Points of Interest | Green Energy News

January 4, 2004 – Vol.8 No.41

POINTS OF INTEREST.

A weekly collection of websites worth visiting.

A half-dozen years ago car manufacturers and suppliers were scrambling to develop technologies that could be incorporated into a viable, marketable, highway-capable battery electric vehicle.

Most have given up in favor of hybrids and dreams of hydrogen fuel cells. It’s rumored that many of the electric vehicles the big manufacturers developed have gone to the crusher.

Yet the technology to build a viable EV has continued to advance. If the technologies available today were available back then the cars might have been successful.

One of those technologies is wheel hub motors. No gearboxes needed. The motor is right where it’s needed - where the rubber meets the road.

Aside from building a wide range of joysticks and controllers, PML Flightlink now makes a series of brushless pancake wheel motors in sizes ranging from 500 watts to 6 kilowatts. The motors will fit 8 and 10 inch wheel rims and offer regenerative braking.

The company, whose roots go back a century, says that because their motors operate at such high efficiency, the range of a battery electric vehicle would double if propelled by them

And those joysticks and controllers the company makes? What could be done with them? Hmmm...here’s an idea. Forward, back, side-to-side - an electric vehicle that can slip sideways in and out of parking spots controlled by a joy stick That’s something a conventional car could never do. Visit PML Flight Link at http://www.pmlflightlink.com/ .