Ginetta working on electric version of G50 sports car

With a half-century of car-building experience for both the road and track, the UK's Ginetta Cars is now setting its sights on a truly modern goal: a high-performance electric vehicle. Details on the car remain closely held, but the car's first development steps are already underway.

The G50 is Ginetta's most recent addition to its stable of race and road cars, with the first production example hitting Britain's streets earlier this year. Now the company is building an electric variant that it claims will be capable of 120mph (193km/h) and have a range up to 250mi (402km).

A three-battery power storage system and an electric motor will send power directly to the rear wheels for strong handling dynamics and simplicity of powertrain design. The motor itself is a Zytek Engineering unit, purpose-built for automotive use.

Ginetta plans to build the entire drivetrain into a single integrated package with just three external connectors: one for water (for cooling purposes), one for 300V high voltage electricity and one for 12V power.

Though the G50 EV reportedly took to the streets for its first test some time in October, so far the car is only in developmental stages, with no time line or price range yet specified. Ginetta's G50R and G50 Cup street and race cars are currently on sale, however, for both road-going and competitive racing use.

3 Drivetrains, 1 Car, Zero Emissions

Hybrid? Electric? Hydrogen? Why choose when you can have all three?

Mercedes-Benz has developed a modular design that can accommodate a gas-electric, battery electric or hydrogen fuel-cell drivetrain in a compact five-seater it calls Concept BlueZero. By using a common architecture based on the A- and B-Class subcompacts, Mercedes says it can diversify its drivetrains without developing a slew of new models.

"Our modular system allows different drive configurations for every customer requirement," says R&D chief Dr. Thomas Weber. "The modified sandwich-floor platform provides the perfect basis for a wide range of electric drive systems."

Although the three BlueZero cars coming to the Detroit auto show in January are just concepts, they are guideposts to the company's future. Mercedes says it will produce its first fuel-cell cars "on a small scale" next year and offer a "small-scale production" of EVs in 2010.

Mercedes says BlueZero allows it to easily embrace "electromobility" in three ways:

    * E-Cell - a battery electric vehicle with a range of about 125 miles.
    * E-Cell Plus - a range-extended electric vehicle that uses a small gasoline engine to recharge the battery as it approaches depletion. Think Chevrolet Volt but smaller.
    * F-Cell - a hydrogen fuel-cell vehicle with a range of about 248 miles.

The three BlueZero vehicles share components, and the design and dimensions are identical. Although the three cars are about the same size as a Honda Fit, Mercedes says they seat five adults and have plenty of cargo space. They are "electric cars offering everyday practicality," says Mercedes boss Dieter Zetsche.

The "sandwich floor" architecture puts the battery pack and other components under the floor, creating plenty of room inside while giving the cars a low center of gravity, agile handing and excellent crash safety, Mercedes says.

All of the cars feature a liquid-cooled lithium-ion battery with a maximum capacity of 35 kWh; Mercedes says they charge in four hours when plugged into a typical wall outlet. The electric motor produces 70 kW (about 94 horsepower) and 236 foot-pounds of torque, propelling the little runabout to 62 mph in a little less than 11 seconds.

The E-Cell Plus uses a 1.0-liter turbocharged engine (the same one found in the Smart fortwo) to keep the battery going. Mercedes didn't offer any details on the fuel-cell drivetrain, but there's probably not much new to say considering the company's been developing hydrogen cars for six years.

The exterior styling provides a glimpse of the next-gen B-Class vehicles we'll see in 2010, although the translucent body panels, clear wheel covers and "three-dimensional light effects" integrated into those 20-inch wheels probably won't see production.

See Also:

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Optimal Energy Joule: South African electric MPV

Everyone is joining in the race to create the definitive new widely accepted publicly-used electric car. We’ve got large corporations like the Renault-Nissan Alliance and even recently BMW but one of the unique beauties of electric cars seems to be the ability for small companies such as Optimal Energy to join the fray as well.

Optimal Energy is a South African company based in Cape Town that was funded by the Department of Science and Technology of the South African Government. It’s electric vehicle entree is the Joule, a 6-seater MPV that at first impression seems to be following the footsteps of the Fiat Multipla to win the ugliest car/MPV of the year award.

The Multipla was a 6-seater too, but Honda has proven with the Edix that it is quite possible to create a 2-row 6-seater that doesn’t hurt the eyes, so why does it have to look like this, Optimal Energy?

Perhaps it’s in the interest of aerodynamics as the overall silhouette of the vehicle kind of reminds you of the Mercedes-Benz Bionic Car Concept which was based on the shape of a fish that cuts through water quite well, so it must be very good in cutting through air as well. The Joule’s body uses a steel spaceframe combined with composite (glass and carbon) and plastic body panels.

The Optimal Energy Joule is an electric vehicle, and while no exact
horsepower/kilowatt stats were quoted, it can go from 0 to 100km/h in 15 seconds and go on to a top speed of 135km/h. The standard Joule is front wheel drive via a motor driving the front wheels through an 8:1 reduction gearbox, but Optimal Energy is also working on in-wheel motors for rear-wheel or all-wheel drive.

The vehicle uses a modular large-cell lithium ion battery pack with the capacity of 200km per module. The chassis can fit 2 modules which means a 400km theoretical maximum range. The batteries can be recharged on the go via brake energy regeneration, and as for plug-in charging, the car has an on-board charger which means you don’t need any additional charging equipment installed in your garage.

Other remaining technical details you should know (and were revealed) are: the car has ABS and airbags, and the suspension uses MacPherson struts at the front and a torsion beam at the rear.

Bay Area Stakes Claim as the "EV Capital of the U.S."

The Mayors of San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose got together Thursday afternoon to declare their intention to morph their collective communities into the “Electric Vehicle Capital of the US.”

The mayors’ Nine-Point Plan was bolstered by Palo Alto start-up Better Place’s announcement that they would begin building the commercial infrastructure that will be necessary in the region by the time EVs  begin to hit the market in 2011.

With Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s influential advisor David Crane showing their support for strategy, there appears to be a commitment at the local, state and federal levels to make the Bay Area a key player in what some—including Germany’s Foreign Minister—are optimistically calling President-elect Barack Obama’s “Green Deal.”

“This type of public-private partnership is exactly what I envisioned when we created the first ever low carbon fuel standard and when the state enacted the zero emissions vehicle program,” Governor Schwarzenegger said in a statement celebrating the plan. Schwarzenegger's zero emissions vehicle program was stifled in the courts last year as the result of a lawsuit introduced the Bush Administration.

But with a new administration intent on pushing alt fuels, local governments will certainly be throwing elbows in hopes of being in the right spot when and if the federal money spout turns on.

In fact, just a day earlier the city of Portland, Oregon said that it would be working with Renault-Nissan and Pacific Gas and Electric to build a network of EV charging stations with the goal of becoming a “global leader” in zero-emission vehicles.

While it’s all well and good to declare oneself a “global leader” or the “EV capital of the US” at a press conference, hopefully very soon these long-delayed alt-fuel-infrastructure initiatives will become more blasé and harder to sell as giant steps for mankind.

Photo by Flickr user internets_dairy.