Audi makes its R8 e-tron electric car sound like a spaceship

Electric cars are silent, and that’s a problem. Yeah, it’s a problem for pedestrians (who can’t hear them coming), but it’s a real problem for electric car owners, who want their cars to sound like the amount of money that they paid. When Audi’s R8 e-tron becomes available, that will be a lot of money, so Audi is inventing a new sound to match.

So, before watching the video below, think about this: if you were to pay slightly less than a bajillion dollars for an electric car that looks more like a spaceship than anything else that you’re ever likely to get a license to pilot, what would you want it to sound like? Got it? Cool, now go watch the video.

(Seriously, go watch it, because otherwise you’re not going to be able to mentally participate in the next part of this article, and that wouldn’t be any fun now, would it?)

Did you watch it? You better have, because that’s a damn good sound, if I do say so myself. It’s electronicsy but not overly so, and it also sounds like how you’d figure an ion spaceship drive would sound, if ion spaceship drives were to make sounds, which they don’t.

Ideally, though, you’d want to have access to the e-tron’s sounds for yourself, so that you could tweak them to suit your own personal preferences. You shouldn’t be allowed to turn them off (since otherwise those poor pedestrians would be little more than road meat), but you should be able to swap in something as good or better. Maybe not something like this, but definitely something likethis.

Via Inhabitat

DVICE

8bitfuture:

New technology could halve the cost of electric car batteries.

Startup company Envia has demonstrated electric car batteries which are able to store twice as much energy as current models. Once fully developed, the system could halve the cost of batteries - currently up to $10,000 or more.

Before the technology can be used commercially though, the developers must find a way to at least double the amount of times they can be charged and recharged, before the technology will be cost effective.

To last the life of a vehicle, they need to be able to recharge over 1,000 times and still maintain 80 percent of their original storage capacity. The company is still testing the new batteries, but after only 400 charges, they have dropped to 72 percent of capacity, Kumar says. Solving the problem could require substantial improvements to the electrodes. The cells also have to be put through several other tests of performance and safety before they’re qualified for use in vehicles.

wired:

[via @wired instagram]: ‘No flux capacitor, but it is electric.’

Sweet ride.

This is a brand-new, all-electric DeLorean

For several years, DeLorean Motor Company of Texas has been reconstituting the fruit of John Z.’s troubled loins (phrasing!). Now it’s working with electric-car startup Epic EV to put an all-electric DMC-12 into production by 2013. You know what that means: Onboard power for the Mr. Fusion.

Humble, Texas-based DeLorean Motor Company not only owns the DMC brand name, but it also maintains a huge stockpile of original, factory parts. The company’s primary business has been restoring, servicing and selling DeLorean cars and merch, but it’s also been using those parts to assemble new cars to order, using 80% original parts and 20% modern engine and suspension tech. These new models are, in effect, pro-touring versions of the original DeLorean cars.

The new car the two companies unveiled today at the International DeLorean Owners Event in Houston, Texas is no run-of-the-mill electric DeLorean conversion. It’s a development model of a car, called DMCEV, which DeLorean plans to launch into production in two years.

The companies haven’t released any specs yet, but if it’s anything like Epic EV’s Torq Roadster, it’ll get a 200 hp+, 44V/156V electric motor, powered by a 24-30 KWh lithium ion phosphate battery. Sure, it’s bit low on jiggawatts right now, but the companies have two years to get that sorted out. Though I guess they never did, or else they’d have come back to let us know.

jalopnik

hassapi:

Renault DeZir Concept Car

Gorgeous electric car concept. The interior makes me pee my pants. And the sound… oh my god, the sound. 

Chris Paine is looking for your electric car “revenge” story

It’s probably too late to make it into the upcoming Revenge of the Electric Car movie (due early next year), but the film’s producers are still interested in hearing stories about about how an electric vehicle (EV) has had its revenge in your life. 

What does EV revenge look like? It’s not a Sith-inspired bloody fight. Instead, it’s a story about how you decided to take action on your gasoline addiction problem and either converted your car to battery power or joined an EV supporters group or something similar. The Revenge blog is currently highlighting two stories – a contractor at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, TX who converted a 1974 Aztec-7 and an 18-year-old high school student who made his 1991 Geo Metro into an EV. May we also recommend reading about Andrew Angellotti (pictured), who spent some of his teenage years changing a 1988 Mazda B2200 truck to run on battery power. Some of the personal stories the Revengeteam gets will be put it up on the blog and, if you can’t be in the film, this might be a good consolation prize. 

[Source: Revenge of the Electric Car]

Autoblog Green

engineeringisawesome:

alexanderpf:

Palestinians build solar car from scratch in Hebron - The product of an environmentally friendly project for Palestinian engineering students, the car is bedecked with banks of solar panels and doesn’t manage to reach a speed much above 19mph (30kph) – but it is being lauded as a feat of creative engineering in the face of limited funds and scant resources.

“It was a complicated project and our students designed and built everything in this car from scratch,” says Dr Zahdi Salhab, director of the mechanical engineering department at Palestine Polytechnic University in Hebron.

The car, which took several months to design, is equipped with a 2bhp electric engine fed by a battery that stores energy harnessed by roof-mounted reflective solar panels.

Although the region is blessed with abundant sunshine, the car battery can also be charged using mains electricity on cloudy days.

The three students responsible for the car were part of a project developing renewable energy sources to replace the diesel, petrol or donkey power more often employed in the area. “We have almost no industry, so nearly all our pollution is from vehicles,” says Dr Salhab.

He hopes that the project will attract funding to enable another stage in development, so that the car could potentially be put to use across the West Bank. “It cost around $4,000 [£2,600] to build, but we would need double that to build a real car that will perform better, go faster, for longer and be able to drive in all conditions.”

via afghanipoppy

Porsche Revving Up All-Electric Sports Car

The electric sports car scene is heating up with Porsche‘s confirmation of a new all-electric sports car based on its Boxster. The company is conducting daily tests of three research cars to study battery systems and electric drive components.

Porsche President and CEO Michael Macht said in a statement that Porsche will “definitely be offering electric sports cars in the future,” but that the performance and cruising range must be comparable to existing sports cars. Greater efficiency and lower emissions are the company’s goals for the new vehicles.

Crunchgear

Toyota and Tesla plan to bring electric RAV4 to market in 2012 

We’d already heard that Toyota and Tesla were working on some electric vehicle prototypes, and the two companies have now come out and officially confirmed that they are, in fact, working on an electric RAV4 crossover. What’s more, Telsa says that it’s already produced one prototype vehicle and plans to deliver a fleet of them to Toyota for evaluation “within this year,” and that Toyota plans to bring the vehicle to market sometime in 2012. Details are still a bit light beyond that (including any word of a price), but it certainly sounds like this is just the beginning of more vehicles to result from the partnership — check out the praise the companies heap on each other in the press release after the break.

Engadget

smarterplanet:

By some accounts, the next 10 years will see as many as 1.6 million electric or plug-in hybrid vehicles zipping around the state, in what is shaping up to be the nation’s e-car proving ground. But in the 1990s a similar optimism hit here too, only to fizzle as gas prices plummeted and gas-guzzling SUVs took over the auto market with a vengeance. Electric Cars Drive Utilities to Meet Power Needs - TIME