Top 10 Electric Cars

1. Tesla Roadster

If you have enough money and you are a passionate car collector then hurry up for this “Green Device” as the production is limited. This marvelous two seater with 6’831 laptop batteries costs about $100’000. The waiting list for next year is already full. This fast road machine can zip from 0-60 km/h in just 3.9 seconds, shockingly pulling a weight of 2’700 pound of vehicle itself beside passengers. The only problem yet is its one gear transmission, thus reducing acceleration to 5.9 seconds. But Tesla Motors are looking forward to redesign technology to overcome current short comings.

2. Toyota Plug-in Hybrid

Actually Toyota Motors is still on the roads to develop an advanced version of their own famous “Prius”. The name of the upcoming New Electric car is not yet announced by manufacturers so they call it as Plug-in hybrid term. They have a clear sketch of the futuristic car called Toyota Hybrid-X and their firm plans suggest its completion by 2010.

Special workings are done on Lithium-Ion batteries near to the one are used widely in laptop computers. On-board gasoline engine is installed similarly as well. But expectations from this electric car are so high as to beat the record of plug-in Prius’s i-e 62 miles on batteries. So, guys tight up your seat belts to welcome this vehicle.

Plug-in Toyota Prius can run good 10 miles just on batteries alone. The price is not formally announced but are expected around $28’000 to 30’000.

3. Chevy Volt

Chevy volt is fortunately making good name in auto market and people from all around the world, especially US customers are impatient to see it running on roads. This 4 seated Sedan of General Motors is an outstanding work of engineering and technology. This product will cost around $30’000 each which is pretty reasonable. It is designed to run 40 miles completely on batteries.

Afterwards, 1 liter gasoline will automatically be utilized to recharge the batteries. Nowadays, General Motors is working majorly on different materials in order to replace old-type nickle-metal-hydride batteries. Their current favorite is T-shaped batteries stacked with Manganese oxide. Interiors contain an iPad technology with touch screen display navigation, control of the charging including your entertainment needs above all.

4. Fisker Karma

If you are rich and really love your planet, this pretty toy like car is just made for you. This electric car is awesome in terms of shape, style and features. This remarkable road rocket is the creation of Henrik Fisker. Hopefully comes in second half of 2010, costs about $80-87000 and expected to go 125 mph with 50 miles on just battery power. It is sexy in appearance and gorgeous to drive, might become a dream sports car of many.

5. Aptera Typ-1

An initial investment of $500 deposit for those living in Southern California only gets the honor to be the Owner of this air jet like car. Your name will be registered in the waiting list. A Novel designs different having mini diesel engine along with power batteries. Moreover, this electric car can run to a range of 600 miles. The very first version is expected to roll on the roads this year with a 120 mile range. The drive in Aptera Typ-1 electric car will definitely make you feel in the space age.

6. Venture Electric Car

One can bluntly say that this electric car will make you laugh on first look and how would it feel during drive is still a surprise or funny experience. A wind turbine is placed to catch any possible wind, which adds a 30-mile expected range to its 30mph. this plug-in car is further loaded with a solar panel at top supporting energy systems. 200 cars will be produced initially for limited run. Actual production will be started next year according to Company’s announcement.

It looks like an accessorized Golf Cart and there are chances of objections on its design by local people. An electric car should look modern and fast in all aspects. It could cost about $31’000.

7. City Zenn

Its makers states that this electric car as “longer lasting, lighter, more powerful and environment friendly”. In comparison with other battery operated class mates. Only a 5 minute recharge time is required for its powerful batteries to make it run on 250 miles – that’s amazing.

Zenn made by makers settled in Toronto. Formerly in 2007, they successfully made cars with speed commonly termed as “neighborhood electric cars”. Now the company is on the way to produce much faster green vehicles powered by “ULTRACAPACITOR” made by EEStor. As the makers claim to come up with a vehicle with No Noise and No Emissions, beating environmental pollution along with Sound pollution. Being nature friendly is good, but this car would be a bit dangerous for blinds. The makers are proud for their all-electrical energy storage unit of this stylish car.

8. Th!nk OX

This electric car can easily travel at 62mph noticeably 100 miles on charge or more. Th!nk Ox is first 5 seater electric car designed by a Norway based company which was formerly a part of Ford Motors. So, expectations are quiet high for this electric car. The accurate prices and launch date is not confirmed till now. But the good news is that General Electronics has invested heavily in Lithium-Ion battery producers A123 Systems. The batteries of this car will be supplied by them.

9. Nissan Electric Car

Nissan has shifted their entire focus on producing electric cars. There are not many details about this car other than its pictures and price which is $22000 – 25000 and expected to run 100 miles on one charge. The company is looking forward to launch this electric car in US market first in 2010. The month of launch is not confirmed yet.

10. BMW’s Mini Electric Car

Green Vehicle or Electric car fever is spreading everywhere. Now our favorite BMW is in the race as well with its 2009 Mini E Limited is on test bed. General Production is still under process. Though it’s a small cute branded car but its price and technology details are still under cover. BMW Group will definitely come up with an extraordinary design and mind blowing engineering, so wait for updates on their E Series.

ENGINE TYPES

Engine Types

There are several engine types which are identified by the number of cylinders and the way the cylinders are laid out. Motor vehicles will have from 3 to 12 cylinders which are arranged in the engine block in several configurations. The most popular of them are shown on the left. In-line engines have their cylinders arranged in a row. 3, 4, 5 and 6 cylinder engines commonly use this arrangement. The "V" arrangement uses two banks of cylinders side-by-side and is commonly used in V-6, V-8, V-10 and V-12 configurations. Flat engines use two opposing banks of cylinders and are less common than the other two designs. They are used in Subaru's and Porsches in 4 and 6 cylinder arrangements as well as in the old VW beetles with 4 cylinders. Flat engines are also used in some Ferrari's with 12 cylinders.

Each cylinder contains a piston that travels up and down inside the cylinder bore. All the pistons in the engine are connected through individual connecting rods to a common crankshaft. 


The crankshaft is located below the cylinders on an in-line engine, at the base of the V on a V-type engine and between the cylinder banks on a flat engine. As the pistons move up and down, they turn the crankshaft just like your legs pump up and down to turn the crank that is connected to the pedals of a bicycle.


A cylinder head is bolted to the top of each bank of cylinders to seal the individual cylinders and contain the combustion process that takes place inside the cylinder. The cylinder head contains at least one intake valve and one exhaust valve for each cylinder. This allows the air-fuel mixture to enter the cylinder and the burned exhaust gas to exit the cylinder. Most engines have two valves per cylinder, one intake valve and one exhaust valve. Some newer engines are using multiple intake and exhaust valves per cylinder for increased engine power and efficiency. These engines are sometimes named for the number of valves that they have such as "24 Valve V6" which indicates a V-6 engine with four valves per cylinder. Modern engine designs can use anywhere from 2 to 5 valves per cylinder.


The valves are opened and closed by means of a camshaft. A camshaft is a rotating shaft that has individual lobes for each valve. The lobe is a "bump" on one side of the shaft that pushes against a valve lifter moving it up and down. When the lobe pushes against the lifter, the lifter in turn pushes the valve open. When the lobe rotates away from the lifter, the valve is closed by a spring that is attached to the valve. A very common configuration is to have one camshaft located in the engine block with the lifters connecting to the valves through a series of linkages. The camshaft must be synchronized with the crankshaft so that it makes one revolution for every two revolutions of the crankshaft. In most engines, this is done by a "Timing Chain" (similar to a bicycle chain) that connect the camshaft with the crankshaft. Newer engines have the camshaft located in the cylinder head directly over the valves. This design is more efficient but it is more costly to manufacture and requires multiple camshafts on Flat and V-type engines. It also requires much longer timing chains or timing belts which are prone to wear. Some engines have two camshafts on each head, one for the intake valves and one for the exhaust valves. These engines are called Double Overhead Camshaft (D.O.H.C.) Engines while the other type is called Single Overhead Camshaft (S.O.H.C.) Engines. Engines with the camshaft in the block are called Overhead Valve (O.H.V) Engines.

How Engine Works
Since the same process occurs in each cylinder, we will take a look at one cylinder to see how the four stroke process works. The four strokes are Intake, Compression,Power and Exhaust. The piston travels down on the Intake stroke, up on the Compression stroke, down on the Power stroke and up on the Exhaust stroke.
Intake

As the piston starts down on the Intake stroke, the intake valve opens and the fuel-air mixture is drawn into the cylinder (similar to drawing back the plunger on a hypodermic needle to allow fluid to be drawn into the chamber.) When the piston reaches the bottom of the intake stroke, the intake valve closes, trapping the air-fuel mixture in the cylinder.

Compression

The piston moves up and compresses the trapped air fuel mixture that was brought in by the intake stroke. The amount that the mixture is compressed is determined by the compression ratio of the engine. The compression ratio on the average engine is in the range of 8:1 to 10:1. This means that when the piston reaches the top of the cylinder, the air-fuel mixture is squeezed to about one tenth of its original volume. 

Power

The spark plug fires, igniting the compressed air-fuel mixture which produces a powerful expansion of the vapor. The combustion process pushes the piston down the cylinder with great force turning the crankshaft to provide the power to propel the vehicle. Each piston fires at a different time, determined by the engine firing order. By the time the crankshaft completes two revolutions, each cylinder in the engine will have gone through one power stroke.

Exhaust

With the piston at the bottom of the cylinder, the exhaust valve opens to allow the burned exhaust gas to be expelled to the exhaust system. Since the cylinder contains so much pressure, when the valve opens, the gas is expelled with a violent force (that is why a vehicle without a muffler sounds so loud.) The piston travels up to the top of the cylinder pushing all the exhaust out before closing the exhaust valve in preparation for starting the four stroke process over again. 

Oiling System

Oil is the life-blood of the engine. An engine running without oil will last about as long as a human without blood. Oil is pumped under pressure to all the moving parts of the engine by an oil pump. The oil pump is mounted at the bottom of the engine in the oil pan and is connected by a gear to either the crankshaft or the camshaft. This way, when the engine is turning, the oil pump is pumping. There is an oil pressure sensor near the oil pump that monitors pressure and sends this information to a warning light or a gauge on the dashboard. When you turn the ignition key on, but before you start the car, the oil light should light, indicating that there is no oil pressure yet, but also letting you know that the warning system is working. As soon as you start cranking the engine to start it, the light should go out indicating that there is oil pressure.

Engine Cooling

Internal combustion engines must maintain a stable operating temperature, not too hot and not too cold. With the massive amounts of heat that is generated from the combustion process, if the engine did not have a method for cooling itself, it would quickly self-destruct. Major engine parts can warp causing oil and water leaks and the oil will boil and become useless.

While some engines are air-cooled, the vast majority of engines are liquid cooled. The water pump circulates coolant throughout the engine, hitting the hot areas around the cylinders and heads and then sends the hot coolant to the radiator to be cooled off.

Engine Balance

Flywheel: A 4 cylinder engine produces a power stroke every half crankshaft revolution, an 8 cylinder, every quarter revolution. This means that a V8 will be smother running than a 4. To keep the combustion pulses from generating a vibration, a flywheel is attached to the back of the crankshaft. The flywheel is a disk that is about 12 to 15 inches in diameter. On a standard transmission car, the flywheel is a heavy iron disk that doubles as part of the clutch system. On automatic equipped vehicles, the flywheel is a stamped steel plate that mounts the heavy torque converter. The flywheel uses inertia to smooth out the normal engine pulses.

Balance Shaft: Some engines have an inherent rocking motion that produces an annoying vibration while running. To combat this, engineers employ one or more balance shafts. A balance shaft is a heavy shaft that runs through the engine parallel to the crankshaft. This shaft has large weights that, while spinning, offset the rocking motion of the engine by creating an opposite rocking motion of their own.

hybrid automobile

A 'hybrid electric ' (HEV) is a type of hybrid vehicle and electric vehicle which combines a conventional internal combustion engine (ICE) propulsion system with an electric propulsion system. The presence of the electric powertrain is intended to achieve either better fuel economy than a conventional vehicle, or better performance. A variety of types of HEV exist, and the degree to which they function as EVs varies as well. The most common form of HEV is the hybrid electric car, although hybrid electric trucks (pickups and tractors) and buses also exist.

Modern HEVs make use of efficiency-improving technologies such as regenerative braking, which converts the vehicle's kinetic energy into battery-replenishing electric energy, rather than wasting it as heat energy as conventional brakes do. Some varieties of HEVs use their internal combustion engine to generate electricity by spinning an electrical generator (this combination is known as a motor-generator), to either recharge their batteries or to directly power the electric drive motors. Many HEVs reduce idle emissions by shutting down the ICE at idle and restarting it when needed; this is known as a start-stop system. A hybrid-electric produces less emissions from its ICE than a comparably-sized gasoline car, as an HEV's gasoline engine is usually smaller than a pure fossil-fuel vehicle, and if not used to directly drive the car, can be geared to run at maximum efficiency, further improving fuel economy.

Types of powertrain

 

Hybrid electric vehicles can be classified according to the way in which power is supplied to the drivetrain:

In parallel hybrids, the ICE and the electric motor are both connected to the mechanical transmission and can simultaneously transmit power to drive the wheels, usually through a conventional transmission. Honda's Integrated Motor Assist (IMA) system as found in the Insight, Civic Accord, as well as the BAS Hybrid system found in the Chevrolet Malibu hybrids are examples of production parallel hybrids.

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Top national markets for hybrid electric vehicles between 2007 and 2009
Rank	Country	Number of registered hybrids 2009	Percent of global hybrid registrations 2009	Number of registered hybrids 2008	Percent of global hybrid registrations 2008	Number of registered hybrids 2007	Percent of global hybrid registrations 2007
1	Japan	334,000	45%	94,259	18%	69,015	14%
2	United States	290,271	39%	312,209	61%	350,289	70%
3	Canada	16,167(1)	2%	15,385	3%	14,828	3%
4	Netherlands	13,686(1)	-	11,814	2%	n.a.(2)	-
5	United Kingdom	13,661(1)	-	19,963	4%	15,968	3%
Top 5		-	-	453,630	89%	457,615	91%
World		740,000		511,758		500,405
Notes: (1) Cumulative sales until November 2009 only. (2) For year 2007 Netherlands was not among the top 5 world markets. Germany, with 7,515 hybrids sold, was the fifth country in the rank.

Rank 2009	Metropolitan Area	New registered hybrids per 1000 households (2009)	Rank 2008	Metropolitan Area	New registered hybrids per 1000 households (2008)
1	Portland, OR	8.8	1	Portland, OR	12.17
2	Helena, MT	6.7	2	San Francisco, CA	8.84
3	San Francisco, CA	6.7	3	Monterey, CA	7.16
4	Washington, DC	5.1	4	Santa Barbara, CA	6.94
5	Los Angeles, CA	4.8	5	San Diego, CA	6.57
6	San Diego, CA	4.7	6	Los Angeles	6.08
7	Seattle, WA	4.7	7	Charlottesville, VA	5.42
8	Juneau, AK	4.6	8	Seattle, WA	4.90
9	Santa Barbara, CA	4.4	9	Washington, DC	4.85
10	Monterey, CA	4.3	10	Sacramento, CA	4.85
U.S. metropolitan area average		1.8	U.S. metropolitan area average		2.1