I’m probably going to seem a little Nissan-centric this month, what with their imminent big announcement August 2nd. But also because I, along with a few other Plug In America members, spent the better part of the past three days meeting with about ten of Nissan’s advanced planning team. They invited us to come to [...]
We’ll finally get to see the new Nissan August 2nd. (That’s Tokyo time, it’ll still be the 1st here.) I assume they’ll have the name finalized by then, too.
I’m kind of excited to see this car, having tested the drivetrain in the Nissan Cube. The drivability was similar to my RAV, but quicker. Since the [...]
We’ve been waiting for several months to hear this good news. Three EV pioneers, Tesla, Nissan and Ford, are receiving loans from the Department of Energy’s Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing program. Totaling $8 billion, the funds will be used to manufacture efficient vehicles and electric drive components.
In Tesla’s case, they’ll receive a total of [...]
It’s happening.
New production electric cars are being delivered at a rate of 100 per month. Teslas mostly, but the first BMW MINI E was also delivered last week, and we’ll have about 500 more of them on the road within the month.
Back in 1999, when we were all a twitter about Y2K, there were about [...]
I heard that Energy Secretary, Steven Chu, was giving the commencement address at CalTech recently, so I jumped in our solar-powered RAV and drove over to Pasadena to hear what he had to say.
Pasadena is a beautiful city, and the section of town where CalTech is located is old and very wealthy. Walking through the [...]
It’s been a long time coming, but we have finally achieved the first “cold ironing” of a tanker in the Port of Long Beach. Cold Ironing is the term for plugging a ship’s electrical system into the on-shore grid to supply power so that the ship’s giant diesel engine can be turned off while it’s [...]
BMW’s just held an event for the lessees of their MINI E at the Science Center, next to the University of Southern California, a really stellar venue when you consider the product they were showing.
I arrived at the same time as Stefano Paris, Plug In America’s documentarian, and as we walked from the parking lot, [...]
[slidepress gallery='paulscott-minie']
AC Propulsion, the San Dimas, CA, company that birthed the modern-day EV with its AC-150 drive train, was tapped by BMW last year to provide drivetrains for an initial run of 500 Minis. Dubbed the “MINI E,” these fully-electric cars are just weeks from being deployed on the streets of Southern Californai, New York, [...]
I got invited to go to Dodger Stadium this afternoon to test drive the Nissan EV. This wasn’t the final car, but the finished drivetrain in a Nissan Cube. I was assured it would be very close to the actual feel of the car though, and given the similarity of the Cube in weight to [...]
February 26, 2009 – 4:09 pm
Nissan is a first tier OEM building a pure EV in the U.S. – for sale to regular folks.
They’re going to hit the market next fall, but will target Tennessee (where they will be made) and Oregon and Sonoma County, initially. (Carlos Ghosn must like the wine up that way or something.)
Regardless, once the $7,500 [...]
February 4, 2009 – 12:41 pm
Remember the Balqon container truck I wrote about a while back, the Port of Long Beach truck that can haul 60,000 lbs and that’s starting to replace diesel spewing internal combustion trucks? Well add another link in the chain to clean our ports with a PHEV tug.
Built by a company called Foss, this tug is [...]
January 30, 2009 – 10:38 am
This is a well written story in the Pasadena Star News about how the utilities are gearing up for the coming plug-in vehicles. While many people are wringing their hands over how the grid, old and cranky as it is, will be able to handle the millions of EVs that will be on our roads [...]
January 27, 2009 – 3:10 pm
This new company, Bright Automotive, is founded by ex-GM EV1 people, and the super efficient Rocky Mountain Institute to make plug-in hybrids in Indiana.
Like Paul MacCready’s original design for the Impact that established the world’s lowest drag coefficient of .195, Bright will be building cars that “do more with less”, a philosophy MacCready was [...]
January 15, 2009 – 6:02 pm
When I was a kid in Arab, Alabama, in 1965, I discovered slot cars. They were a new phenomenon then and quickly got everyone’s attention.
They were fast as hell, sounded cool, and it only cost one penny per minute for track time.
I remember the really fast cars had “re-wound” motors, whatever that was. All I [...]
January 3, 2009 – 2:21 pm
Well, it had to happen. Lotus is making an EV. Actually, it’s a plug-in hybrid much like the Chevy Volt.
After both Tesla and Chrysler chose the Elise and Europa, respectively, for their slot car-fast EVs, it only makes sense that the car company named after a flower would make its own “flower power” speedster.
GM is [...]
December 24, 2008 – 4:33 pm
“Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A. Inc. said today that it will show a small electric concept vehicle at the Detroit auto show next month.” – Toyota Division Communications
Considering the implication of those two short lines, they were barely whispered to the press.
Toyota is going to show a Battery EV at the North American International Auto [...]
December 23, 2008 – 7:28 pm
I wrote a few months ago about the Japanese and European carmakers teaming up with Asian and Euro battery manufacturers with $200-$400 million deals to build large production facilities that will soon be cranking out high volumes of LiIon batteries for plug-in cars. Since achieving cost parity with internal combustion requires batteries to cost less [...]
December 3, 2008 – 10:58 pm
My wife, Zan, and I were recently on the Big Island, Hawaii, and while there we toured the state’s only geothermal plant. It’s located close to the town of Hilo on the island’s east side and on the flank of Kilauea, the world’s most active volcano.
This is the entire control room of the 30 megawatt facility. [...]
November 3, 2008 – 8:34 am
A couple weeks ago, I read about the Rocky Mountain Institute’s gathering of EV interests in Portland for “Smart Garage.” The list of invitees was pretty impressive with representation from, “auto manufacturers like Nissan and GM, utilities such as PG&E and Duke Energy, IBM, P&G, Wal-Mart and Google, among many others”.
When Amory Lovins gets involved, [...]
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 [...]
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, [...]
