Electric Car

 Screenshot of DBM Energy's Audi A2 crossing the finish line of 375 mile drive.
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We all know that  battery packs are the weakest link in electric vehicles. Not only are they heavy and expensive, but they take a long time to recharge and on average can only provide around 100 miles per charge. 
A German-based company has changed all that with a new vehicle capable of driving up to 375 miles at moderate highway speeds. 
That’s roughly the equivalent of driving from Santa Barbara, CA to the Hoover Dam, without a recharge. 
It doesn’t end there. The company responsible for the battery pack, DBM Energy, claims a battery pack efficiency of 97 percent and a recharge time of around 6 minutes when charged from a direct current source. 
Unlike the small Daihatsu which was heavily modified by a team in Japan earlier this year that achieved a massive 623 miles on a charge at around 27 mph, the Audi A2 modified by DBM Energy was able to achieve its 375 miles range at an average speed of 55 mph. 
In contrast to the Japanese Daihatsu which had just one seat to enable more batteries to be squeezed into its diminutive frame, the DBM A2 retained its four original seats. 
At the end of the historic drive, DBM’s CEO Mirko Hannemann, who has been driving the car for around seven hours between the German cities of Munich and Berlin even offered to charge up the cellphones of the waiting journalists with the remaining power left in the car. 
Funded as part of a joint venture between German utility company Lekker Energie and the German Economy Ministry, the prototype battery offers a glimpse into the future of the electric car. 

 DBM Energy Audi A2 Electric Car
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Don’t think for a second that this is a one-off battery pack. DBM’s battery technology, called KOLIBRI AlphaPolymer, is already in use in the unglamorous role of warehouses, where forklift trucks running on the same battery pack are capable of 28 hours of continuous operation before recharging is required. 
We’re always a little cautious of battery technologies offering ultra-fast recharge and a magnitude of range improvement on other battery chemistry types, but everything we’ve seen and heard from DBM Energy thus far points to a battery technology we’re all keen to watch. 
Could this be the future of electric vehicles? Is it ready?
If the battery technology is truly as revolutionary as this impressive journey hints and the battery packs from DBM are ready for the arduous duties of daily abuse at the hands of electric car drivers worldwide it is conceivable that this could be the answer to range anxiety. 
Even more, dare we suggest it, the conventional combustion engined car may have met its match. 
Only time will tell. 

 Taken in Lisbon, Portugal. Pre-Production Test.
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Your Mileage May Vary. One of the terms banded about time and time again by automakers as a justification for why your car doesn’t get the fuel economy it says your car should. The reason? Fuel economy is affected by many different variables, from the mood of the driver to the weather, tire condition and even the type of shoes the driver is wearing.  The official EPA figures for the 2011 Nissan Leaf haven’t been released yet, and while Nissan has been open about the expected variances in range between optimal driving conditions and poor driving conditions after a series of computer simulations, we had one burning question.
Does the 2011 Nissan Leaf get 100 miles to a charge, or is the list range something only elite hypermiling ninjas can achieve?
So when Nissan Europe invited us to Portugal to test-drive the closest example to a production version of the car we’ve seen, we jumped at the chance.

 2011 Nissan Leaf
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The car we drove, in a brilliant white, was made as part of the production test-run in Oppama, Japan. While these vehicles will never see life beyond the Nissan press corp, the vehicle we drove was as close to the cars which started rolling off the production line last week as we’ve seen so far.  While the European 2011 Nissan Leaf is only offered in one trim level, the car we drove was comparable to the SL trim option for the U.S. market, with solar panel, fast-charge port, fog lights, rear-view camera and automatic headlights.
Setting out on one of the three routes Nissan Europe had pre-programmed into our car, we soon discovered that even in Eco mode, the 2011 Nissan Leaf could easily keep up with traffic. Our goal: to drive as we would in an everyday situation to see if Nissan’s claim of a 100 mile range was realistic.
While most of the trip would be in the car’s “Eco” mode, we vowed to keep up with traffic, not break the speed limit and to only use the car’s additional electrical systems when we needed to.
Being a European car, the odometer and speedometer read in kilometres instead of miles so our target figure for range was 161km.  Throughout the trip we aimed to keep the odometer plus indicated remaining range as close to that figure as possible.

 2011 Nissan Leaf European Test Routes
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Heading west out of Lisbon and into the country, our first demo route rose up into the hills north of the seaside town of Cascais before returning back to Lisbon with fast freeway driving.  While our trip west was on roads limited to no more than 50 mph, the return loop allowed us to push the Leaf at freeway speeds, with our co-driver keeping up with traffic at speeds exceeding 75 mph.