Treehugger: Electric Mini: 0-60 in 4 Seconds: It Has Motors In Its Wheels
A British engineering firm has put together a high-performance hybrid version of BMW’s Mini Cooper. The PML Mini QED has a top speed of 150 mph, a 0-60 mph time of 4.5 seconds. The car uses a small gasoline engine with four 160 horsepower electric motors — one on each wheel. The car has been designed to run for four hours of combined urban/extra urban driving, powered only by a battery and bank of ultra capacitors. The QED supports an all-electric range of 200-250 miles and has a total range of about 932 miles (1,500 km). For longer journeys at higher speeds, a small conventional internal combustion engine (ICE) is used to re-charge the battery. In this hybrid mode, fuel economies of up to 80mpg can be achieved.
These are the type of cars that need to be available now for people to drive. Most people shouldn’t be buying anything that gets less than 30 mpg. I think the government needs to encourage this through taxes on non transportation vehicles that get less than 30 mpg. This can be done by requiring automakers to sumbit records of how many vehicles they sold every year that doesn’t meet this requirment.
