What the world needs right now is a new kind of racing. Electric car racing … not in a straight line, but through the twisty bits. BMW would do well to follow Volkswagen’s lead (with their successful Jetta TDI Cup program) and create a racing series for the Mini E.
Imagine a Mini E racing series, with a dozen or so Mini E race cars piloted by celebrities. Each car would be fully outfitted with cameras fore, aft, and inside the cabin. The races would be livestreamed over the Internet. A legion of fans would follow each event.
Huge potential awaits …
Cable networks are hungry for good clean green entertainment. Hi-tech sponsors would line up for the chance to splash their logos across the flanks of the cars. Celebrities would fight tooth and nail to gain a ride. The public would clamor for this new form of interactive and environmentally-sensitive form of racing. And perhaps most importantly, engineers would gather a remarkable amount of data from each and every car in a fantastically short time frame.
To counter the argument that racing needs to be loud to win over the fans, special audio systems (with bleacher-rattling subwoofers) would be fitted to each Mini E race car. While most mechanical modifications would be prohibited in the spirit of fairness (and to hold down costs), individual teams would develop distinctive soundtracks for each vehicle. The potential for corporate sponsorship is staggering, from video game companies (such as Electronic Arts and LucasArts), through audio companies (like Kenwood, Alpine, and Kicker), and the high-tech world (think IBM, Microsoft, Apple, Google, and Oracle).
Events would take place on each coast, with the initial events in the NY/NJ and LA areas to serve as gathering points for the installed base of Mini E test drivers.
When Mini sent the news about opening up the Mini E Field Trial application this morning, I jumped right on it. The email didn’t sit in my inbox for long. I immediately applied to become a Mini-E test driver. The honor of leasing a cutting-edge full-electric Mini E is only being extended to folks that live in the NY/NJ or LA metro areas. Chalk this up as yet another reason I’m glad I live in New Jersey (just don’t bring up the topic of taxes).
While I won’t share all the secrets of the Mini E Field Trial application process, I will say that it’s a Flash-based application that eats up all available monitor real estate. Needless to say, it was pretty cool to see the silver and yellow Mini E take over my iMac’s 24-inch screen. The application was fairly exhaustive (but fun), and took roughly an hour to complete.
I have my fingers crossed that we’ll be among the 500 people chosen to field test the Mini E for a year’s time. The Mini E is, without a doubt, one of the coolest transportation developments ever. This is a research project like no other and a remarkable chance to help make history. Continue reading →
Of all the vehicles shown at SEMA 2008, PML Flightlink’s electric Ford F-150 sits proudly at the top of the hill when it comes to pure innovation. Don’t look for an engine under this F-150′s hood … the means of propulsion has been put out to the wheels, with PML Flightlink’s HI-PA Drive electric wheel motors (clad in shiny green metallic paint) nestled behind each of the conventional rims. This is four wheel drive (4WD) in its purest sense: four wheels, four permanent magnet brushless motors.
The 4WD PML Flightlink F-150 has a range of approximately 100 miles. A 40 kilowatt hour Lithium ion battery, weighing roughly 1000 pounds, is slung between the frame rails. While typical charge time is six-to-eight hours with the 110-volt charger, a fast three-phase charge can be completed in under an hour. Continue reading →
Audi pulled the cover off their shiny new plug-in hybrid A1 Sportback concept this week at the Paris Auto Show.
The five-door sub-compact four seater is fitted with a 150 horsepower (HP) 1.4 liter TFSI engine along with an electric motor, which drive the front wheels through a S Tronic dual-clutch transmission. Needless to say, this isn’t your Aunt Emma’s pokey hybrid. The A1 Sportback’s 27 HP electric motor delivers an extra 110.6 foot pounds of torque during acceleration, and can provide a very respectable range of 62 miles when driven at low speeds in full-electric mode. Leave it to Audi to build a hybrid that can both crawl and fly. The simultaneous drive provides the A1 Sportback with the ability to reach 62 miles per hour (MPH) in 7.9 seconds, with a top speed of 124 MPH.
Drill, Baby, Drill isn’t an answer. It’s a cattle call … for sheep.
When you actually look at the numbers, you’ll see that whatever oil America has untapped is but a tiny fraction of what we will ultimately need. Yes, we should increase domestic production, but only on shore. In order to quickly create jobs and energy independence, America’s focus must be on renewable sources.
The Internet revolution created a wealth of capital that is now being put to good use. I’ve had the good fortune to be in the room with many brilliant people that are working hard to make this change.
The electric utilities have enough capacity in the grid at present to recharge a growing fleet of electric cars — at night, when there is an over capacity. As the fleet increases in size, of course, we’ll need to upgrade the grid and bring on additional power sources.
That’s one of the big reasons I’m down with the Pickens Plan. We need to ramp up the production of wind power as quickly as possible to free up natural gas for use in transportation. Natural gas can be quickly and easily retrofitted into a wide range of vehicles, from city buses to F-150s, to Ford Mustangs.
While I have never advocated corn ethanol, I am a big advocate of biodiesel. Biodiesel needn’t come from a food stock. In all likelihood, our biodiesel needs will be met by distributed infrastructure of algae fuel production, in facilities that definine clean green carbon-neutral energy. Algae biodiesel plants can be built quickly and the fuel can be be delivered to the existing network of service stations without the need to build costly pipelines that might take years to construct.
In less then ten years, at least half the vehicles sold in the United States of America can be either clean diesel or electric powered, in some form, for one simple reason … the manufacturers that choose not to produce these fuel efficient vehicles will find that their market has passed them by.
We are seeing the first results of this sea change, right now. Things can, and will, change more rapidly then most folks would have ever considered.
When a company comes seemingly out of the blue in 2009 or 2010 with a technology that changes the game, it may come as a surprise to many. It won’t come as a surprise to me. Every major auto manufacturer will have an electric vehicle on the road in 2009, with real availability coming in 2010. Chrysler’s electric car announcement last week was only a harbinger of what’s to come.
This is not rocket science. It’s a question of having sufficient battery production to dramatically lower costs.
