DIY electric cars

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Want an electric car but don’t like the very few that are available if there are any available to you at all? Well you could build your own, there have been plenty of people out there that have converted there existing cars to run on electricity and there are specialist parts available to make it happen. It’s not cheap but if you do a lot of city driving the savings in fuel will soon pay off the initial outlay. Conversions have been done on all sorts of cars from Ford F100 pickups to Porsches. Generally you start by ripping out the petrol engine, tank and exhaust and replacing them with a big electric motor a controller and a heap of batteries. Things like your existing AC and power steering often get powered by a separate smaller motor and electric heaters can be bought to replace your existing heater. The cool video above is of a triumph Spitfire conversion being done at an electric car show.

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G-wiz, it’s the Reva

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The Reva is an Indian built electric car and one of the largest selling electric cars in the world. The Reva is a small 3-door hatchback measuring only 2.6 m long and with a top speed of 70km/h it is designed as a city car. Its small size and lake of pollution has won favor with London’s city council where it is exempt from London’s congestion charges. The car features a 13 kW DC motor mounted in the rear with 8 lead acid batteries under the front seats. It takes 2.5 hours to get to 80% charge or 8 hours to fully charge the Reva that gives it a range of 80klm although future use of lithium ion batteries will improve this greatly. The body of the Riva is made of colour impregnated ABS plastic that makes it dent and scratch resistant.  In some markets the Reva is sold as the Reva G-wiz and as with most electric cars has found itself a niche market for people that want a cheap neighbourhood runabout and dont really need to go far or fast on a highway.

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Think Th!nk

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The Th!nk City is a zero emission electric car which is built for European cities, capable of a top speed of 100kmh and about 200 km range the car is estimated at being three times more energy efficient than a petrol vehicle of the same size. The car is made in Aursokog in Norway by Think Global and once had Ford as their major shareholder investing over 150 million dollars into the project which got the car into production. Ford left the company in 2003 and it is now owned by Norwegian investor InSpire who are now looking to launch the 5th generation vehicle onto the market. The Th!nk project has had a chequered life, Lotus were another company involved in the early days as consultants to the project. A Swiss firm also owned the company for a short time, but now with environmental concerns a major issue world wide, the new consortium can see a profitable future for this tiny environmentally friendly vehicle.

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The GM EV1

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This week we are looking at electric cars and the most well known electric car was the GM EV1. The EV1 was the first electric car built by General Motors, it was made to address the requirement of Californian law at the time for automakers to start making zero emission cars. 800 were made from 1996, as the whole program was so expensive for GM all the cars were leased to customers instead of being sold. This proved handy for GM later on in 2003 when they recalled all the cars and crushed them thereby wiping out the expensive program. Many customers who leased the EV1 begged to purchase their cars but GM didn’t want to know about them claiming it would be too costly to keep the program going. The car also became the subject of the Doco “Who killed the electric car?” Many people believe there was a conspiracy by the fuel companies to get rid of the EV1 but in reality the car wasn’t that great, at the time it may of be seen as a car ahead of its time but looking at the advances of today’s Chevy Volt concept it perhaps was the right idea at the wrong time. Today the few remaining cars that weren’t crushed were donated and used in either museums or university labs, there are still a few used in GMs own test fleet as well.    

Who’s breathing life into the electric car?

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The Chevy Volt is a plug in hybrid electric vehicle concept that was first unveiled at the North American Auto Show in January 2007. It was soon announced that the concept would make it to production by about 2010 and GM have just released some footage of the car under development (see video above). GM prefer to call the car a electric vehicle with a range extender as the car will be powered by the electric motor and only use the onboard petrol engine to charge the batteries when needed, normally you could do this from a standard power point at home. The Volt will mark GM’s return to electric vehicle production since the demise of the ill fated EV1, in contrast the Volt’s improvements ove the EV1 include the ability to seat 4 people, longer range thanks to improved battery technology with the ability to recharge them on the road via the petrol motor and cost. The EV1 was so expensive to produce they were only available on a lease plan while the Volt is expected to be sold for less than $40k.  

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Want a Tank? then its DIY time

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Now building scale models of army stuff like tanks is not a new hobby but when you build a fully drivable half scale WW2 German tiger tiger tank you are pretty much on your own. University student Will Foster from Kettering Uni in Michigan recons he always liked building models so he asked his fraternity if he could build a tank in their yard and they agreed. The tank has 3 cyl diesel engine scavenged from a generator and a fully working gun that can shoot paint balls via compressed air from a scuba tank. He recons there is about 2000 bux worth of parts in his half scale tank but has spent a lot more on trial and error finding the right parts to make it all work.

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Japan’s new jet

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Mitsubishi Heavy Industries has just released details of a new regional passenger jet which they hope will enter service in 2013 and put Japan on the map for efficient state of the art passenger jets. The plane has already had 25 orders from All Nipon Airways totalling about 60000 million Yen and there is quiet a bit of interest world wide including reports of Vietnam Air and Emirates also very keen to sign up. With seating for between 70 and 90 people the plane is on Friday launched a project to build its first ever passenger jet, a next-generation regional airliner that aims to meet growing demand for fuel efficient planes. There are a few aircraft manufacturers around the world which are trying to get into this lucrative small jet market including Canada’s Bombardier, Brazil’s Embraer and Chinese and Russian manufacturers, but the Japanese with their track record of affordable, high quality and efficient products might just have the edge they need.

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Holden Camira – Supercar?

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One of our favorite car ads from the 80s was the Tron inspired marketing campaign for the Holden Camira. The Camira was Australia’s version of GM’s J car program and when first released was a huge success, it even won car of the year. Holden’s marketing line for the Camira was “Supercar” and the early purchasers of the Camira soon found out the only thing that the Camira had in common with a real supercar was poor reliability. The issues that dogged the first model (the JB) affected sales on the whole series, so much so that the New Zealanders refused to take the follow up JD model and imported the Japanese version instead. Some people claim the later models like the JD or JE were fantastic but you still have trouble even giving them away.

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