Mixed Greens: Electric vehicles with 1000km range, 10 mins charge?

Italian renewable energy group Silex Power claims to have designed a premium luxury electric vehicle – the Chreos – that is capable of achieving outstanding range, performance, and charge time. Among the fastback sedan’s eyebrow-raising specifications are a 1000km range (at 125km/h speed), less than 10 minutes charging time – from flat batteries to full, the ability to go from 0-100km/h in <2.9 seconds (0 – 200km/h in <6.0s), and a top speed of 300km/h.

Aware that some of these claims might seem somewhat fanciful, Silex Power says on its website that, while “it is still premature to disclose our technologies and advancements… we want to share with you our vision of the feasibility of electric vehicles in a world where the perception of an electric car is of a vehicle that takes hours and hours to charge.” According to the company, the super-fast charging comes down to a “very expensive” lithium battery variant, which has a modified cathode that allows rapid charging. They will also use a “new breed of inverters,” than will convert high tension voltage to suitable voltage required to charge the battery packs.

“This is the innovation that we are proposing to the world,” Silex Power says of its Hypercharge technology – “to introduce the concept of having high voltage points in service stations to create grids of charging stations for future rapid charging electric vehicles.” As for the claims of a powerful battery back that allows for 1000km range per charge, as Nicholas Brown points out on CleanTechnica, we are yet to see an electric vehicle do that, but “prototype battery technology has the ability to store ten times as much energy as typical lithium-ion batteries.” The company says there will be a further release, with further information on some of the technologies behind Chreos, in late April.

In other news…

Tenax Energy – the Australian company behind plans to power Darwin with tidal energy and to turn the Northern Territory into a tropical tidal energy hub – has recruited the renewables knowledge and expertise of Philip van der Riet, one of the founders of Pacific Hydro, in a role the company says will initially be as a consultant, to assist in market development. Van der Riet says the recent increase in global investment in ocean energy technologies was a major factor in his decision to join the Tenax team, which says it has a number of exciting initiatives planned for the first quarter of 2013.

Mining logisitics groups Bulk Mine Services has become the first brand new company to be certified as carbon-neutral, after voluntarily taking up the government-led challenge. The trucking company has committed to trialling low sulfur diesel and biodiesel and a driver incentive program that rewards lower fuel consumption. It will also decommission aging trucks early, and recycle waste oil and tyres. Its electricity needs will be met through GreenPower, and it will buy and retire offsets to bring its net emissions to zero.

The Sustainable Energy Association of Australia (SEA) has released its policy position ahead of the WA state election on 09 March, with five key recommendations drawn from surveys of its 300-plus members. The peak body has called for the state government to: adopt a state-based renewable energy target; reduce barriers to commercial self-generation; commit government to purchase a set amount of renewable energy generation; accelerate improvements to WA’s public transport services and infrastructure; and support the roll out of smart meters