Fifty years ago, engineers at Chevy were playing around with a Corvair Monza sport sedan they had turned into an all-electric test bed vehicle. Christened the “Electrovair II” it used a 532-volt silver-zinc battery pack array to power a 115 horsepower AC-induction motor, allowing the car to “accelerate as quickly as a standard Corvair, even with a […]
Read more "The Electric Corvair You Couldn’t Buy"Industrial engineer Marc Barceló couldn’t find an electric motorcycle he liked. So he decided to build one. Sure, his experience in the technical department at Tramontana (builder and developer of supercars) would come in handy. But even more helpful was the fortuitous nature of his place of birth: Catalonia, home of Spain’s motorcycle industry1. Bultaco, […]
Read more "Catalan Contender"When I ran across a Honda Clarity tucked quietly away in the upper South Hall at CES last January, I was introduced to Honda’s concept of generating hydrogen on-site in a stand-alone fueling station. It turns out that Honda had more than a Fuel Cell Electric Vehicle in mind with the Clarity. Just announced are […]
Read more "3X the Clarity"The company Bob Lutz likes to pick on is at it again. First they gave us a little expensive Roadster that famous people drove around Beverly Hills. Then the luxury 4-door Model S and its insane variants. Recently a fortunate few began driving an SUV called X. And now this. The Model 3. The electric car for the rest […]
Read more "@TeslaMotors and the little-known barely-anticipated Model 3 Launch"On October 8, 1899, Hawaii’s first automobile rolled through the streets of Honolulu. According to a report in the Hawaiian Gazette1 it achieved speeds of up to 14 miles per hour and was found to “excite no undue attention from horses.” Whether or not this was because of the vehicle’s lack of clattering gasoline engine […]
Read more "EVs in PARADISE"Appropriately, the inventor of the MICRO scooter, Wim Ouboter, is tackling electric vehicle transport not just by thinking small, but by thinking tiny. As in Isetta microcar tiny. The Isetta was (is) a vehicle that cannot be ignored, no matter how diminutive its stature. This little gnat of a vehicle is super-odd, super-hard to miss, […]
Read more "Tiny is Huge"Electric scooter. Vintage styling. The double wow. In Barcelona, you can rent an electric scooter that looks like a vintage Vespa. It’s called YUGO. No, this retro-fun scooter isn’t named after a former Communist bloc nation like its defunct automotive cousin. It’s a straight-forward combination of YOU + GO. And yes, you really can GO. […]
Read more "The Double Wow"Jacques pressed the accelerator of the little plastic-bodied Citroën to the floor. The vehicle shot forward with a clattering roar, its 602 cc two-cylinder petrol engine straining under the weight of his clients. They had insisted on visiting the cliffs near the end of beach before sunset, and Jacques had the only vehicle in the […]
Read more "Chameau électrique"Concept vehicles create attention and inspire the mind with “what if.” Citroën has set out to do this in advance of the Geneva Motor Show by teasing the automotive world with the E-Tense electric sports car concept. By building on its Formula E (all-electric) racing experience, the venerable French automobile manufacturer is electrifying discussion about […]
Read more "SPARK THE IMAGINATION"