France to Invest Heavily on Electric Cars

France has unveiled plans to invest 1.5 billion Euros on the infrastructure for the 2 million hybrid and electric cars that it want on roads by 2020 and with this announcement, “The battle of the electric car” was launched. France is aiming to be a world leader in the energy and car industry, as reported by the Jean-Louis Borloo, the ecology minister of France, while presenting his government’s strategy to reduce CO2 emissions with the help of eco-friendly cars. He also said that no player can take the risk alone but it works if all actors take it at the same time, after being flanked by the top French car makers PSA Peugeot Citroen and Renault. The project will cover everything from industrial research, producing clean cars, making batteries and building a nation-wide network of battery-charging stations.

Earlier to this announcement, Borloo had said that France plans to invest more than 7 billion Euros i.e. around 10 billion dollars for development of freight transport by rail to reduce road traffic. These schemes are said to be part of “Green plan” for France by President Nicholas Sarkozy and it aims to reduce green house gas emissions responsible for global warming. To bring this into effect, he also announced a new carbon tax on individuals and businesses to encourage consumers to cut down on gas, oil and coal and this is supposed to come into force next year.

Currently, out of 30 million French cars on roads, only a few thousands are electric or hybrid and so major investment would be required to build two million of them. 900 million dollars out of 2.2 billion earmarked is hoped to come from a state loan due for launch next year. The money though would be mostly used for infrastructure, but buying of cars and subsidies for both buyers and makers of clean vehicles will also be funded with it. According to the plan, around a million battery-charging stations will be built by the year 2015, 90 percent of them would be in private homes but also in roadside sites and car parks. All new apartments having parking lots will have to include charging stations by 2012 so that the network grows to 4 million points by 2020, which is equivalent to two per vehicle.

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!

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.

Growing Popularity of Electric Cars will be huge

The world is changing and new technologies are coming in our lifestyle everyday and we could hear the buzz around the world regarding save earth and green eco friendly earth concept and electric cars are a part of it, and soon they will be adopted in our lifestyle for the sake of humanity and generation’s future to come ahead.

From past few 5-6 years the buzz about electric cars and Bio diesel powered cars is been huge and even countries like Israel and Denmark have already started working on this concept to have an electric vehicle in every family or house we can say.

The world will be changed with the concept of electric car mechanism because it requires less economic structure, less parts for car mechanism, and most of all it’s cheaper than available fuel powered cars. The increasing popularity of electric indicates that soon most reputed car companies around the world will launch their electric car versions in the market and that will be a precious gift for our beautiful earth and eco friendly mechanism.

Most impressive aspect of electric cars is that it is certainly going to low down the air and noise pollution ratio. And it will be a great solution for those countries which are suffering from less amount natural resources, Gas, fuel etc and totally dependent on wind and water resources.

Aside that electric cars industry will bring more employment for developing countries as well, as it will require man power and labor for part manufacturing for combustion powered vehicles and cars. And that will help those countries to stabilize the economy and growth rate as well.

There is a huge impact over the world’s economy of those countries which are blessed with natural and fuel resources and that is why they want to create pressure on other countries which are reliable on them for their fuel needs. But with the revolution of electric cars this issue will likely be solved as well, as they will not require that fuel resources from those developed powerful countries.

Electric Cars saves money and fuel

Sudden downfall in the economy of the world and rising prices of fuel worldwide making people to think about their fuel budget and expenditures, which cause them thousands of dollars every month. In that situation these days many people are planning to buy electric cars or they are getting their fuel based cars converted into an electric powered car. Aside that we often notice that cars owner get puzzled that whether electric cars really saves you money or not, but the fact is totally depending on an individual electric car owner, that how he manage to run his electric car, and other maintenance factors as well.

When people talk about purchasing new electric powered vehicle or cars they complaint that electric cars are pretty much over priced, and that is true that electric are priced a bit on higher side when they are compared to fuel or gas based car prices. One of the main reasons of electric car’s high price is that the demand and supply ratio is not that good enough because there are very few companies which are offering electric powered cars and demand is just too high. To limit the consumer rate they have to price these electric cars a bit on the higher side to control the manufacturing process.

Well, the whole discussion is all about that do electric cars really saves you money, but still they are pretty expensive to buy, then how can they be cheaper than usual gas or fuel based cars? But we should not forget that that is one time investment, as later on the fuel charges or rising gas prices you are going to save will be a benefit and charging electric cars is quite affordable and cheap as well.

So we should wait and let the buzz go around in the world for electric cars and they will get cheaper for sure and at that time buying an electric car would be the best decision, and you will save your hard earned money on fuel and gas prices.

Advantages of Electric Car and Electric car Conversion

Unstable economy and worldwide economic crisis is the result of improper use of our natural resources and fuel & diesel come under that situation. We all feel so helpless while seeing those raising prices of fuel, and we can’t even do anything about it because that is under control of our nation’s government. Well aside that there is a solution to overcome the raising prices of gasoline and fuel, and which is known as Electric cars or we can say electric powered vehicles. Electric cars are on hype these days as they are cheaper than Fuel based Cars and electricity for electric cars can be generated at your home as well, with minimal expenses.

 
Well, there are various reason and numerous advantages of electric cars that really is handy to save fuel and money as well. We have compiled some of the advantages of having an electric powered car or any other vehicle.

 
Electric cars are affordable and Inexpensive – Even though these days Electric cars are hyped up and they are on higher side of prices but still as far as they care compared with fuel powered cars, they still are pretty much affordable and inexpensive. Usually electric cars are one time investment for electric generating plant, and that will be used to charge back your electric cars and that makes it really cheaper in comparison with fuel cars.

Electric Cars Requires Low Maintenance - Electric cars are usually requiring very low maintenance and even If you do not take care of that much as you do take care of your fuel based cars still they run fine. Electric cars are charged back with electric and that really makes them on low side of maintenance. Aside that you just need to maintain its tires, engines and electric supplier etc and you’re on.

Reliable, Simple and Easy - Like fuel based cars they can stuck anywhere in no time and then it’s a complete messy situation for you, but on the other side electric cars are really easy to manage, they are reliable and simple to use as well. They can be charged with electric anywhere and that makes them highly reliable because you do not have to run around and search for Fuel and gas pump.