Media gets sneak peek of SA’s electric car
September 14, 2008
Posted in Transport
Journalists got to see South Africa’s first electric car, known as the Joule, this week. The car’s lithium-ion batteries can be charged using a 220-volt outlet and it has regenerative braking, said Edwin Naidu in a report on IOL. He described the car as “a compact six-seater that looks like an uncluttered mix of a Renault Scenic and a Citroen Picasso”. The Joule was developed by Cape Town company Optimal Energy and designed by Keith Helfet, who has also designed cars for Jaguars. Naidu says the care should be available from the end of 2010 and is expected to cost about R200,000. But it looks like we’ll have to wait until the Paris Motor show next month to see the Joule. Full story on IOL
2010 launch set for GM’s all-electric car – and SA’s making one too
June 4, 2008
Posted in Transport
General Motors has announced that it’s all-electric car, the Chevy Volt, will be launched in 2010 and will be in showrooms (in the US, presumably) by the end of that year, Reuters reports.
The Volt will be powered entirely by an electric motor and have a lithium-ion battery pack that can be charged through an ordinary plug point. The car will be designed to travel for about 60km on its battery pack – which is apparently enough for the average daily commute in America. For longer trips, the Volt has a “range-extending power source” which “kicks in to recharge the lithium-ion battery pack as required”, says the Chevrolet.com website. This will last for around 1,000km, the site says. The car should also be able to reach a top speed of at least 100km.
Reuters says Toyota is also racing to market its own plug-in hybrid by 2010 using the same technology.
The full-charge cycle should take about three hours at 220V, gm-volt.com reports. It’s all very nice in theory, considering how the petrol price is rocketing, but the big question is whether South Africa’s power monopoloy Eskom would be able to cope with the demands electric cars would put on the grid – even if they were charged at night.
Peet du Plooy of the WWF was interviewed by summit TV earlier this year when the WWF’s report “Plugged in, the end of the oil age” was released. He said that electric vehicles cost a tenth of the price to run over time and an added advantage is that electricity is generated locally, whereas South Africa imports its oil. He also said that if you compared turning coal into electricity with turning coal into liquid fuel (as Sasol does), the electric car would go three times further with the same amount of fuel.
He also said, that in South Africa, Optimal Energy of Cape Town, which had received government funding from the Innovation Fund, was looking to go into production with an electric vehicle in 2010.
The deputy science and technology minister, Derek Hanekom, was reported in Saturday’s The Weekender as saying that the first prototype of the South African-designed car would be unveiled by early next year.
The reports says that the batteries will be imported from China and that the six-seater passenger vehicle would have a range of between 100km and 400km. And, here’s a bonus, “the roof would have solar panels to help charge the battery when it is parked in the sun”. Now, there’s a good idea for sunny South Africa.
How a locally made vehicle would compete with vehicles made by well-known car manufacturers’ on the market, is another matter.
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