electric car, because it’s all about changing your combustion part and electric chargeable batteries in your car. Aside that there are few books and step by step guides available on electric cars conversion, which exactly explains the procedure of making an electric car or converting an electric car from a gas powered one.

What exactly we need to start off with electric car conversion:-

1. A Care or any other vehicle to convert it from fuel powered to electric powered.
2. Detailed plan and design on how to make an electric car?
3. A place where you can do your electric car conversion workout or it can be a small garage or backyard space in your house.
4. A good reliable co worker with your, because it can a tough physical task to perform alone, so in that situation it will be better to have someone around you to help you lifting up tasks.
5. We need an electric car conversion kit to start off with proceeding as it will be having all the necessary tools and a detailed step by step guide with instruction follow up. It will ease up your entire procedure for electric car conversion.

 

Electric Car conversion Procedure:-

The first and far most thing you will require is to get a vehicle, care or any other truck which you would want to convert to an electric powered one.

As you have selected a vehicle to convert, now we will need around 30 batteries which can be charged with electricity and you need to manage according to your vehicle and have to see that how many batteries you can use with it.

Rest of the procedure is pretty easy to follow to convert your first electric car and it gets in details and you will not be able to grab it while learning online without pictures and diagrams. So we would recommend going through and referring with your electric car conversion kit, which will help you to follow rest of process step by step and easily.

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