The UC? from Rinspeed, a subcompact two-seat electric car, was designed to reduce emissions and the need for gasoline, eliminate or shrink traffic jams, and to fit on trains. Consumers could take their UC?s along on long-distance train trips for use at their destinations. (Rinspeed even designed railcars that could onload and off-load UC?s quickly.) [...]

The batteries in University of Illinois professor Paul Braun’s lab look like any others, but they pack a surprise inside.
Braun’s group developed a three-dimensional nanostructure for battery cathodes that allows for dramatically faster charging and discharging without sacrificing energy storage capacity. The researchers’ findings were published in the March 20 advance online edition of the [...]

A million EVs: Our generation’s Sputnik moment?
Bruce Rayner
4/4/2011 10:26 AM EDT
“We cannot keep going from shock to trance on the issue of energy security, rushing to propose action when gas prices rise, then hitting the snooze button when they fall again.” President Obama used those words last week to introduce his administration’s Blueprint for a [...]

by Don Tuite for Electronic Design Magazine
One of the things the Smart Grid roadmap talks about is using the batteries in electric vehicles (EVs) to store energy produced during low periods in the diurnal demand cycle and making it available on the grid during periods of high demand. Whenever dynamic electricity pricing is introduced, this [...]

BMW Recruiting Engineers to Focus on Lightweight, Carbon-Fiber Composites
By William Diem
WardsAuto.com, Apr 5, 2011 9:02 AM
PARIS – BMW is recruiting 40 engineers with carbon-fiber expertise to help meet its goal of launching its i3 and i8 lightweight electrified vehicles in 2013.
BMW co-sponsored the JEC composite exposition here this year here to call attention to its [...]