Range Extender

2011 Chevrolet Volt – Click above for high-res image gallery

At last week's Vienna Motor Symposium, FEV was on hand showing off its LiiOn-drive Fiat 500 for ride and drives. We first saw this range extended electric vehicle last year at the Society of Automotive Engineers World Congress in Detroit.

We knew it was too good to be true. Something about the Chevrolet Volt just didn't add up. How did General Motors, a corporate leviathan known showing very little forward thinking in the green car arena (except for the EV-1 ex

2011 Chevrolet Volt – Click above for high-res image gallery

2011 Audi A1 – Click above for high-res image gallery

2011 Audi A1 – Click above for high-res image gallery

Getrag Range Extender – Click above for high-res image gallery

The latest product of Lotus Engineering's ongoing development work on alternative drivetrains is a new engine custom designed for use as a range extender in electric drive vehicles. The engineers at Lotus have developed an optimized architecture using a mono-block layout that combines the cylinder head, exhaust manifold and cylinder block into a single casting. Such an architecture allows for lower weight and reduced cost which is critical to making range extended EVs or series hybrids economica

Lou Rhodes and the Dodge Circuit prototype

For all those interested in the progress of Chevrolet's pivotal 2011 Volt, take note: Autoblog is taking part in a four-way live-chat with Jon Lauckner, General Motors' Vice President Global Program Management tonight at 6:00pm EST.

Over the last century and a half engineers and designers have created a wide array of different combustion engine designs. In spite of certain inherent advantages of some of these designs, the traditional four stroke reciprocating engine has continued to dominate the transportation space. Many of these alternatives have worked in principle but have never been adopted for several reasons. The most important reason is typically the problem of converting the chemical energy of combustion into rotat

A few months back, Tesla Motors revealed that its upcoming WhiteStar sedan would be available in two variants, a pure battery electric like the Roadster and a range-extended electric more like the Chevy Volt. We still don't have many details on the car, although we do know that lessons learned while working on the drivetrain for the heavier sedan have been fed back into the Roadster for its updated 2.0 drivetrain.

Nissan has been telling us over and Domenick Yoney