German electrical car with a range of more than 600 km

It's not first of April, so maybe it's true. Apparently German companies (lekker engery, DBM energy) built an electrical car that can go more than 600 km (they did 605 km to prove this) and can be recharged within an hour (or in 5 minutes under optimal conditions). The technology used for the battery is new and is based on lithium metal polymer structures. The whole battery weighs only 100 kg. The car used is an almost vintage Audi A2 and still offers seats for 4 people and space for the luggage. This almost sounds like a miracle! Sadly enough the battery technology is not yet production ready and of course many questions can be raised. But if eventually something like this can be manufactured in large numbers then this provides interesting parameters for the design of future cars! Think about small electrical motors, relatively small and light batteries. Let's see!

Road test of the Tesla Roadster Sport - fast, expensive but good

The German car magazine "Auto Motor und Sport" did one of the first comprehensive road tests of the Tesla Roadster Sport. I was expecting that they would trash it, but actually they were much more positive than what I expected.
Here's what they measured:
0-100 km/h: 4.3 sec
0-180 km/h: 16.3 s
Max speed: 200 km/h
100-0 km/h: 37/35 m
Max range: 328 km
Min range: 200 km
Energy consumption: 20 kWh/100 km, 4 Euros per 100 km. For 4 Euros you could roughly buy 3 liters of gasoline, so no Diesel is going to beat this economy.
So what do these results tell us? The car is fast and can compete with many similarly priced sports cars such as a Maserati or an Aston V8 Vantage if it's about these measures.
Price wise the car is expensive, roughly 130'000 Euros. And regardless of all the new technology it's an Elise at the end, but with much more weight (1'267 kg versus roughly 900 kg). The handling of course suffers due to this and obviously the steering got quite heavy. On the other side this car offers more power and especially torque than any Elise or Exige.
My take? An expensive Elise, but a "cheap" electrical super car. Nothing for me, as I still like good engine sound, something electrical cars will never be able to provide except through the stereo.

How practical and ecological are electrical cars really?

In the current issue of Auto Motor und Sport they test crew compares two electrical cars, the Mitsubishi i-MiEV and the Smart Fortwo ED.
While they are positive about many things, they criticize the reach. The Mitsubishi got them to 77 km (instead of 144 km as promised), the Smart lasted for 106 km (versus the 135 km promised by the vendor). Now, the test was done during the Winter and cold weather has a strong influence on batteries as we know. But going from 144 km to 77 km is quite a negative surprise.
What is worse is the "fuel consumption". The Mitsubishi needs 21.9 kWh/100 km, while the Smart asks for 22.4 kWh/100 km. Using the German mix on how electrical energy is produced (a lot by using coal), this results in equivalent of 125 versus 128 g CO2 per km. That's actually comparable or higher than what a good Diesel car like the Seat Ibiza Ecomotive (106 g CO2 in the test of Auto Motor und Sport) can do. So, what this means is, that electrical cars only make real sense if the energy need to "fuel" them can be produced in a clean way. Not new, but always good to remember.

Opel Flextreme GT/E Concept - going into the right direction

Opel is going to present its Opel Flextreme GT/E Concept at the Geneva Autoshow. Looking at this car, I must admit that this is going into the right direction! The design is impressive and technology wise it seems to be a car that combines usability with ecological savvyness. It's based on the coming Opel Ampera (2011) and combines an electrical motor (370 NM) and a range extender (1.4 l gasoline engine). It can run for 60 km only on electricity, adding the range extender it can go to 500 km. With 0-100 km/h in 9 secs and a top speed of more than 200 km/h it will not slow down traffic. With 1.6 l/100 km it would emit less than half CO2 than a Toyota Prius. However it's a bit unclear how you calculate these things for electrical cars still. It comes with four doors a some fancy aerodynamics gimmicks that probably will never make it into series production. With almost 4.8 m it's comparable in size to a BMW 5 series or Volkswagen Passat. So, let's see what Opel can save into production and what the price for such a toy would be.
P.S. I think it's a nice touch to call the concept car "GT/E", bringing back memories of fast and rallye proven Opel Kadett GT/E cars from the 70ies.

Audi's second trial - Audi e-tron mk2 could be a winner

Audi is showing its new Audi e-tron mk2 at the Detroit Motor Show. While the first version has been built on top of the R8 the new is smaller, less powerful and much lighter, but a lot closer to reality than the first prototype. Impressive are the 2'650 NM torque that the two engines produce. The car is a bit smaller than an Audi TT and weighs roughly 1'350 kg. It accelerates in less than 6 seconds from 0 to 100 km/h, reaches 200 km/h and has a driving range of approx. 250 km. All of this sounds quite acceptable to me and I could imagine driving one of these assuming it's priced at less than 50k USD. I am not fully convinced about the design, but that's probably due to its relatively small size. And somebody maybe should explain to me why you would need such a monstrous air intake in the front - certainly not for cooling the engine. I wonder whether the aerodynamics really is top notch also.