An electric car powered by 8,320 laptop batteries this week drove 1000km on a single charge.
The Japan Electric Vehicle Club took a stock Daihatsu Mira and replaced its petrol engine with an electric motor powered by Sanyo lithium-ion batteries of the kind normally found in laptop computers.
The record-breaking drive took almost 28 hours at an average speed of around 40km/h. A team of 17 people took turns behind the wheel.
The forthcoming Nissan Leaf will have a range of 100 miles before it needs to be re-charaged, but manufacturers admit that ‘range anxiety’ will dissuade buyers until rapid recharging facilities are commonplace.
Can I buy the Mira EV?
The Mira EV may have a highly-desirable range, but it is not available to buy. Quite apart form anything else, building an electric car powered by laptop batteries is horrendously expensive. If each of the Mira EV batteries costs £30, then the power pack alone is worth almost £250,000.
A spokesperson for the Environmental Transport Association (ETA) said: “Reducing the cost of batteries remains the number one challenge for electric car makers, but the Mira EV does at least show that an extended range is possible.”
How far is it possible to drive in an electric car?
A team of French students from Polytech Nantes managed 13,830mpg in fuel-cell electric car earlier this month at the Shell eco marathon event in Germany.
The single-seater car used its engine for very short bursts to boost its speed up then coasted until it lost momentum, an evolution of the stop/start technology that allows conventional cars to stop their engines when at rest at lights or in traffic and then fire-up as soon as the accelerator pedal is touched
kimmy kervel
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