The Car with 350 MPG

From Forbes.com:
The race drew teams from Volkswagen, BMW, Mercedes and Peugeot, but Gordon Murray Designs walked away the winner.

The T.27, an all-electric car with a lightweight composite chassis, won the Future Car Challenge sponsored by the Royal Automobile Club (RAC) by completing a 57.13 mile course between Brighton and London on less energy than its fellow competitors. Carrying two occupants, the T.27 consumed only 7 kilowatt hours of electricity, which is about equal to 350 miles per gallon, according to the company. The total energy bill came to 64 pence, or about $1.03.

Second place went to an electrified Jaguar E-Type from Germany which consumed 8.5 kilowatt hours. Tesla Roadsters, Nissan Leafs, an electrified Citroen, a Honda Insight and a few diesels also competed.

Murray, a noted race car designer whose cars won world championships at Brabham and McLaren, is on a quest to get cars to lose weight. By swapping out steel components for parts made from structurally strong plastic or composites, car manufacturers can dramatically increase mileage without impacting performance. Less weight, after all, leads directly to better fuel efficiency and/or acceleration.

A T.27, for instance, can go 100 miles on a charge, the same as a Nissan Leaf or Mitsubishi i. The T.27, however, only sports a 12.5 kilowatt hour battery pack, which is about half the size of the battery in the other two cars. A smaller battery means quicker charging times and, potentially, a lower sticker price. Last year, Murray’s T.25, a T.27 with a gas engine, beat half of the electric cars in the race with an 80 miles per gallon rating.

Bright Automotive in the U.S. is mining similar concepts with a lightweight delivery truck.

Composite cars can also be cheaper to produce. Instead of steel stamping mills and painting stalls needed for applying rust-proofing, manufacturers only need to invest in software and injection molding machinery.

Murray’s company does not plan on producing cars. Instead, it will license its intellectual property. A deal with an established manufacturer may come next year...

Tiny Car Gets 350 MPG, Beats Corporate Competitors In Energy Derby
Michael Kanellos
11/08/2011
http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelkanellos/2011/11/08/tiny-car-beats-multinationals-in-energy-derby-with-350-mpg

Bolivia holds key to electric car future

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7707847.stm

Bolivia holds key to electric car future
By Damian Kahya
BBC News, Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia
Sunday, 9 November 2008
Bolivia's lithium reserves could bring wealth to the country

High in the Andes, in a remote corner of Bolivia, lies more than half the world's reserves of a mineral that could radically reduce our reliance on dwindling fossil fuels.

Lithium carries a great promise. It could help power the fuel efficient electric or petrol-electric hybrid vehicles of the future.

But, as is the case with fossil fuels, it is a limited resource.

Lithium carbonate is already in the batteries of laptop computers and mobile phones.

It is used because it allows more energy to be stored in a lighter, smaller space than most alternatives.

And as the auto industry rushes to produce new fuel efficient and electric cars, it too is turning to lithium batteries as its first choice to boost the power of their new models.

GM has one in its new hybrid Volt, Toyota is testing one in its next generation hybrid Prius. Mercedes is testing an electric version of its Smart, while BMW is doing the same with its Mini.

And Nissan-Renault, Mitsubishi and VW are all rushing to buy or produce enough of the batteries to power their future models.

The best of the pure electric cars can reach ranges of more than 150 kilometres per charge.

More is needed

But there is a problem.

Mitsubishi, which plans to release its own electric car soon, estimates that the demand for lithium will outstrip supply in less than 10 years unless new sources are found.

And they have ended up in Bolivia.

"The demand for lithium won't double but increase by five times," according to Eichi Maeyama Mitsubishi's general manager in La Paz.

"We will need more lithium sources - and 50% of the world's reserves of lithium exist in Bolivia, in the Salar de Uyuni," he adds, pointing out that without new production, the price of lithium will rise prohibitively.

Locals fear the benefits will not be passed on

But almost all the commercially exploitable reserves are found in the brine under salt flats.

The world's largest reserves lie in Bolivia at the Salar de Uyuni - in the remote southern Andean plane.

But Bolivia is not a country known to be friendly to foreign industry.

Its socialist president, Evo Morales, is keen to expand state control over its natural resources, a task carried out by Bolivia's minister for mining, Luis Alberto Echazu.

"We want to send a message to the industrialized countries and their companies," Mr Echazu says.

"We will not repeat the historical experience since the fifteenth century: raw materials exported for the industrialisation of the west that has left us poor."

Modest ambitions

Gold, silver, tin, oil and gas have all been found and exported from here whilst the country remains the poorest in the region.

For President Morales' supporters, that is reason enough not to allow in foreign mining companies to extract the lithium.

Across the flats, freelance miners work to break up the surface salt selling it to passing trucks for just a few dollars.

Indigenous and poor, they are core supporters of the president.

A grizzled old miner, giving his name only as Alfredo, says he does not believe that lithium will ever be extracted.

"We don't want to see foreign companies here," he says.

"It would be very bad, as the government says."

Alfredo's hopes for the future are modest.

"I just want to work until I die" he says, a smile across his face. It is not an uncommon sentiment here.

Sharing the benefits

In spite of the grinding poverty here, attempts in the 1980's and 1990's by foreign companies to extract the lithium met with resistance from the community.

They say the money would go elsewhere.

Francisco Quisbert is a local activist with President Morales' party who took part in the resistance.

Now he is working with the president to hammer out a new plan for a state-owned pilot plant on the flats.

"We don't want international involvement," he says.

"This plan has raised the hopes of the region.

"Before our grandparents lived on the salt. They arrived from the valleys in caravans of llamas, but the market forced them to leave.

"We want to return to live on the salar [and] improve our living conditions and to participate in the project."

To begin with the pilot plant will produce no more than 1.2 kilotonnes a year.

If an industrial plant is then built it may increase to around 30 kilotonnes by 2012, - thats just under a third of current production.

But most lithium now goes to small batteries for electronic goods.

Car batteries are far larger and Mitsubishi estimates the world will need 500 kilotonnes a year just to service a niche market. For electric cars to become the norm, it could need far more.

Mitsubishi predicts that there will be a supply shortage by 2015.

Pollution nevertheless

Analysts suspect that Bolivia's government can produce this much.

"Governments in South America have had a very successful history of mining," explains Charles Kernot, a mining analyst at Evolution Securities.

But the question is how fast.

"They probably don't have a lot of experience of doing this sort of thing themselves so they'll have to bring in expertise and technology," Mr Kernot adds.

"That whole process may take a lot longer than people are anticipating."

Consequently, he continues, "the car manufacturers will have to strike a balance between how quickly they manufacture with the supply of metal because they don't want to drive the price up to such an extent that the cars get priced out of the market".

Long-term, Bolivia's government is wary of the environmental damage mass extraction could cause.

The mining minister, Mr Eschazu, has a stark message for Western firms.

"The capitalist leaders have to change," he says.

"If all the world had consumers like North America, everyone with a car, it would grind to a halt.

"It is also going to generate pollution, not just from fossil fuels but also from lithium plants, which produce sulphur dioxide. This isn't a magic solution."

It is not a view likely to go down well in the offices of Toyota and General Motors.

Photographer accused of helping MI6 found dead

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23436233-details/Photographer+accused+of+helping+MI6+kill+Diana+was+found+dead+in+burnt-out+BMW+with+a+hole+in+his+head/article.do

Photographer accused of helping MI6 kill Diana was found dead in burnt-out BMW with a hole in his head
09.02.08
James Andanson: The photographer was found dead in a burnt out BMW with a hole in his head

The photographer accused of helping MI6 to murder Princess Diana was found in a burnt-out BMW with a hole in his head, a court heard today.

James Andanson died after boasting to friends of having secretly taken "explosive" photos of the Paris crash scene, the Diana inquest was told.

The Frenchman owned a white Fiat Uno, which Mohamed Al Fayed claims he used to cause the fatal collision that killed the princess and his son Dodi.

The Harrods boss believes the photographer was planning to go public with his "involvement" in the alleged British secret service plot when his charred body was found in a forest near his home in the South of France in May 2000.

French Investigating officer Jean-Michel Lauzun told the London hearing that he arrived while the vehicle was still ablaze and saw the corpse alight at the steering wheel with a two inch hole in his left temple.

But police concluded that it was a suicide after a pathologist said the hole was due to the intense heat of the fire after he set alight to himself.

High levels of carbon monoxide was also found in his blood, suggesting Andanson was alive inside the fireball long enough to inhale fumes, rather than being killed beforehand.

But Mr Al Fayed's barrister Michael Mansfield QC suggested he may have been attacked before the car was set on fire.

He said: "We just don't know whether it is a case of a man consigning himself to a bizarre and painful death or whether in fact some violence had been meted out to him first."

Four months after the August 1997 crash, Andanson had bragged to friends that he had trailed Diana's Mercedes into the Alma Tunnel where it smashed into a pillar.

Unlike other paparazzi in the chase, he claimed to have been too "cunning" to get rounded up by the police afterwards and escaped arrest.

His photos from the scene were kept hidden in a safe and would cause a furore when they were published, he insisted.

French police were later tipped off about Andanson's claims, but when they interviewed him he produced receipts to show that on the night of the crash he had been in Lignieres, 170 miles to the south of Paris.

And while he had owned a white Fiat Uno, tests showed that paint flecks on the Mercedes could not have come from it.

Mr Al Fayed claims Diana and Dodi were killed on the orders of Prince Philip because she was pregnant with his child and they were planning to marry.

The Smart car is coming

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/11/12/smart_car/

The Smart car is coming
Sure, the tiny autos are perfectly suited for the narrow lanes of Paris and Rome. But here in the land of freeways and monster SUVs, are we ready to downsize so far?
By Katharine Mieszkowski

Nov. 12, 2007 Everything's bigger in Texas, including, surprisingly, the interest in the itsy-bitsy car known as the Smart. In January, the miniature two-seat cars that dot the narrow lanes of Europe will make their way across the Atlantic and go on sale at 70 dealerships across America. For the past seven months, the Smart, which is made by Mercedes, has been embarked on a 50-city road show, offering test drives, photo ops and hype worthy of a monster-truck rally.

On a bright Saturday morning, a fleet of the tiny cars is on display at Mockingbird Station, one of Dallas' prefab entertainment and lifestyle complexes, thick with restaurants, movie theaters, stores and lofts. More than 100 Texans are waiting to test-drive the Smart model called Fortwo, whose price starts at $11,600. Many wannabe drivers are armed with cameras, as if they're here hoping to catch a glimpse of an exotic animal at the zoo.

Charlie Barnhardt, a big, bald man in snakeskin cowboy boots and a hunting cameo shirt with birds on it, drove an hour and a half from Greenville in his Jeep Grand Cherokee to see the Smart. Barnhardt, who runs a welding shop and hopes soon to retire, gives this verdict. "They're cute," he chuckles with a sweet smile. "I think it would go over good" in Texas.

Here in the land of the big pickup, the cuteness factor is turning a lot of heads for the smallest-horsepower vehicle offered by a major automaker. Irene Zeilan, a 40-something redhead, commutes five miles to her job at Texas Instruments in a 1988 Ford Bronco. But she recently bought a house in the burbs and will soon be making a 25-mile slog to work. So she's planning to shrink her ride and is thrilled by the microcars. "The time is right for this kind of car here," she says.

That's Mercedes' thinking, too. For years, the Smart car has roamed the roads of France, Italy and Germany, as well as Malaysia, South Africa and Canada -- 36 countries in all. Now the German automaker believes rising gas prices have propelled American drivers into recovery from their SUV binge. It believes we're finally ready to downsize -- way, way down.

But still there's something about the Smart car that seems to contradict the American way of life. We are a frontier country of wide-open spaces and eight-lane freeways. Want to go green? Sure, as long as it's with a 6,000-square-foot mansion with solar panels and a hybrid SUV. Besides, we're not Europeans. We don't drive cars that resemble toy poodles. We know all about the geopolitical crises of oil and the environmental fallout of all those carbon-dioxide emissions and exhaust fumes, but we demand a lot of metal and horsepower to keep us feeling safe and secure.

After all, the SUV craze was fueled in large part by the feeling that big cars were safer, and despite being mightly debunked, those sentiments die hard. An early Car and Driver review of the Smart Fortwo pronounced it "scary," while suggesting that only coastal snobs trying to navigate the narrow streets and limited parking of cities like Boston and San Francisco would settle for something this small. "Just how many urban fashionistas are there?" the reviewer sniffed.

"Cars have gotten incrementally smaller, but this is a quantum leap smaller," says Philip Reed, senior consumer advice editor for Edmunds.com. The two-seater measures just 8.8 feet long -- a whopping total of 106 inches. It's 5.1 feet tall and wide. The Smart's often compared to a golf cart, except with heated leather seats, a sunroof and a nice stereo. Yet it's truly diminutive size has inspired other admirers to liken it to a roller skate or a bowling shoe. "For two people there's room," says Brandon Dye, executive editor of AutomotiveTrends.com. "It's not a torture cell by a long shot. But Americans are used to our big cars."

Fears about the Smart's being like a cue ball in an accident on a typical American freeway are its biggest drawback. Because it weighs a mere 1,800 pounds, some drivers will never overcome the horrific vision of a collision between a Smart and, say, a Toyota Land Cruiser, which clocks in at 5,700 pounds. "I like big trucks," says Pedro Caballero, checking out the Smarts in Dallas. Caballero owns a P.T. Cruiser, the smallest thing he has ever driven. "You're up so high. You feel safe."

"Many consumers equate size with safety," says Sean Comey, spokesman for the American Automobile Association. "And ultimately, the most important job that any vehicle will ever be called upon to perform is to save your life, and prevent you from being injured." However, he adds, "some smaller cars are engineered in such a way that they are in fact safer than big ones in many respects." In recent decades, auto experts have shown that it's not how much a car weighs that keeps its passengers safe. More important are a car's design and inclusion of safety features like air bags and anti-lock brakes, not to mention driver responsibility and skill.

The Smart Fortwo meets all American safety standards. The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has not yet crash-tested it, but plans to do so in the first quarter of 2008. In the European Union, the crash testing body Euro NCAP gave the 2007 Smart Fortwo a four out of five stars safety rating. In fact, at 1,650 pounds, the European Smart Fortwo is somewhat lighter than the U.S. model.

Reed argues that the Smart's as safe as a small car can be. "The seats rise completely above your head, and they're made of extra-hard plastic," he says. "There are air bags everywhere." Passengers are also surrounded by what the company calls the "tridion safety cell," a kind of egg-shaped steel cage, designed to absorb the impact of bigger vehicles, which means practically every other car on the road.

Denise McCluggage, a columnist for AutoWeek magazine, who is a former race-car driver, says that size is also the car's advantage when you're behind the wheel. Not only does it slip into parking spaces that midsize sedans can only dream of, it allows you to maneuver through cars in clogged traffic. "It's almost like a motorcycle in that way," says McCluggage, who drove the Smart at the Frankfurt Auto Show this year. "You can really find places that no one else can go. It makes you feel so smug because that can mean the difference of half a block, so that means you make a light or don't. Over time, you just get through traffic faster." She hopes that crowded cities will designate places for Smart car parking, the way that they do bicycle parking, to encourage the cars' use to save space, money and fuel.

Throughout the U.S., small cars are indeed making a comeback, thanks to oil topping $96 a barrel and gas prices staying high, at least by American standards. In 2006, small cars made up about 15 percent of new cars sold, while in 2002 that figure was just 13.8 percent, according to the National Automobile Dealers Association. As of September 2007, 16 percent of cars sold were small, including the likes of the Honda Fit, Toyota Yaris, Nissan Versa, Chevrolet Aveo and Mini Cooper.

For some, the appeal of the Smart is owning a vehicle that doesn't seem wasteful. In Dallas, Sondra Dickson, taking photos of the Smart Fortwo using a huge black camera with a zoom lens, says: "They say Texas isn't going to like little cars, but we have a Mini and it's too big for us!" Although the Smart's official gas mileage hasn't been published, the company says the two-seater is designed to achieve an average of 40 miles per gallon. That's not so great for such a tiny car, but it's more than 10 miles per gallon better than the average American car.

Many auto industry observers expect the Smart to sell well in the U.S., especially at first when it has newness going for it. Over time, whether it's built well, reliable and performs consistently over time will make the difference in ongoing sales. In any case, environmentalists and patriots who want to break Americans' dependence on foreign oil shouldn't get too excited about the nation's fleet of mammoth gas guzzlers being replaced in a wave of zippy, little, fuel-efficient cuteness.

The typical American household simply owns more vehicles now, with drivers holding on to old vehicles instead of trading them in when they get new ones. "The trend is toward more vehicles per household, and has been for more than a decade," says Paul Taylor, chief economist for the NADA. The average is currently more than two cars per household, even though more and more households are headed by a single person.

"We're seeing an increasing tendency for families to have more cars than drivers," says Comey of the AAA. He believes that this phenomenon may skew some of the stats about the increase in smaller vehicle ownership, because buying a smaller car doesn't necessarily equal taking a bigger car off the road. As cars and trucks have gotten more reliable, their dependable life span has increased. Even paint has gotten tougher. So whether it's out of dismay for how little that old beater is worth when you try to trade it in or emotional attachment to a faithful four wheels, Americans are keeping their older cars around longer. "It's like having your own family fleet. You might have one car that gets better gas mileage," says Comey.

While observers expect the Smart to sell to empty-nesters who don't need a back seat, and recent grads, who don't have kids and really can't afford a bigger car, they also imagine that many initial buyers will get a Smart as a little something extra. Some suggest that with its relatively low prices, the Smart Fortwo will be a convenient addition to the family fleet -- the third car, the weekend car, the fun car rather than a true substitute for another vehicle.

"It's priced low enough that it can be a novelty," says Reed from Edmunds. "You could already own two cars, and buy it as a novelty to run around town in, which is perhaps one of the best uses for it, in addition to -- I hate to say it -- a real car." After all, driving a big SUV or a minivan to the store for a gallon of milk can be frustrating, especially when you pull into a parking lot that is crowded with a lot of other big cars and trucks smooshed into conventional-size spaces. Why not just solve the problem the conventional American way by buying something new -- in this case another car for those trips around town?

At least one American automotive legend is sold on the Smart. That's Roger Penske, the famed race-car driver turned billionaire businessman, whose Penske Automotive Group will be distributing the cars in the United States. They'll be sold mainly at Mercedes dealerships, as well as at free-standing Smart USA dealerships. So far it appears America is ready to get Smart. More than 35,000 people have paid $99 for a refundable "reservation" to buy a Smart Fortwo.

With reporting by Andrea Grimes in Texas.