Pininfarina plans a new electric car

Pininfarina, the Italian styling house best known for its shapely Ferraris and Alfa Romeos, is teaming up with French electronics manufacturer Bolloré on a new all-electric four-seater.

A couple of years ago Bolloré showed off a prototype called BlueCar (pictured), built to demonstrate its lithium metal polymer batteries, which will power the new Pininfarina car. BlueCar was styled with the help of Renault, explaining its resemblance to a Kangoo that’s swallowed a beach-ball. It’s safe to say that the new electric car will share little in the looks department with BlueCar. Perhaps it will share something with Pininfarina’s 2004 Nido city car concept (pictured below).

According to Bolloré its lithium-metal-polymer battery pack will provide a range of 250km (155 miles) and, remarkably, will be good for a 200,000km (125,000 mile) vehicle life. We don't know if this number has been plucked by assuming 800 recharge cycles at maximum range, or has been calculated from some more realistic usage pattern. If the latter, it means the batteries are more durable than many rivals.

The two companies also quote acceleration of nought to 50km/h (31mph) in 4.9 seconds and a top speed of 130km/h (just over 80mph).

The precision of those figures (4.9 seconds rather than a round five seconds) suggest that development is already at an advanced stage. Indeed, the BlueCar prototypes “passed approval tests on August 7 2007”, according to Bolleré, suggesting that Pininfarina may simply need to create a body and build the thing. And, of course, undertake the sort of shake-down programme that has been such a trauma for electric sportscar pioneer Tesla.

Deposits are due to be taken in December 2008 and the first paying customers will take delivery before the autumn of 2009, Bolleré said. It added that the car “will be sold at €500 per month” (about £360/month), indicating that it might be leased instead of (or in addition to) being sold outright.

Production plans will start with a modest 1,000 vehicles by mid-2009, limited by Bolleré’s battery manufacturing capacity. It envisages production rising to 4,000 units in 2010, 5,000 in 2011, up to 10,000 in 2012, and 15,000 in the following years.

The electric car will be built by Pininfarina and sold under its badge. Or at least that’s the plan at the moment. Auto IT wouldn’t be surprised to see a bigger marque putting some money into the project and taking all the credit, if the product is as good as it sounds. Particularly given the potential financial benefits of having a zero-emission model on your books when selling cars in Europe.

European Commission settles on 130g/km, sort of

The European Commission has finished umming and ahhing about CO2 and has finally proposed limits for carmakers trading in Europe. As expected, targets have been softened from the 120g/km originally envisaged for 2005 and delayed twice. Instead the cap is for 130g/km with "complementary measures" to trim emissions by a further 10g/km, including "efficiency improvements for car components with the highest impact on fuel consumption, such as tyres and air conditioning systems". While good for automakers, this compromise is not so good for consumers. Some tyre makers have already pointed out that lowering rolling resistance also lowers grip, and thus safety.

The EC doesn't create laws, but proposes legislation, so the measures still have to be approved by the European Parliament and EU member states.

The cap applies as an average, so for every car over the limit a maker will have to ship another car under the limit to avoid fines. Fines will be worked out by assessing the number of g/km over the average a maker is, and then applying a fine across every vehicle sold. The proposed penalty starts at €20 per g/km in 2012, €35 in 2013, €60 in 2014 and €95 in 2015. These fines don't sound like much but could really hurt. A maker selling a million cars in 2012 and missing the average by just 10g/km would be fined €200m. The UK Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders has already complained that this puts a price on CO2 for the motor industry that's much steeper than the carbon trading cost in other polluting industries.

Carmakers will be allowed to pool their efforts, so it's likely that we will see co-operative deals between makers of predominantly frugal and profligate cars. The EC warns that pooling will not exempt makers from competition law - colluding to force less powerful rivals out of the market, say, will not be any more or less illegal than before. It seems likely, however, that the proposed legislation will shift the economics of the industry and could provoke new and unexpected joint ventures and mergers. It will also incentivise makers to create electric cars, which count as zero-CO2 vehicles under the legislation. Even a minority of zeros will help to drag a bloated CO2 average down.

Low-volume makers selling fewer than 10,000 vehicles per year are not exempt but can apply for an individual target or join a pool.

Mercedes: battery swapping is so last century

Cast your mind back to Shai Agassi’s inventive, entrepreneurial plan to build a network of charging stations for electric cars. Recall the audacity of his scheme to swap the exhausted battery packs of incoming cars, so that they could glide silently on their way after mere moments spent idling in the “switch station”.

Turns out this vision is not quite as new nor as inventive as one might suppose. Mercedes-Benz was experimenting with this very technology all of, erm, 35 years ago.

In 1972, Mercedes built an electrically powered people carrier called the LE 306. Its 31kW (42hp) motor could zip it along at 70km/h (44mph), with a range of 65km (40 miles). A contemporary press release explained that the battery could be “recharged during breaks or replaced using what is known as push-through horizontal-exchange technology”. In other words, a bloke with a pair of pallet-style trolley-jack things could shove the old battery out of the vehicle while winching the new one in, horizontally. “This procedure, which to a large extent can be automated, takes no more than the time needed to fill up a vehicle’s tank,” the release added.

Fortuitously for the boffins behind the project, the 1973 oil crisis must have bumped their efforts up the priority list. According to Mercedes-Benz, a fleet of 89 prototype vehicles was built, trundling slowly through 2.9 million kilometres of tests. In 1975 the German boffins concluded that the system would be ideal for urban delivery vans clocking up less than 60 or so miles per day, but for longer distances they recommended a hybrid drive to supplement the electric motor with a diesel engine.

Of course the oil crisis had ended in 1974, and the cost of the batteries killed off any production plans.

As with the prophetically electric Lohner-Porsche, we can only wonder where Mercedes might have been today had it pressed on with battery swapping and electric people carriers.

Pedal to the metal

We loved the playful cleverness hidden down in the footwells of Nissan's two Pivo prototypes: this year's Pivo 2 features music-player-style fast-forward and stop iconography, a sidestep from the pedals featured in the earlier egg-on-a-rollerskate Pivo 1, with bold add and subtract symbology.

We're unlikely too see either option on a Nissan forecourt any time soon. There's nothing in either Pivo that couldn't be done in a production vehicle - but Nissan has said the cost of swivelling cabins would be prohibitive. Plus, of course, big car corporations tend to water down the creative exuberance in the transition from motor-show to showroom, losing many of their charming little details.

Smaller makers, by contrast, tend to be a bit more adventurous - often bringing the wow factor through to series production, in a bid to attract attention if nothing else. Look inside a recent TVR, for example. So we can only hope that Brazilian micro-sportscar maker Obvio! will bring its fabulous flip-flop style pedals to market.
And, equally, that Aptera's plus and minus pedals will survive through to customer deliveries.

Troubled Tesla chased by a Brazilian

Every hyped product faces a precipitous plummet into the dread trough of disillusionment, where after the peak of inflated expectation it’s downhill all the way as the knives come out. Lucky products then make it back up the slope of enlightenment to the plateau of productivity, where something real gets done and followers of inflated fashion go off to join the next bandwagon. That's according to claptrap from software industry analyst firm Gartner, at least.

The much-anticipated Tesla Roadster, conceived by ex-software-industry geeks, recently rocketed down into the trough, nudged over the edge when Martin Eberhard was unceremoniously booted out of the company he founded, following unwelcome delays and strategy shifts.

Never mind that the problems seem to be just the sort of teething issues all sane people would expect, the Tesla is currently filed alongside pyramid schemes in some critics’ eyes until such time as ordinary (well, rich ordinary) customers start collecting their keys. The silicon-valley software-jockeys behind Tesla should "fold-up their slide rules, tuck that pen caddy firmly into their shirt pockets, shove their no-limit American Express card into their wallets and get back into a business which they actually understand", according to one foamed-flecked armchair critic.

No doubt the Tesla will arrive in its own good time. Meanwhile Auto IT would like to know if and when the Brazilian Obvio 828E might be made available in the UK. About the size of a squashed Smart ForTwo, the Obvio promises Tesla-chasing performance for half the price.

Due to ship in the first quarter of 2009 (although if the Tesla is anything to go by, it’ll turn up a bit later), the Obvio is slated to deliver a 200 – 240 mile range on a five-hour charge, 120mph top speed and a very brisk 0-60 time of 4.5 seconds. It features roll-forward scissor doors like a Koenigsegg CC. And it boasts three-abreast seating, just like the, er, Kewet Buddy.

Batteries are listed as lead-cobalt cells from Apollo Energy Systems.

Despite the less-than-cutting-edge sound of lead-based lumps, the Obvio manages to tick a lot of boxes. We want one.

Now all it has to do is haul itself up the incline of expectation between now and 2009 - and survive the drop on the other side.

Spectrum of opinion on rapid recharging

IEEE Spectrum reports on the practicalities of charging a flat electric vehicle in 10 minutes dead. Or a dead electric vehicle in 10 minutes flat. Whichever:

“To charge a 35kWh battery in 10 minutes requires 250 kilowatts of power—five times as much as the average office building consumes at its peak. That rules out rapid charging at home. Even rapid-charge ‘filling stations’ stretch the imagination, as you’d need a megawatt power feed—generally available only at electrical substations—to simultaneously operate four power pumps. That is a stretch too far for even some staunch EV proponents. ‘I look at 10-minute charging as a gimmick because of the power requirements,’ says Andrew Burke, an EV engineering pioneer at the University of California, Davis.”

The article looks at Altair Nano, which has developed batteries capable of sucking up the necessary wattage without melting or exploding.

Altair CEO Alan Gotcher, in true nominative deterministic spirit, admits to Spectrum that this gotcha has been a problem in his own firm’s labs, but nonetheless thinks there is a future in rapid recharging.

The article goes on to discuss the merits of vehicle-to-grid electron-shuffling, in Shai Agassi style.

Worth a read.

More on the crash-tested 2008 G-Wiz

When we wrote about the G-Wiz being crash tested at 25mph the other day, we joked that GoinGreen’s image was of a car still moving forward, still squishing itself onto the wall.

Today GoinGreen has updated its imagery and it’s clear that the car was actually still moving forward. Fortunately it doesn’t keep going until it’s squashed like a bug, but does in fact bounce off with its passenger cell still happily intact.

It’s still not as reassuring as, say, a second-hand Ford Fiesta, but at least things are heading in the right direction.

Kewet Buddy electric wedge headed for UK

Via a blog called Danny’s Contentment we learn that another hopeful electric car is heading for UK streets: the Kewet Buddy. “It’s a nice little car and better than I expected it to be,” says Danny, before reporting that the little wedge-shaped runabout will likely cost £11,000. Which is quite a lot. And it hails from Norway. And it looks a little bit like a Bond Bug with an extra wheel.

Designed to seat three abreast the Buddy also has luggage-carrying capacity “designed around two cases of beer,” according to Kewet. That’s the Norwegians for you.

The upcoming Th!nk City electric vehicle also hails from Norway, of course. “The authorities in Norway have ambitious policies for the increased use of electric vehicles, including incentives offering considerable financial and time-saving benefits. This includes no taxes, no road toll, free parking and use of the bus lane,” says Kewet. “As a result we have experienced a strong increase in demand.”

We hope Ken Livingstone is paying attention – use of bus lanes sounds like a great benefit that would contribute greatly to Ken’s plans for reducing pollution in London.

Kewet claims a top speed of 80-90km/h (50-56mph) depending on battery technology - maintenance-free lead-acid batteries are offered and lithium-ion are an option for greater storage capacity. Claimed range is 50-100km (31-62 miles) for the lead lumps, or 100-150km (62-93 miles) on lithium power.

We admire Kewet’s optimism in offering a towing hook among the optional extras.