Winds of change generate a whole new sameness

Amid the deluge of tiny electric city cars coming on stream through motor shows to market, it's getting hard to tell one from the next

The announcement of another new-name electric city car at November's LA Auto Show came and went. The pool is expanding and a great school of such vehicles is swimming upstream to get to it. Not just from big-name makers like Mitsubishi (i-MiEV), Nissan (Leaf, Townpod) and BMW (MCV) -- they're the lucky ones with well-built brand platforms from which to make the transition into the EV and alt-fuels market.

But beneath them is a horde of new names and less well-knowns jumping on an opportunity to raise their profiles or start over. With predictions abounding that the mainstream global car market could be 20 per cent electric-powered by 2020, it's not surprising that the auto media is drowning in material from manufacturers well known, less known and unknown alike.

Among the reams of material emanating from this month's LA Auto Show was a release announcing the arrival of yet another new name when US EV specialist Wheego took the wraps off its Whip LiFe EV (pictured), staking its claim in what it hopes will one day be a serious chunk of the mainstream auto market.

The LiFe, a tiny city car straight from the smart fortwo, Toyota iQ et al mould, gets its steam from a 45 kW electric motor powered by a 115 volt Li-ion battery pack. It produces 128 Nm of torque and will make up to 160 km on a single charge. A top-up charge from 50 to 100 per cent takes about five hours off a 240 volt outlet. Regenerative braking helps stretch its range with constant battery top-ups.

Wheego has equipped it with what's fast becoming standard kit in the light car market -- two airbags, ABS, power steering and an AM/FM CD player with MP3 and USB ports, plus remote central locking and power windows and mirrors.

Production of the LiFe has already started, with the car reaching dealerships late November at a base price of US$32,995 (AUD$33,755), before federal tax credits of up to US$7500 cut in.

Perhaps the most outstanding feature of the LiFe is its increasing lack of upstandingness. Wheego has popped up as one more in a growing phalanx of new names looking to stake their claim in the new goldfields of the EV and altfuels sectors. Names like Tesla, Fisker and Aptera are already well known, thanks more to well funded publicity campaigns than sales at this point (the latter two have generated plenty of noise in the US without having yet sold a unit). But others are growing profile now too, often care of some radical ideas built into their concept vehicles.

Take UK company Riversimple. Their two-seat city car is revolutionary in several ways. It uses an electric motor on each wheel; these draw power from a small (6kW) hydrogen fuel cell and a bank of ultracapacitors fed by its energy regeneration systems. Riversimple has kept the weight down to 350kg by using mainly carbonfibre composite body panels and subframe. The company claims a potential range of 300-400 km on a single fill of its 1kg hydrogen tank, which calculates out to about 1.0L/100km and 30g/km CO2. All that and -- perhaps most radically of all -- the blueprints are open-source, inviting input from anyone who thinks they can help.

Meanwhile, French company Lumeneo has come up with something called the Smera, a tandem two-seat affair reminiscent of the Messerschmidt 'bubble cars', but powered by a 15kW electric motor producing an astonishing claimed 1000Nm of torque. That's bound to be a hoot in a 450 kg midget that leans into corners like an enclosed bike.

Closer to home is Eday Life, an Australian company that's been looking to China to source a small EV possibly a single platform available with electric, LPG and petrol power options. Eday is also investigating business models based on a two-year battery-lease program, part of a wider whole-of-life vehicle management strategy.

The top-shelf contenders and pretenders

The supercar market isn't without its contenders and pretenders either. And not just in imagination grabbers like Audi's R8-based e-tron. To quote a Swiss outfit called Protoscar, who describe themselves as "Clean Car Shapers", "electric drive-trains are mature and perform sufficiently well to be a solution for all types of vehicles, not just city cars. This includes premium cars, the segment through which most new technologies have successfully been introduced into the market." As an example that "impressively demonstrates that", the company used the 2010 Geneva show to serve up the Lampo 2, a none-too-pretty pitch at Tesla's Roadster based on GM's now defunct Kappa platform. It uses a 30 kWh Li-ion battery pack powering two electric motors -- one per axle, allowing variable torque distribution among all four wheels -- for a total claimed output of 260 kW and 600 Nm. That's enough for a 0-100 km/h dash in around five seconds, a 200 km/h top speed and a range of "over 200 km". All with the ability to absorb "an extra 100 km of additional range" in just ten minutes off a DC fast-charge point.

German outfit e-Wolf generated loads of copy with pics of its Lambo-esque e2 electric supercar in 2009. A year later, the company has gone remarkably quiet, its ludicrously vain website having disappeared. Not so Swedish photovoltaics specialist NVL, which teamed up with sportscar maker Koenigsegg to adorn the 2009 Geneva motor show with a massive four seat, gullwinged electric sportsbarge called the Quant. Driven by a 150 kW motor inside each of its 23-inch wheels, it powers its instruments and helps keeps its charge up with the help of photovoltaic pyrite film over its carbon fibre body panels.

NVL turned up again at the 2010 Geneva show without Koenigsegg  but with a working prototype of the Quant. The figures being bandied around are staggering, especially the 2.7 second 0-100 acceleration time. Questions remain about much of the technical detail.

At the same show, Italian design house I.DE.A Institute (Institute of Development in Automotive Engineering) rolled out its Sophia concept, a Karma-esque sedan designed from scratch to accommodate a V8 petrol or hybrid powertrain. Despite the abundance of superlatives in the press material for the concept -- "Italian to the core: its shape, its look, its elegance and name are instantly recognized as being synonymous with Italian styling and beauty" etc -- nothing has been heard about it since.


Opportunity to boost profile

Actually, I.DE.A fits more appropriately among that other group in the mix: names that aren't so new but are using changing times to gain a leg-up from obscurity, boost their profiles or expand out of limited markets. Norwegian specialist Think, for example, has been producing EVs since the early 1990s; current conditions have changed to provide what might appear a God-given springboard to success of the kind its people could only dream of a decade ago. Think certainly seems to think so, given how much of its recent media activity has revolved around getting its executive mix right for growth.

Then there's Gordon Murray -- the engineering brains behind McLaren's legendary 1990s F1, for a while the world's fastest road car. Murray's moved on to something altogether less spectacular, but likely more applicable on a mass scale. The T.27 electric city car, a joint project with UK EV and hybrid engineering outfit Zytek, is just 2.3 metres long with a 12 kW/h Li-ion battery pack powering a 25kW electric motor driving the rear wheels. Much of the T.27's USP lies in the packaging of its entire powertrain -- battery, motor, transmission, power management unit -- in a single module. The car is good for a claimed 130-160 km, with CO2 emissions calculated at somewhere around 48 g/km combined when it's charged from the standard UK grid.

Swiss custom house Rinspeed is best known for garish chop-and-tweak jobs on Porsches and the like for the Arab and Russian quarters. Until last year, at least, when it took the covers off a radical road-rail concept called UC. It's a small city car that can be hitched in multiples like a train to ride the inter-city rails, at least partially solving some of the range problems that restrict EVs to city use.

And venerated Italian design house Pininfarina has been busy on EV concepts aimed at the mass market. First came the Bluecar, (initially B0 or B-Zero), a small four-seater developed with French battery specialist Bollore. It was designed from scratch as a ready-to-roll production model and went on sale in late 2009. Following its debut at the Geneva motor show in March, the car has generated more than 6000 orders. Deliveries begin early in 2011.

Now comes the Nido platform, developed in-house at Pininfarina's Cambiano studios. The aim is, once again, affordability with the flexibility to produce it in different body styles -- two- and four-seat city cars, a pickup and a van. The company plans to use an Audi-style aluminium space frame to keep the kilos down.

The Nido's 30 kW electric motor drives the rear wheels. Unusually, it's powered by a nickel-salt Zebra battery -- a formula high on the energy density scale but marred by high operating temperatures. Power-to-weight is what counts, and Pininfarina reckons that 21.2 kW/h from a relatively light 180 kg leaves it with plenty of margin to deal with the heat. It helps that the nickel-salt formula contains nothing toxic (at least until you look back to the process of mining nickel...) and allows for full recyclability. The company claims a range of about 140 km and 0-100 sprint time inside seven seconds. It's looking at future Nido product with hybrid power as well.

Indian giant Tata has hit the EV trail as well, using the Geneva show to debut an all-electric version of its tiny four-seat Nano. The company claims a range of 160km and acceleration of 0-60km/h in under 10 seconds. It joins the company's Indica Vista EV, already on sale in Europe.

At end of 2009 and the beginning of 2010 the wires were buzzing with rumours that Caterham was looking at extending its stock in trade, the open-wheeled Seven roadster, to include electric and/or hybrid powertrains. The noise has died down, so it appears the company has shelved such plans for the time being.

Don't expect it to be forever, though. No nook or cranny of the industry is immune to the winds of change.

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