Canon PowerShot S100
ƒ/2
5.2 mm
1/30
800
NIce parking spots for Virgin Airlines at SFO.
CBS filmed a drive of my car, and you can see the segment on c|net.
And the BMW ActiveE cars seem to frequent the horse barn (below).
8 responses to “EV Parade”
-
The third electric BMW in California, and the first Tesla Sedan:
This solar flare photo is by Googler Salil Pandit and Jen Federico. Here is his Electronaut BMW promo video.
Since it is a retrofit of a gas-burner, like most EV experiments, there is not much room up front, and the hood bulges up a bit (giving a bit of a Subaru look).This peek under the hood comes from a different Active E at the same location:
and the window sticker:
MSRP: $60,395 EPA estimated range: 94 miles
BMW has 700 trial cars in the U.S., with 70 in California. Many of the early models went to Googlers. They are all on leases. The owners told me that BMW says that they will not crush the cars like GM did at the end of the EV1 program, but use them for fleet vehicles and post-trial analysis. Estimated release date, if all goes well, is 2014. -
thanks for the info, i just read something about the life expectancy of lithium batteries, is directly related to temperature, the higher the shorter the life…
-
@vizpix — correct. And that’s why a laptop is the worst environment for laptop batteries (adjacent to the Intel heat pump). And that’s why an air-cooled battery pack in cars is a bit risky. Tesla uses liquid cooling throughout the battery pack to maintain temperature in the ideal range.
It makes me curious how long these temp-regulated cells might last. The normal way to test the life is an accelerated lifetime test when you operate at extreme temperatures to simulate many cycles and years of use. But what if there are non-linear chemical degradation effects that depend on temperature (as there are)? So we already have one Roadster customer who has logged 200,000 kilometers, and she’s still going like the Energizer bunny. =)
In any case, my car comes with an 8 year unlimited miles warranty on the battery.
-
greenwashing everywhere… =)
Love the note up there, Erik… very funny.
Oh, and the EV pairings continue…. Tim parked next to me and grabbed this shot:
I have been thinking… if I just stencil painted "EV Parking" to a couple choice parking slots at work, how long until it’s noticed… and would they remove it?
-
It would be curious to see if there is a way to refurbish a depleted battery/cell such that it would not be so expensive to have to replace a whole battery pack.
Leave a Reply