Charles Moir blog Page 4.

I want one Awesome looking electric car. What goes around, comes around, and it seems the era of electric vehicles is about to come around again. Last year a vintage car rally stopped off at my house for a tea break. Click to enlarge Although not shown here there were some veteran electric cars from pre 1905, when electric cars were quite common. One of the benefits of electric cars is that they are a lot, lot simpler than petrol or diesel driven ones. Modern electric motors can be built with just one moving part - compare that to the hundreds of components in a typical engine. I’ve seen prototype electric cars with the motors embedded into the wheel so then almost all the ‘works’ of a modern car are just gone, no central engine, no gearbox. And a large bunch of batteries replacing the fuel-tank. And with battery technology advancing at a rapid rate, we’ll all soon be driving electric cars - seriously within 10 year such cars will be commonplace. Within 20 years petrol driven cars will seems as old fashioned as the ones shown here. Audi electric car This is Audi’s second concept all-electric car, but this one is much closer to production - they promise it will be available in a couple of years 0 to 60 in under 6 seconds, 2 electric motors driving the rear wheels. I think I prefer the first concept car, below. It had 4 motors and was considerable more powerful. For the first model they were suggesting a 150 mile range, but no details are given for the newer, second generation concept. It’s less powerful so perhaps it might have a better range. The critical issues for all electric cars are the range and charging. Using a normal household supply it will take up to 10 hours to recharge this and most al-electric cars. That goes down to 2 to 3 hours using a high-power supply, so this is not the 5 minute fill-up you’re used to. Audi are suggesting they’ll offer a contact- less charger (bit like your toothbrush, only a tad more powerful) which is cute, but doesn’t alter the fundamental problem. Tesla Electric Car Talking of electric cars, the Tesla pioneered this coming revolution and remains just about the only decent electric car you can actually go out and buy today. At £90,000 not cheap, but even by the standards of the above cars it offers outstanding performance. A >200 mile range and 0-60-mph in under 4 seconds. Tesla just celebrated delivery of their 1000th production model.