As Koenigsegg NLV, electro-solar who wants to advance technology

A bold gamble

I met Christian Koenigsegg (the left against) for the first time at the Paris salon in October 2000. This was before the first version of his car, and I asked him with a certain nonchalance if he wanted to compete with Ferrari. He answered me simply that it was not his goal, he wanted to do much better. Faster and more powerful. Coming from a stranger who did not 30 years old, I did not give much value to these words. Some years later however, I would travel to the obvious. The Koenigsegg is a unique car, more powerful than any Ferrari or Lamborghini. So if this man decides to make an electric car ...

Surprise, however, Mr. Koenigsegg was not alone in Geneva to give the press conference presentation of this new electric car. He was accompanied by a man named Nunzio La Vecchia (the right against), and he is responsible for this car. Totally unrelated to the automotive industry, Mr. La Vecchia leads a high-tech SMEs (NLV Solar AG, located in the suburbs of Munich) has developed an ultra-efficient solar cell, the Pyradian and several technologies, in particular, in storage of electricity. He thought that a car in high performance would be a good showcase for its products and has taken the initiative to propose a partnership with Mr. Koenigsegg.

The result is below the car against which currently is not even one. It was a scale model which was 1 exposed to Geneva, but the technical architecture and design are fixed. It's a sedan about the size of an Audi A6, just a little wider, but with only 2 doors. These are large butterfly doors, and they allow easy access to both front and seats. Called As this is a self propulsion driven by 2 electric motors with a combined 512 hp with 715 Nm of torque. The car is expected to reach 275 km / h and accelerate from 0 to 100 km / h in 5.2 s.

But alongside this, As 2 has unique characteristics. The first is to have a photovoltaic body. Whole body photovoltaic effect is! This is not the painting, but a film placed on the body. Transparent, it could put a limit on the windows. The company said Mr La Vecchia be reached conversion efficiencies of 40% in the laboratory (the conversion efficiency of solar energy into usable electrical energy), but the As, the yield would be between 15 and 20%, which is already excellent, since silicon cell moncristallin quality is 16%.

Side storage of electricity then, Mr. La Vecchia retained supercapacitors, more resistant to wear than any battery. It can load and unload thousands of times without any decrease in their performance, they also agree very easily very high load or discharge. But all that we already knew, the surprise is in their mass density. Mr. La Vecchia told us the exceptional value of 160 Wh / kg which is higher than 20% of the best Lithium-Ion. Clearly, the store As more power in less weight than if it had the best batteries on the market!

In 2 words: it promises. Widely in carbon fiber, with great finesse aerodynamics (Cd of 0.27) and a reduced frontal area (about 2 square meters), the NLV Koenigsegg will offer the best technology in almost all areas, although of course recovered energy in its body will be insufficient to power never alone. The manufacturer provides a mass of 1780 kg, and there are 285 mm tire width at the rear, as we believe that the body will generate probably never more than 500 watts ... NLV As the Koenigsegg is nevertheless a fantastic project, and it is one of very few cars that can say it is advancing knowledge and industry. The concept is daring, but we do not recommend betting against Christian Koenigsegg.

The Yellow Peril, the first jet.

Two new electric car made in one go! The small British company NICE Car Company (No Internal Combustion Engine) is strong, very strong, because it is not about concepts. Cars are visible in the month of July show in London, and may be ordered on the stand, they are priced, approved and guaranteed 2 years. But first, pompously named MyCar is not really a car. It is a cart, strict 2-seater. Its performance also leaves no doubt about the subject. 64 km / h, and announced independence 64 km urban route, this is not a vehicle with which to go on vacation.

On a tubular chassis with body parts in fiberglass, the motor is direct current (DC, not AC), and batteries are to lead. This means that it is not modern ... Design against the east, it is also signed Giugiaro, the great Italian designer. So the highlight of the car, with its price of £ 8995, approximately € 11,400. Almost the same price as a Smart gasoline, but from a manufacturer that is far from the R & D budget of Daimler (the German group which owns Smart). The finish is less good, more chiche equipment, and generally less sophisticated design, and the trunk is much smaller.

However, for those who only short-haul urban MyCar this is a solution not to be ignored. With vivid colors, the car has a certain sympathy. Made in Hong Kong, the first deliveries are expected this fall, and the manufacturer has already taken the time to establish a list of options. Alloy rims 15 inches, leather, glass roof, heated seats ... But nothing is yet planned for the distribution of this model on the continent for the Ze-0 rather than (at least officially). Second model, the Ze-0 is not a novelty in itself, we had already seen several years ago.

In contrast to the MyCar which is a 100% original car, the Ze-0 (against this) is a Changhe. A car available in China with a gasoline engine, and there is also marketed under the name Suzuki Ideal, then it is sold under the name of Effa M100 in Brazil. The novelty is that gasoline engines were dropped, the Changhe sold in the United Kingdom is available with electric engines, and under the strange name of Ze-0. Funny name, funny car, as we are not accustomed to see as it is taller than wide.

Compared with a Peugeot in 1007, only European with a somewhat physical approach, the Ze-0 is 17 cm shorter, narrower 8 cm and 5 cm high. Proportions that were dictated by the desire to have a very handy car in town, but still habitable. The car is quite successful in the genre, it also bears also the signature of a great designer Italian Bertone. But mechanical, is not there a little exciting, the Ze-0 uses lead acid batteries. AGM of lead-gel, about what is best in lead batteries, but ... This remains the lead!
Autonomy is limited to 100 km and the speed is advertised at 88 km / h. This will be difficult to leave the city. Like MyCar, the first deliveries of the Ze-0 is scheduled for September, and its price is £ 13,995, which is € 17,730. It had long been talk of a Chinese invasion of small electrical appliances. The idea took a lot of fantasy, but these 2 small cars prove that it is not impossible. This is not for now. It is unfortunate, for quidam who runs the show in London without thinking, to see that the 2 cars that have the worst interior finishing is these electrical 2. These cars were unsaleable 10 years ago. But today, with gasoline prices, environmental concerns much more now, and a tax incentive (bonus-malus), these small cars, although not taking the car comparison with any essence of the same rate, have certainly a market. A small market but that will only grow.

Urban Riversimple Car: A means of transport rather than a nice car

As expected, the British company Riversimple presented yesterday at London's small hydrogen car, yet named Urban car. It has not yet intended to be marketed directly to individuals, but formal lease at a rate of 200 pounds per month, or about 235 euros.
The model Riversimple is a small two-seater that might seem out of an animated film for children. Lightweight (about 350 kilograms), it uses a fuel cell to 6 kilowatts finally allowing a range of nearly 400 miles to 1 kilogram of hydrogen. It also uses the braking energy recovered during phases of acceleration.

"In town, the car of the future will be electric. A fuel cell fuel supply electricity. It will be available for rent. "From when this prediction? From the 1960s ... The Egg electrical, Paul Arzens famous creator (the term designer did not yet exist), was the forerunner and rolled ... in 1942. 

This is word for word the leitmotiv of the British company Riversimple, just to show the Urban Car, a tiny city car which offers only two seats. Its weight is 350 kg and the electric motor is provided by four engines installed in each wheel. This architecture differs completely from that of a car engine powered with its impressive powertrain under the hood, its gearbox and transmission mechanism of the movement to two or four wheels. But it is ideally suited to an electric vehicle and is often adopted in the current studies, such as french Forewheel project, supported by the ADEME.

Electricity is not provided by batteries but by a fuel cell that uses fuel as liquid hydrogen (and the oxygen of the air as oxidizer). The exhaust pipe, therefore the water and not carbon dioxide. Often mentioned, the principle of hydrogen-powered electric motor raises the question of production of that gas to be produced (eg with water) using a source of energy, eg oil or a nuclear fuel. The advantage of hydrogen is to establish an energy more easily stored as electricity itself.

Car in the Urban, it is temporarily stored in super-capacity, ie large capacitors that can provide great powers during a time short, what can not do a battery, but not can not long retain the electricity that a battery is very good. 

With a tank of hydrogen only a liter and a battery providing a power of 6 kilowatts (about 8.2 horses Din), the machine has an autonomy of 390 km and provide a speed of 80 km / h. Acceleration is quite honorable (as on all electric cars) and the Urban Car goes from 0 to 50 km / h in under six seconds.

As futurists imagined the 1960s, the electric car is not for sale. It will take the rent and it should cost 230 euros per month, a rate sufficient deterrent but incorporates all maintenance and fuel. The vehicle was introduced in the streets of London and its developers expect to raise enough funds to make a dozen prototypes to be tested in several British cities before marketing in 2013. 

Around Spowers Hugo, the team includes Sebastian Piech, a former Porsche and rear-grand-son of the founder, Ferdinand Porsche. The young entrepreneur also cites his grandfather, who wanted him as "a means of personal transportation affordable.
Interestingly, the design of the vehicle was carried out under open-source license. other manufacturers can follow to create their own version of the Urban as hydrogen.

Pilot project by Japan to develop the next generation electric car batteries

The biggest brier for electric car industries at preset the suitable long mileage energy supply through batteries, in other words the unavailability of high capacity batteries. In this circumstances, Five carmakers, including Toyota and Nissan, seven manufacturers of electric car batteries and ten universities and research institutes [1] will engage in joint development of next generation electric car batteries. It is a seven-year project funded by METI through NEDO, with a total budget of approximately 21 billion yen (about 155 million euros). This project for electric car batteries aims to triple the autonomy of the electric car by 2020. On the international market for electric car battery, competition is becoming stronger as a result of increasing demands for action against global warming. Given this situation, the Government wishes to strengthen the competitiveness of Japanese electric car companies by inviting them to participate in this project. In the research center will be established within the University of Kyoto, about fifty people from the participating agencies, will work full time to develop basic technologies needed for their common goal for next generation electric car batteries.

Autonomy current electric cars equipped with lithium-ion batteries is 100 km for vehicles of average size and 150 km for vehicles of small size, which is significantly lower than that of petrol vehicles whose autonomy is over 500 km. This project will aim to develop technologies for electric car that are expected to accumulate three times more electricity per kilogram of battery. More specifically, it will study the mechanisms of degradation of materials using the analytical facilities of the most advanced in Japan as "Spring-8", large synchrotron located in Hyogo, and observe in real time the movement of ions lithium.

Such basic research requires a significant research budget and R & D, long time. Participating companies, which are currently R & D each for their part, felt that participation in the project would be a more efficient and cheaper to reach their goal.

Using data from the research, the best materials will be designed and used to produce a prototype lithium-ion battery small before 2015. In parallel, research on another type of battery should achieve an autonomy of 500 km after 2020. The technologies developed will be applied to other products, such as an accumulator of electricity installed in the houses.

[1] Participants in the project:
- 5 car manufacturers: Toyota, Nissan, Mitsubishi Motors, Honda R & D, Toyota Central R & D Labs
- 7 organizations related to the battery: GS Yuasa Corporation, Sanyo, Panasonic, Hitachi Maxell, Shin-Kobe Electric Machinery, Mitsubishi Heavy Industry, Hitachi
- 10 universities and research institutions: Kyoto University, Tohoku University, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Waseda University, Kyushu University, Ritsumeikan University, AIST, KEK, etc..

The Pixy, or when Suzuki shows us how to reinvent the urban transport

We look forward to the changes in customs and practices are only a few years. Not long ago, it was a lot of telephone booths in public spaces, because nobody had a mobile phone. Today, pay phones are disappearing because everyone has his personal phone with him. It is a shift towards more individuality, but at the same time, good thinkers trying to make us believe that we should make a reverse turn as far as our means of travel. 


We must abandon the car to take the transport! They are ecologically and economically. They are a place of social mixing. This is an opportunity for citizens to meet, discover, people he does not know. Especially when the person who came to sit next to you tells his entire day to his mobile phone. Transit is an opportunity, joy, the crossing of people from different backgrounds, different cultures, people who have a definition of health as distinct from the standard definition. The wonderful smell of sweat! And this pleasure of all these bodies tight against each other at rush hour! 

But the enjoyment of all the senses, a rebellious Japanese would have us deny. Malotrus What is this? Suzuki. The Hayabusa motorcycle manufacturer. Gear death. Machines boil radar. And then not content to produce these infamies the civilized world for the road, he is daring to design a vehicle for individual urban areas. It is a machine with 4 wheels, 4 very small wheels, and it is a car. Neither passenger nor luggage. 


The Pixy is very small, on the station anywhere, exactly the place of departure and precisely to its destination. It robs us of the joy of seeing if the windows of shops to which we pass every day, between the end point of the transit and the destination have changed. And as if that were not enough, the electric Pixy us the affront to reduce our travel time, for the deprivation of the joys of intermodality. And what fun to run in the rain out of the subway station, so to quickly catch the bus? But what constitutes a real massacre, is that the Pixy is perfectly silent. 

How will pedestrians to avoid being crushed, and transformed into salami, if we did not even hear you come, Pixy demonic, with its electric motor? And all this to carry one small person! Is it not true that we become deaf, if you ride alone in his vehicle? How can we not prefer the heat of public transport, with its many similar meeting in the right mood, loneliness petty quiet to listen to the music of his choice, lulled by the air conditioning? Under the great bubble of his windshield, the driver of the Pixy can not even realize that it does not pollute. 


Zero pollution and individual, the Pixy can possibly fit into the Suzuki Sharing Coach (SSC) which, alone or in pairs, it turns into a real electric car. The manufacturer has also planned a sport where the declination Pixy one this time, slightly tilted, and bubble in the garage, just form a roadster. And we shall dream of solar panels to help recharge its free Pixy home. So much for the urban environment. And if it accompanied a Hayabusa modified to work with ethanol for the road? Of ethanol to be produced from organic farming, of course. 

But a Hayabusa to ethanol, it would be even more powerful, what a nightmare! And a large sedan with hydrogen to travel with family, hydrogen would be the product of a giant solar power plant, located in the middle of the Sahara. Better to take the TGV powered by nuclear electricity. How? There are those who chipotent for radioactive waste? So many spoilers! They just take the bike. Ah, belive, the pleasure of knowing that every day, the saddle on which arises hosted 10 other buttocks! This is the Tokyo Motor Show, Suzuki will present her as Pixy with the SSC, and it is far from France. Could we draw the country of Voltaire, one might dream of marketing in France (even if it is still a prototype), or deny there any individuality to people on the move just to do more than pawns in the hands of the authorities of public transport? It now uses the environment to justify the transportation and order the individual transport by private car, there's politics in the argument.

Shell Eco-marathon 2009, running always at least

Have you ever heard of the Shell Eco Marathon? For 25 years, the event organized by a large tanker is designed to work for students and engineers from major schools on ways to consume less. Rather big wheels outside the body, or small wheels completely hidden under the bodywork? On a tricycle with a rear wheel drive, is it better 3 wheels of the same diameter, or 2 small in front, and great on the back? On a vehicle with a roof entirely covered with photovoltaic cells, is it better body opaque or transparent? There are so many questions! But one place to know all the answers, the Eco-Shell Marathon, held last weekend at the Eurospeedway Lausitz, south of Berlin.

The goal of the game is to use the minimum possible fuel (petrol, diesel, biofuels, natural gas, LPG, hydrogen, solar). Race to the improved energy efficiency, the Shell Eco-marathon offers the last twenty years, a real challenge to participants from around the world. This year, 227 teams from 18 different nationalities (including 16 European) the challenge to lower energy consumption and will reach their educational project.

Had 112 vehicles running on gasoline, diesel 16, 10 LPG, 39 with hydrogen 11 in ethanol (pure, the E100), 3 GTL diesel (the fuel for which Shell built a huge factory) and 11 ran on solar power. The participants are students, who came all schools except the team of self-against whom it was a design school. It seems to us that this is a first. The car was beautiful to our eyes, of the Polytechnic of Turin (below), all carbon fiber, even the wheel fairings, with an impeccable finish.

But despite the diversity of competitors, and resources involved, the winner was once again the school in the Joliverie (below). The years pass, the students, but the talented forward, and the team this year broke all records. It was calculated that their prototype could travel 3771 km with 1 liter of fuel. This corresponds to an incredible 0027 l/100 km! Paris-Nice with a quarter of a liter of gasoline. But note at a speed of 30 km / h for a person with the size jockey who is not claustrophobic in a vehicle that would not be to his advantage on the road.

Vehicles that run the marathon Eco gear are great, but those of category prototypes are too special, too exclusively devoted to the very specific use for which they are intended. We prefer the urban concept, such as the Portuguese team against this. Body made of sheet aluminum, with solar panels directly from a DIY store. Wheeled scooter, a piece of plexi to the windshield is very far from the major achievements of schools, but it successfully demonstrates that it is possible to participate without spending a fortune.

Or green, the fruit of work by students of the CFA de la CCI de Nîmes. They finished 23 ° in their class, but they built a real small car with a funny look, and they have acquired a great experience, with memories that they will be happy to tell later to their children. More than the race itself, this is the most important part of the Eco marathon, he teaches young people with practical knowledge. Finally, in addition, it demonstrates that the motor has a future. These vehicles with ultra-simple, this circuit lined with wind turbines, how to think differently?

The Shell Eco Marathon attracts participants from all over Europe. The formula also exported to the USA since 2007 (in California) and Asia will affect next year (in Malaysia). For 25 years of trial, it was logical that a new change occurs. So in former East Germany, at Lausitz (near Dresden) takes place at this very moment the 2009 edition.

The records of consumption are in vogue. A team of Ford (engineers and driver) was able to go 1445 miles (2312 km) with a Fusion hybrid in the U.S. and Austrian drove 1562 km at the wheel of a Seat ibiza "Ecomotive" on a single tank of 45 liters of Spain, France and Germany.

Europcar rent of Nissan electric

After a first attempt, the owner, this time success. It gives them the means.

The Renault-Nissan alliance has big ambitions for the electric car. She signed for the purpose of multiple contracts to promote the development of electric mobility, including the last 2 as Singapore and Hong Kong. The alliance has already signed 26 such contracts, contracts are fairly unusual for a car, in the sense that they are not contracts for the sale of vehicles. It is jointly create the conditions that enable a rapid expansion of the electric car. We expect to see, but the agreement with Europcar is normal, to provide electric cars that the owner will in several European markets.

It will not be the first electric qu'Europcar propose, he had already had electric Kangoo few years ago, but only in a handful of agencies. Whereas today, the project is to provide electricity in 7 countries: France, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Spain, Portugal and the United Kingdom. So it is very ambitious and should be commended for Renault-Nissan have managed to convince a client as important qu'Europcar before the official presentation of its future electric model. We discover at the beginning, and in the meantime, we illustrate the article with former Nissan electric prototypes.