Hybrid

BMW has fully committed itself to the battery-electric driving revolution by setting up a whole new sub-brand - BMW i - devoted to emission-free motoring. Now, the i group has released details of two concept cars that look set to become production models within a few years. The i3 concept is a fully-electric city car with an everyday driving range of around 160 km (100 miles) per charge, and the i8 is a sporty 4-seater plug-in hybrid that combines electric and petrol drive to give a good compromise between emission-free commuting and petrol-powered range and performance. Both cars make widespread use of carbon fiber-reinforced plastic (CFRP) to keep weight down, and both offer a raft of fascinating new driver assist and efficiency initiatives that seem likely to make it through to the real world. Read More

The team at Scaled Composites pulled out all the stops to realize the final design of the company’s founder and former CTO, Burt Rutan, ahead of his retirement in April earlier this year. In just four months, the Scaled Composites team went from beginning the preliminary design to the first flight of the “BiPod”, a hybrid gasoline-electric flying car that grew out of a program to develop a rapid, low-cost electric test bed using as many off-the-shelf components as possible. Read More

While there have been huge strides made in battery technology in recent times, the limited range of electric vehicles remains one of the main barriers to their general adoption. While maybe not an ideal solution, Volvo is producing a few electric test vehicles with range extenders – combustion engines that increase the effective range of the electric vehicle by effectively turning it into a hybrid. The project, which is supported by he Swedish Energy Agency and the EU, will test three different electric motor/combustion engine combinations. Read More

If you've ever watched your Parrot AR Drone power through the air and wondered what it would be like to be inside such a craft, the announcement of the Air Car project could be the answer you are looking for. The folks behind the development of the SoloTrek/Springtail Exoskeleton Flying Vehicle have revealed plans to create the world's first fuel-electric hybrid flying car. Read More

Last year in the Nürburgring 24 Hour race, Porsche's 911 GT3 R Hybrid held the lead for more than eight hours before problems unrelated to the hybrid system saw it relegated through the field. The organizer of the event thought the performance potential of the vehicle was so auspicious that for this year it crippled the rear-mounted petrol engine's performance to just 448 bhp. So Porsche built a completely new vehicle to the same design around the new regulations, lowered the weight, upped the electrical drive to the front wheels to 200 bhp and set out to run the same lap times. Not only did it achieve the same lap times, it delivered even better fuel consumption, and four hours after the start of this year's race, it hit the lead once more ... Read More

Toyota will continue the growing trend among auto makers of announcing new models and concept cars at places other than auto shows by unveiling the GRMN Sports Concept II at the Nürburgring 24-hour race this weekend. The GRMN is a lightweight, petrol-electric hybrid convertible with 295 bhp. The 245 bhp V6 is located centrally and drives the rear wheels while the front wheels are electrically-powered to complete the sports-hybrid AWD system. Read More

We first wrote about the DTV Shredder late last year - a wild, go-anywhere cross between a Segway and a powerboard, with twin tank tracks and a steering/control column to hang on to as you blast through the underbrush at frightening speed. Well, it seems like many fun extreme sports ideas, the Shredder may end up being co-opted by the military. And to that end, DTV has designed the Jackal - a hybrid-drive, weather and waterproof, militarised version of the Shredder that's fitted with twin grenade launchers and a full remote control system that allows it to operate as an unmanned ground vehicle. The Jackal can sneak silently across contested areas in fully electric drive modeand lay an explosive smackdown on hidden enemies with no risk to live soldiers. Read More

To the continued annoyance of his father Pierce, twelve-year old Nash Hoover was forever leaving his bedroom light on when he wasn't in the house. Determined to teach him the real value of wasted energy, Nash's journalist father popped the young wastrel on an exercise bike that displayed the amount of energy being produced and told him to pedal away until he managed to produce enough watts to power a standard incandescent light bulb. Then the pair had the notion of spreading the now fully-learned lesson by traveling across America in a vehicle that uses no more energy than a light bulb left on each day. Read More

This futuristic, zero emissions hovercraft concept won't be gracing our wilderness zones any time soon but it definitely merits a mention. Dubbed the "Aqua Volkswagen," the concept was created by Zhang Yuhan, a 21 year old graduate in Industrial Design at Xihua University, China. The concept is a finalist submission in the CDN China Car Awards, a competition created to reward the creativity of young designers. The brief for entrants was to create a "Chinese off-road vehicle" by Volkswagen with "go-anywhere" capabilities to tackle the vast expanse of wild countryside in China. Read More