VW premiered its spanking new EV concept, the E-Up!, at the Frankfurt Auto Show yesterday, and gave the strongest hint yet that the car will be very close to the production model available from 2013.
The E-Up! boasts acceleration to 62 mph in a fairly zippy 11.3 seconds and tops out at 84 mph, whilst its 18 kWh integrated lithium-ion batteries will enable a range of over 80 miles (see picture gallery after the jump).
Exciting new pictures of a hotly anticipated Audi electric car concept have been leaked, a week before the ‘official’ unveiling at the Frankfurt Motorshow.
The car will apparently be called the ‘e-Tron,’ and as you can see from the pictures, will take a lot of its design cues from the R8, but with a different front grille, LED headlights, wheels and rear end. Inside, the cabin is also quite different, featuring a driver-biased center console with two screens; one for the rear view camera and one showing a navigation map (see picture gallery after the jump).
A few weeks ago I met Todd Mouw with Roush Manufacturing (many of you may know the company from its work in motorsports) who was displaying a Ford F250 converted to run on propane. I talked him into letting me take it for a spin through Ft. Worth, Texas.
From there, I convinced him to let me take a liquid propane injection (LPJ) F150, model year 2007, across the country (I’m technically on vacation). I know that propane is not a new technology -it’s been used as a fuel since the 1930s- but in America, it is rarely used in vehicles outside of fleets, but is gaining momentum and can now be used in applications such as lawn mowers.
Now here are the selling points from companies such as Roush that are producing LPJ vehicles:
So, keeping good to her word, the official teaser pic is here - and while it doesn’t give away much, I have more than enough for some wild speculation. Thoughts and comments after the jump.
As the tourist trolley bus made it’s way down Penn Ave, instead of ogling the famous buildings, the tourists seemed more interested in checking out the bright yellow Smart fortwo car parked at the curb, just a few feet from me. I heard the tour guide say something about the building I work in as he stopped at the light, then I saw a middle aged husband and wife pointing at the car, and telling their kids to “Check out that cute little car!” “Wow!” exclaimed a boy of about ten, “That’s just my size!” The light turned green, they were off, and I was left standing, looking at something that I see every day in this city.
The vehicle has been developed by the Italian firms’s automotive engineering division in Brazil and features a zero-emission electric engine.
Showcasing a body made out of renewable natural fibers, it’s no wonder Fiat chose environmentally ravaged Brazil, to show of it’s futuristic green legs.
Follow the jump for another photo.
In San Francisco last week I happened to bump into a Tesla Roadster outside SF Green. The pictures are below, but I also wanted to highlight something Daryl Siry, VP of sales marketing and service for Tesla Motors said during the event.
Daryl commented that yes, $100K is a lot to pay for an electric car (he also mentioned the new Whitestar sedan would be around $70k), but he reiterated how expensive the technology is for small companies. Read the rest of this entry »
The future of transportation is in no way restricted to cars, considering that most of the world’s population gets by on some sort of bike. If you want to see what the future of individual transport might look like, take a look at the Yamaha Tesseract (above), and a slideshow of 11 other green motorcycles put together by Wired. Read the rest of this entry »
Gas 2.0
Gas 2.0 digs into the viscous world of biofuels and the fast-paced transit arena, exploring the technologies and substances that are the future of transportation.
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