Electric Car Weekly is a Sunday only recap of the week at a glance. This week we take a look at a few under the radar newsworthy stories.
In this weekly series, we will look at some strange and decidedly interesting concepts, prototypes and more on alternative energy vehicles. This week kicks off with the VOLAR-e from Spain. Check this out.
VOLAR-e. From Spanish industrial design firm Applus Idiada comes the VOLAR-e. Not your average electric car (EV) but more your highly enthusiastic weekend toy. With no less than 1,000 horsepower and 737 pounds-feet of torque from its four electric motors, providing torque vectoring and sprint the 0 to 4 in just 3.4 seconds. Its top speed of 186 mph comes from a 38 kWh battery pack made up of ten-cells, which takes between 10-15 minutes to recharge.
Flooded iMiEV Back Alive. If you’re gutsy, happen to have a drenched Mitsubishi i MiEV in your garage, Benjamin Nelson on YouTube can show you how to bring it alive. Watch this amazing and courageous battery handling video.
An Electric Land Rover? You bet! While Land Rovers are anything but green, fuel frugal or any other green halos, the new route the company has taken is definitely new territory. Land Rover is electric only from now on. You might have heard of it a year or so ago, but this time the company has something to show for. It’s Defender 110 that will be shown at the Geneva Motor Show.
Goodbye four-cylinder 2.2 liter diesel engine with your six-speed manual gearbox and hello 70-kilowatt electric, giving 94 horsepower with 243 foot-pounds of torque. A 27 kilowatt-hour lithium-ion battery pack hidden in the engine bay provides a range of 50 miles or more.
Why Are Gasoline Prices Rising? Good question, thank you for asking. Indeed, some of you have noticed, the price of gasoline has steadily gone up since the beginning of the year, and even further back. So what’s the deal? The average U.S. retail price for regular motor gasoline is up about 45 cents per gallon since the start of 2013, reaching $3.75 per gallon on February 18. The rise in gasoline prices is partly due to higher crude oil prices, as well as refinery outages, higher global demand for petroleum products than expected, prior low crack spreads and of course, the seasonal switch to summer grade gasoline routine that sends prices up, according to the US Energy Information Administration.
Stay tuned for more Electric Car news on CarNewsCafe.
