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Amerigon Incorporated , a leader in developing and marketing products based on advanced thermoelectric (TE) technologies, today announced that its subsidiary, BSST LLC, will partner in a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) project to develop a highly-efficient thermoelectric heating and cooling system for automobiles that will substantially reduce energy consumption, engine load and ultimately greenhouse gas emissions. The goal of the 36-month, up to $8.4 million project is to create a zonal heating and cooling system for automobiles that heats or cools the vehicle occupants, rather than the entire cabin and its components, thereby reducing the energy consumed by existing heating/cooling systems by one third.

It is all about batteries. In my opinion batteries are the worst roadblock on the way to further spread of electric vehicles. The Li-Ion-battery as mentioned in the document "Conti-Li-Ion.doc" was shown on the IAA 2008 "Commercial Vehicles" It contains 2 kWh, has a voltage of 350 V and a power of 60 kW. It has a volume of 52 l and weighs 65 kg, all included. It contains an energy of 2 kWh. This is the energy content of 200 ml of gasoline. To get a satisfactory service life you can use only about 20 % of the capacity of the battery, e. g. between 60 and 80 % state of charge. Calculated in gasoline that is 40 ml, about a double schnaps (liquor), as we say in Germany. So all this ado with electro-motor-generator, DC/DC- and AC/DC-converters, controllers and so on serves only for shoving a double schnaps in and out of the battery. Of course you can do it several times, wheras the gasoline, which you take out of the tank is lost forever. But the calculation shows how far the capacity even of the most sophisticated batteries is from what would be really needed.

a) at an October 2008 plant visit at Mitsubishi in Osaka (IWCC-GA), Japan, I had the opportunity to drive myself the first electric car which will be commercially available on the Japanese market mid 2009 at a price of 30 k$ with the following key characteristics : -  Li-Ion battery capacity (in-out) 25 kWh -  Guaranteed battery life time 4 years -  Charge time 30 minutes on a 400 V supply for charge -  Useful range :  150 km in summer / 90 km in winter (battery and passenger        need warming) -  Major parking lots and shopping malls will offer charging for free in Japan  -  value of consumption is 1 L of gasoline for 100 km.