Like the Sputnik debacle of the 50s (when the Reds beat us to orbit), the Chinese have beat us to the punch for a mass market EV. Damn it!

China’s premier battery, mobile phone and now electric vehicle maker, BYD, announced yesterday the by this time next week, they’ll be the first automaker in the world to offer a mass-produced electric automobile.

Beating both the Chevy Volt and the Nissan Leaf to market, the BYD F3DM promises to deliver about 60 miles of all-electric range and sells for about $22,000.

With the Chinese government already giving Cash-For-Clunkers-style tax cuts for consumers switching from gas to electric, it looks like the F3DM is here to stay. Expect to see them on US shores sometime in 2011. We can’t wait.

Source: hybridCARS

Since the bottleneck for the advancement of hybrid and EV technology lies in battery technology, it’s refreshing to see reports like this one out of California. Looks like the eggheads over at Stanford U continue to make radical advancements in things battery parts like silicone nanowire anodes and mesoporous nanocomposites.

For the rest of us—they discovered something in 2007, reworked it and come up with the lithium-sulfur battery. The new cells are safer and hold four times the charge as lithium-ions, which promises great things for the future battery-powered products.

But before your dreams of the vibrator-equivalent to the everlasting gobstopper can come true, the scientists must overcome the fact that the new batteries can only be charged 40 – 50 times, which puts a damper on the fun—for now.

Source: engadget

Early this summer, a team of young, badass, idealistic hippies—did we mention badass—plan to lead the first ever around the world expedition in a commercially available electric vehicle. Since range anxiety is the most common reason folks shy away from EVs, the Project EVIE team is out to prove those fears wrong. After all, if they can drive a real, production EV around the freaking world, why can’t the rest of drive one to the market?

Check out their site here. They have a blog, a facebook, a twitter, a flickr, a mailing list and even a cool counter on the homepage counting down the days till they embark. Stay tuned, we have a feeling this is gonna be BIG—god speed Project EVIE!

A group of super-smart hippy engineers in Camarillo, CA have developed a fuel-injection system they claim improves gas-engine efficiency by 50%. Transonic Combustion set out to best the best hybrid on the road, the Toyota Prius, with an exclusively gasoline fueled powerplant. And, if initial tests are an indicator, they may have done it. A test vehicle outfitted with the new technology recently scored 64 mpg in a real-world highway test (as reported by the MIT Technology Review), which is about 15 mpg better than the Prius.

The system works by heating and pressurizing gasoline before injecting it into the combustion chamber, kinda like a diesel. Once the petrol is in this supercritical state, it burns much faster and cleaner, therefore requiring less fuel for complete combustion. In fact, it’s so efficient that no spark is even needed for combustion.

It’s all happening folks! Just imagine the possibility of mating an engine outfitted with this technology to an electric hybrid set up. Sounds like triple-digit mileage numbers could be right around the corner.