We are interested at Electric Race News in changing the fuel of Racing, and while we think Electric is the way to go, there are carbon neutral liquid fuels that are renewable and do not tap fossil oil resources. Quimera has made an announcement showing they’re not just about electric racing, but…
Drayson Racing Technologies is, unsurprisingly, the first team to be officially approved by the FIA for entry in the Formula E global electric championship. It was announced at the Low Carbon Racing Conference, in the UK. What is surprising is that Drayson will not be driving their own car, but…
This teaser picture was posted by Brammo on Facebook showing a part of the Empulse TTX. It is based on Empulse R (as expected) so all the positive experience Empulse R owners are giving will be carrying over to the TTX. The Empulse TTX was announced in July 2011, the…
On Tuesday (Jan 8, 2013) Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell (a.k.a. “Governor Ultrasound”) proposed to eliminate the gasoline tax, raise sales taxes, raise some other taxes, in an effort to shore up Virginia’s transportation budget. In part the causative factor is the rise of fuel efficient hybrid and electric vehicles, and…
Barry Stevens saw one of my news articles, 60 kWh Tesla Model S rated at 208 mile electric driving range by EPA, and decided to extrapolate cost of ownership figures he claims shows electric cars do not currently save money and perhaps make no financial sense. In my article I talked…
Who pays for the highway system? In the U.S. the roads are paid for, primarily, by gasoline taxes, but that’s by no means the pattern around the world for highway transportation funds. Electric vehicles do not consume gasoline, so therefore electric vehicle owners aren’t paying into the funding of the…
Several good milestones were reached in the world of Tesla Motors. The first expansion of the Supercharger network began with construction of stations on the East Coast. That’s a good milestone, however the company seems to be behind original projections for the network in California. That the lawsuit from the…
According to a news release from the Isle of Man TT, the TT ZERO race will have an additional qualifying/practice round. In November 2012 they released information for the 2013 TT Race Programme, saying that it would be largely unchanged from the 2012 program. One major change will be the…
Some recent news about Renault and Better Place Australia is reinforcing my kooky theory that Renault is distancing itself from Better Place. Specifically, several news reports are circulating that Renault is indefinitely delaying the Australian launch of the Fluence Z.E. sedan. Why? Better Place has yet to build the required…
The on-again-off-again Audi R8 e-tron project may be back on again, if the Audi enthusiast website fortitude.com is to be believed. The e-tron concept was first unveiled at the September 2009 Frankfurt Auto Show, but has undergone several revisions since. At that time it was a “true quattro” with four…
Lithium-air batteries have been one of the supposed saviors of electric vehicles, with ultra-high energy density. Some researchers at the Institute of Physical Chemistry at Justus-Liebig-University Gießen in Gießen, Germany have developed Sodium-air battery technology they say is far better than Lithium-air. The key flaw of Lithium-air batteries is, according to…
Recently Coda Automotive laid off 50 employees, some of them senior, in what they called a “rightsizing” effort. At the same time the company has sold very few cars since launching production of their electric car in March 2012. Coda hasn’t released sales figures, but a recall operation last summer…
This film (a part of GE’s Focus Forward film series) goes over a break-through in graphene supercapacitors, technology that could replace lithium-ion batteries for all sorts of gizmos. The video describes this as one of those fortuitous accidents where they were studying Graphene for one purpose, but found that it…
As arbitrary as our calendar is, this is a new year (by the way we reckon time) and, well, here’s my thoughts about what we’ll see in the coming year in electric racing. Overall I think we’ve seen great leaps over the last three years of electric racing, and I see that…
Here in California we passed a law requiring a certain percentage of automobile sales from each manufacturer to be zero emissions vehicles, in order for the manufacturer to continue doing business in California. That simple law has been twisted around in many ways until now it is a complicated mess…
