The Green Optimistic

The world’s first commercial wireless EV has been introduced on Tuesday in South Korea at a theme park in Seoul. It’s called the “On-Line Electric Vehicle” (OLEV), and it gets its energy from cables underneath the surface of the road. The car doesn’t make any contact with the road, all the energy is transferred by magnetic induction.

Nobody would have ever though that Central and Eastern Europe would have the technology or financial resources to build a super car or a zero emission vehicle. This is why we are now astonished as the Hungarian company called Antro developed a hybrid car that is also able to run on solar power.

While giant auto manufacturers spend millions to build electric vehicles, a Japanese family decided to open a family-run business in their garage-workshop and to build eco-friendly electric cars by hand.

Hertz, a worldwide car hire company, plans to buy electric cars and make them available for renting in Europe and the U.S. within the next two years. Teaming up with Nissan, they will start their electric car hire service with LEAF, Nissan’s first electric car available to the public.

The world’s first electric Pick-up, EMC (Electric Motor Cars), built on a Dacia Logan platform, brought to the U.S. by Envision Motor Co., has been presented by Des Moines Motors, an ex-Chrysler dealer.

2010 comes with no surprises anymore as it continues the trend imposed last year, when most of the manufacturers presented electric vehicles and hybrid or plug-in hybrids.

This Monday, at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit, Ford announced their intentions to build a next-generation Ford Focus, an all-electric version of the vehicle, starting next year.

Just few days ago, Tesla Motors announced that they will start the collaboration with Panasonic for the development of the next generation battery cells for the EV.

GM (General Motors) introduced the electric Spark, which will be India’s first 4-door electric vehicle. Hyundai has also unveiled the electric version of its i10 model, but for sure it will be more expensive than the e-Spark.

Switzerland can finally brag with their most expensive sports car: Protoscar has just finished the development and manufacturing of a 1 million Euro electric sports car prototype called Lampo.

One of Europe’s largest automotive manufacturers, Mercedes-Benz, announced that the next generation of the S-class will come with a plug-in hybrid engine.

An electric car maker from Norway, Think, will start assembling vehicles in the US next year, hoping to produce about 20,000 cars per year, informed the Wall Street Journal.

The new charging technology works by raising charging power to as much as 300 kW, so the batteries can be recharged on the go.

The partnership between Kia and Hyundai resulted in some huge steps forward regarding fuel cell technology. Kia has just released some footage about their latest FCEV prototype called Borrego (Mohave for the Korean market).

By April 2010, Toyota will put in place around 21 charging stations for plug-in hybrid vehicles(PHVs) and electric vehicles(EVs)in Aichi Prefecture . The most interesting thing about these stations is the fact that they are charging themselves using solar power.

There are some ideas that could evolve no matter what technology is used to apply them. For example, James Yarger, an industrial designer, thought of a concept vehicle made from recyclable materials, inspired by Dean Kamen’s Segway.

As the automotive industry has oriented itself towards green energy usage, the need of a “supreme” alternative resource is obvious. And what is more obvious is the demand of Electric Vehicles. EVs need to store their energy in batteries: mainly Lithium-Ion batteries. As of this particular reason, Lithium seems to be one of the most searched resource.

Evatran, an EV charging company, announced that they have a deal with product design company Synchroness to mass-produce Plugless Power, a hands-free proximity charging system for electric vehicles.

Lately the automotive industry had directed its attention to the Electric Vehicle market and to the green energy usage. But if the electric energy that will power the EV is obtained from fossil fuels the EV won’t be green anymore. Because of that particular reason several solar-powered charging stations were developed lately to help EV use alternative energy.

The predictions are based on the widespread adoption of the recently release Electrification Roadmap that estimates battery powered EVs and Plug-in hybrids making up 25% of new vehicles sales in the U.S. by 2020.