Jul 22, 2010 (From the CalCars-News archive)
We have loads of new developments: so we're splitting it into three separate posts. In this one, we highlight several more conversion companies in addition to those at our website; we note some media coverage of our "Big Fix" strategy, and we point to an organization and an analyses that help make the case for our approach.
We'll be adding these to our list at http://www.calcars.org/ice-conversions.html by the weekend:
- AMP (ADVANCED MECHANICAL PRODUCTS) A Cincinnati, Ohio company converting GM vehicles (Solstice, Sky, Equinox) to EV. http://www.AMPelectricvehicles.com
- LIBERTY ELECTRIC CARS A new British company in business selling conversions of Range Rovers to all-electric vehicles with a 200-mile range. http://www.liberty-ecars.com/
- ReVOLO: Two companies in India, Bharat Forge Limited http://www.bharatforge.com and KPIT Cummins Infosystems Limited http://www.kpitcummins.com have developed a low-cost add-on solution. Announcement at http://blogs.strategyanalytics.com/auto/?p=114 and descriptions at http://green.autoblog.com/2010/06/15/retrofit-your-vehicle-with-hybrid-power-in-less-than-six-hours and http://www.carblogindia.com/revolo-hybrid-car-kit/
- WRIGHTSPEED has a game plan to go from sportscars to trucks http://www.wrightspeed.com . Ian Wright, part of the founding team at Tesla, built a proof-of-concept race car to demonstrate what could be possible in heavy vehicles. He's talked about this for some time, but now he explains his planned sequence leading to conversion kits for truck fleets that could save fleet owners 3,000-5,000 gallons/year per truck with a three-year return on investment. http://earth2tech.com/2010/07/18/a-tesla-pioneer-paves-a-path-for-high-performance-hybrids/
BRITISH CAR SITE GUNG-HO FOR GAS-GUZZLER CONVERSIONS: The editor of The Green Car Website asks, "Are car conversions the key in battle against oil use?" Faye Sunderland picks up on many of our key points at http://www.thegreencarwebsite.co.uk/blog/index.php/2010/07/20/are-car-conversions-the-key-in-battle-against-oil-use-the-green-piece/
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR: Mark Clayton's report on President Obama's visit to a Missouri factory for Smith Electric's new delivery trucks quotes us saying "No question about it, the commercial fleet market is a giant untapped opportunity for electrified vehicles. We think the future will be retrofitting existing trucks with electric-drive technology." http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/2010/0708/Obama-touts-electric-delivery-truck-but-still-a-long-haul-to-market/
COALITION FOR GREEN CAPITAL PROPOSES CLEAN ENERGY BANK: Led by former FCC Chairman Reed Hundt, this relatively new advocacy group urges investments to enable energy service companies to offer retrofits to buildings. See Hundt's April 14 testimony at http://www.coalitionforgreencapital.com/in-the-news.html . We've proposed to the group that it expand its financing focus to include vehicles as part of the "built environment" that needs to be fixed.
THE CHALLENGE OF REPLACING OFFSHORE OIL: A thoughtful comment shows the scale of the problem -- the size and intractability of our dependence on oil -- at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-nelder/195-californias-or-74-tex_b_596546.html