Lithium replaces petrol in British sports car

High speed, high performance, high power - it used to mean high fossil fuel consumption.

But the Renewable Energy Vehicle (REV) project’s newly launched Lotus Elise has changed all that.

The sleek English sports car has been converted by staff and students in the Faculty of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics at the University of Western Australia to an electric-powered car that has barely lost any of its performance.

“We haven’t tested it at high speed yet - there really isn’t any need,” said Prof Thomas Braunl, the leader of the REV project. But a gleam in his eye acknowledged that there would be no shortage of students lining up to do that test.

“With a conventional petrol engine, the Lotus would have no problem doing more than 200 km/h. The same is achievable with an electric motor, but for weight reasons we couldn’t fit as many batteries as we wanted into it. So it would probably do around 180 km/h.”

Prof Braunl said the team tried to keep the weight the same, trading the petrol engine and fuel tank for batteries, but the car is so small and light that they had to reinforce the rear to take the batteries.

“It’s a bit heavier, but this has not affected the handling. The kart-racing feeling is still there.”

An advantage the Lotus has over REV’s first electric car, the Hyundai Getz, (apart from style) is regenerative braking.

“You just touch the brakes and the motor reverses its function, producing rather than consuming energy, and that energy is put back into the batteries,” Prof Braunl explained.

“We will do lots of testing to see how this affects the range it can travel between charging, and also its effect on driver behaviour. We feel it could be a distinct advantage for city driving, where you are doing a lot of braking.”

The range is always an issue with electric cars. The Lotus can do about 110 km before its batteries are empty.

Now Perth’s first fast-recharging station for electric cars has been opened at RAC headquarters. It is the first of 12 fast recharge bays which are part of a three-year electric car research project being run by the REV group.

The first of 11 locally converted, electrically powered Ford Focus cars was also launched.

These cars will be used as pool cars by the WA Electrical Vehicle Trial’s participants, which include the RAC, Telstra, The West Australian, several local municipalities and state government departments.

Electric vehicle fast-charging bays will be installed at UWA, Murdoch University, in Perth and Fremantle, and at several Gull service stations, which are a major REV sponsor.

Other sponsors of the Lotus are Galaxy Resources, a company that is mining lithium in Ravensthorpe (a material used in the production of lithium-ion batteries for electric cars) and CREST, the Centre for Research into Energy for Sustainable Transport, at Murdoch University.

Along with the Lotus, the REV group unveiled a new-generation racing car, which will compete in the international Formula Student Electric competition.

“We converted UWA Motorsport’s 2001 Formula SAE racing car to electric drive, but the REV students are already working on designs to build a new car for this year’s competition,” Prof Braunl said.

His 25 undergraduate and postgraduate students have been working on four cars: the Lotus Elise, the electric Formula SAE racing car, the Hyundai Getz (launched three years ago) and the BMW X5.

“The BMW is a drive-by-wire project,” he said. “That means a car that can be driven by an embedded computer system. It can already brake and steer itself and we are looking to do further work on this project next year.”

University of Western Australia

www.uwa.edu.au