Monthly Archives: October 2008

BMW MINI E electric car gets boost from AC Propulsion in San Dimas

October 27, 2008 – 5:56 pm

The web was buzzing last week with stories about BMW’s MINI E. To recap, BMW will be leasing 500 MINI Es from dealers in New York, New Jersey and Southern California starting some time early in 2009. To be considered for one of these cars, you have to go to http://www.minispace.com/en_us/projects/electric-mini-e/ and sign up, but [...]

By Paul Scott | Posted in Inside Track | Tagged , | Comments (10)

Killacycle World Record

October 26, 2008 – 4:08 am

One of our favorite guests from our shoot in Iceland, Bill Dube and his KillaCycle Team, made headlines this past week in Colorado with a new EV world speed record.
On Thursday October 23rd, 2008, Team KillaCycle set their latest drag racing world record at Bandimere Raceway. Rider Scotty Pollacheck piloted the wickedly fast all electric [...]

By Stefano Paris | Posted in Inside Track | Tagged , | Comments (0)

BMW MINI E Powered by AC Propulsion?

October 25, 2008 – 10:07 am

The automotive and green electric vehicle blogosphere has been abuzz with talk of the BMW MINI E ever since July 9th, 2008, when AutoblogGreen published the rumor that 500 of the intriguing new electric cars would be released later this year in California. Chris Paine’s docudrama “Who Killed the Electric Car” has raised awareness that [...]

By Stefano Paris | Posted in Inside Track | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (16)

GM taps LG for Volt Battery

October 23, 2008 – 7:07 pm

Lots going on with batteries now, as John O’Dell’s piece below illustrates.
GM has been saying for a while now that they had picked their supplier for the LiIon battery in the Volt, but they weren’t prepared to announce who it was. MIT spinoff A123 was a personal favorite, also Germany’s Continental was in the running, [...]

By Paul Scott | Posted in Inside Track | Tagged , | Comments (3)

Postcard From Iceland (1 of 2)

October 10, 2008 – 3:31 pm

The rumors are true. Iceland is beautiful. Sitting on the continental plates between Europe and North America, this volcanic island is home to a mere 300,000 people.
I came as a guest for Driving Sustainability, Iceland’s conference for the future of cars. They lined up an international and terrific schedule. Yet-Ming Chiang from A123 [...]

By Chris Paine | Posted in Production Diary | Tagged , , , , | Comments (3)

GM Detroit Shoot (2 of 2)

October 5, 2008 – 1:30 am

Early wakeup calls in Detroit continued as our grand tour picked up speed.
We shoot at the Tech Center campus where engineers ran tests on Volt battery packs. To our surprise, some of the industrial battery testing equipment came from Aerovironment, the company who had built the SunRaycer and Impact EV prototypes back in the early [...]

By Chris Paine | Posted in Production Diary | Tagged , , , | Comments (1)

GM Detroit Shoot (1 of 2)

October 4, 2008 – 1:35 am

General Motors invited me to Detroit to speak on a panel at its 100th anniversary along with a small group of other “outside voices”.  Since GM’s Vice Chairman, Bob Lutz planned to unveil the Chevy Volt production prototype, we decided to take our film crew.  We knew we were being pulled into GM’s PR [...]

By Chris Paine | Posted in Production Diary | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)

Welcome to Revenge of the Electric Car!

October 1, 2008 – 12:26 pm

Welcome to our blog and Chris Paine’s new film, “Revenge of the Electric Car.” (slated for Spring, 2011)!
Every week, we’ll be posting production stories, insider information, and late breaking news from the world of plug-in vehicles. We’ll be covering stories from around the world — from the auto giants to the converters to indy [...]

By P.G. Morgan | Posted in Production Diary | Tagged | Comments (9)