Automotive

Brigham Young University (BYU) students are celebrating after setting a new land speed record for an electric car in the “E1” (under 1,100 lbs/499 kg) class. The record of 155.8 mph (250.7 km/h) set by the “Electric Blue” streamliner at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah was averaged over the two required qualifying runs, one of which saw the car reach a speed of 175 mph (281.6 km/h). The record marks the end of a seven year quest by BYU students led by Perry Carter who, having just retired as an associate professor, gets to bow out on top. Read More

UPDATED: NEW VIDEO Nissan is building two Juke-R concept cars. The tiny rocketships will be comprised of the all-wheel-drive drive-train and 480 bhp 3.8-liter twin-turbo V6 engine from the Nissan GT-R supercar wedged into Nissan's diminutive crossover city car. The cars are being built by RML for Nissan Technical Centre for Europe (NTC-E) with a view to testing the “public’s reaction to a seriously sporty Juke.” The performance of the tiny super-city car is not yet known, but given the horsepower and dimensions of the vehicle, it will no doubt be one of the fastest accelerating roadcars in existence. There's also just a hint that should reaction be positive, it just might eventuate as a production model. Read More

The 16th Annual Supercharging conference was held last week at the Technical University of Dresden in Germany where many interesting new developments in the critically important field of forced induction were shown. Most motor vehicles only use maximum power for a small fraction of their time on the road, and with downsizing of engines now standard practice for the auto industry, supercharging is an ideal way of providing that power boost from a small engine. We've written previously about Controlled Power Technologies' (CPT) 12 volt electric supercharger, but it now has a 48 volt version which uses 7 kW of electrical power and delivers (an extra) six to ten times that power at the crankshaft for overtaking and steep hills. Read More

BMW is set to introduce its third production hybrid following in the tire treads of the ActiveHybrid 7 and soon-to-cease-production ActiveHybrid X6. The new ActiveHybrid 5 is BMW’s first 5 Series hybrid and is based on the company’s 535i sedan. It combines that car’s 225 kW/306 hp 3.0-liter TwinPower Turbo inline six-cylinder engine with a 40 kW/55 hp electric motor for a combined output of 250 kW/340 hp. This allows the ActiveHybrid 5 to go from zero to 100 km/h (62 mph) in 5.9 seconds and limits fuel consumption to between 6.4 and 7 liters per 100 km (44 to 40 US mpg). Read More

With frontal, roof-mounted and rear-window airbags you'd be forgiven for thinking that there couldn't possibly be anywhere else in a car automobile manufacturers could cram one. But you'd be wrong. General Motors (GM) has just announced it will introduce the industry's first front center airbag in selected vehicles in 2013. The latest airbag addition is designed to protect drivers and front passengers in the event of side impact crashes. Read More

Martin Bacon and his team of Teesdale Conservation Vounteers from Durham, England, must have drank copious amounts of coffee when developing this project. It was definitely a sacrifice worth making though. Their aptly named Coffee Car rose to the challenge and broke the world land speed record for cars powered by organic waste, hitting an average speed of 66.5 mph over two runs on September 14. Read More

The Morgan Aero SuperSports is a pretty impressive automobile, even in its standard form. It has a lightweight aluminum body, a hardwood and leather cockpit and a top speed of 170 mph (273 km/h). It also has a 4.8 liter BMW V8 engine, although in a project currently being undertaken by the British automaker and Zytek Automotive, that power plant will be replaced with a 70kW electric motor. The result will be known as the Electric Morgan +E. Although only two of them will be made, the company says that if the experience proves favorable, "further developments" could result. Read More

Although battery-powered cars may no longer be considered quirky and weird, automobiles propelled by compressed air are still perhaps thoughts of as a little ... fringy. The MDI Air Car looked promising, although development of the vehicle seems to have been at least temporarily suspended. Toyota Industries Corporation, however, recently brought some attention to the technology. On September 9th, its one-off KU:RIN set a new speed record for compressed air cars, at 129.2 km/h (80.3 mph). Read More

While it still may be some time before all American EV drivers can expect to find charging stations located close to wherever they’re going, things are at least heading more and more in that direction. Late last week, charging network developer 350Green announced that it will be adding 400 new stations to its existing U.S. network, as part of a plan to bring the total number up to 1,000. Read More