Points of Interest | Green Energy News

November 9, 2003 – Vol.8 No.33

POINTS OF INTEREST.

A weekly collection of websites worth visiting.

EVS-20 (Electric Vehicle Symposium - the 20th) runs from November 15 - 18 in Long Beach, California. The world-traveling event has become the showplace for the latest in green vehicle technology.

UQM Technologies (electric motors, generators, controllers) is there as usual, so is a one-off hybrid using one of UQM’s generators. That car is not only interesting for its technology, but from where it came from.

The car is a converted Volkswagen New Beetle with a 3-cylinder VW diesel generator operating in series configuration with an electric drive motor and battery pack.

(In a series hybrid the combustion engine is a generator to keep the battery pack charged and provide electric power for the vehicle’s drive motor. There is NO mechanical connection between the generator and the wheels.)

This car not only supposedly gets 30-35 percent better mileage than a stock diesel Beetle, it can also drive about 6 miles (10 kilometers) on electric power alone. Short hops to the market wouldn’t need the combustion engine at all.

(In this configuration, too, the car’s 42-kilowatt generator could easily become a standby or emergency generator for homes or a number of them.)

And where it came from? TNO Automotive of The Netherlands. TNO Automotive is part of a 5400 member team of professionals that research all kinds of things including advanced vehicle technologies. On the web they have the TNO Automotive Showroom to keep customers - many of them well-known brands like Volkswagen - and others up-to-date with their research efforts.

TNO is worth a visit at http://www.automotive.tno.nl/ as is EVS-20 at http://www.evs20.org/ the Electric Drive Transportation Association (formerly the EVAA http://www.electricdrive.org/ and UQM Technologies http://www.uqm.com/