Clearly the company is being dismantled. Reading the blog suggests nothing less than sabotage.

Conspiracy theories aside, the EV project is forward thinking, popular, low maintenance, relatively efficient and environmentally-considerate - therefore it must be stopped!

"If you don't get the job done, there are consequences. We haven't had that before."

But I thought you haven't done anything yet, so why would you have had this before? Sounds like bush/hilton statement to me

Not a single pun revolving around the word "shocker". Must be a Monday...

Just like to say how much I applaud El Reg's use of the technical argot viz "'leccy". It's the consistent high standard and academic rigour which sets this site apart.

(typed on my lappy whilst talking on my mobe)

Have I got this right - you are going to be able to buy a car with a BETA grade transmission. Then what? Plug it into the 'Net every night until you are able to download 25kgs of new gearbox? (Don't think my ADSL does matter transfer yet...)

there seemed to be genuine hope in that product.

Oh well, they'll have to leave it to the French to come up with a decent green car.

Hard not to arrive at the conclusion that the whole show just got nobbled by larger business interests. No doubt the truth will eventually out. One day.

Look - anyone with any knowledge of proper car colours knows

British cars are green

Italian cars are red

American cars are black

German cars can be any colour they like as they have no souls

Japanese cars actually work

French cars are an urban myth - they don't really exist

Remove dead weight, improve performance

you should have seen it coming - built on Lotus tech as it is

You mean this one? http://www.theaircar.com/

French cars must exist - they invented the kilometre to make French cars sound faster.

I've heard of surveys of CEOs who have said they'd love to have a policy like that, 10% of bottom performers getting the chop. Now someones gone and done it, I hope its just not a matter of time.

But all the good puns are already taken.

To mike brockington: I think my lack of a good title is because I hit my head falling out of the chair on this one!!

Seriously though, I think the conspiracy theories are overdone on this one. I saw this on TV a while back. Both the show and the car were very long on glitz and short on physics.

I can't remember how many pounds of Pounds the silly thing was to cost but I do seem to recall you needed a rather large truck (lorry if you prefer) to carry the payment in. Although a full sized car would probably be adequate if one were paying in gold bars. (Even then it would be best to use care not to overloading the suspension.)

On a related note.... Li-ion?!?!?! Give me a break. I forgot how many cells this thing had but it was a BUNCH!! If my laptop experience is representative, I expected about $50/mile when you start replacing these things after a year or so - more if you drive them below 10% of course. And while considerably more ecco-friendly than your own personal RTG, this trunk load of batteries surely is no answer, regardless of the question.

Overall it sounds like another hopeless idea meeting its expected fate.

Wouldn't it just be perfect if it turned out that Paul Moller was a major investor in Tesla Motors?

Thats classic I will have to remember that. Mike, all I can say is if this is a Moller production we should expect to see lawsuits soon.

I think in fact that indeed the whole world of finance, politics, esponage,drug and people trafficing should bolster the ability for people to buy these wonderful motor and that the huge excess profits should go to the near by communities infastructure needs of the fabrication plants and all its people living there.

Oh and that there should be world unity in developing computers and engineering labs to dvelop all the molten carbon megawatts need to support the power demands such a huge burst of people byeing the things would put on the grid.

See oil use, plenty of wild life preservation, better carbon managment yep sounds a good nobel idea to me.

So a company that's a few weeks from releasing the product (in limited form, OK) is supposed to be RIP because they trimmed 26 employees after an important screwup?

Electric motors have a torque curve that starts of really really high, and then drops to zero at top RPM. This causes a problem when applying internal combustion engine thinking to the drive train. You simple cant scale components to the approximate BHP rating of the engine. At low revs the high torque will tear cogs and axles to shreds. I know someone that has snapped the axle 3 times on a conventional small city electric car. Just imagine what a damage high performance sports engine can do...

Was it Li-on based, why not Li-Polymer at least? Higher density, less toxic, more easily moldable shape.

And the cost was pegged at around £100,000 I believe.

Electric cars don't make sense to me ...wheres that lovely Vrrrrm Vrrrm noise going to come from?

kilt

I wanted to read more and take a look round the site....It will not open and looks like they have closed shop over night! I would have liked to see an electric sports car make it to market.

Maybe we will look to sustainable bio fuels like Virgin Airlines say they are trying soon. If we can use more sustainable bio fuels which do not eat into the resources we already use for our own use then this maybe the future until greener sources are available to us.After all we still use a lot of our earths resources to create the power needed to keep the electric vehicle running.

OK, well so that's "only" 15 Jubs of gold. Perhaps not too bad to transport, but still more than I have on hand at the moment.

Why not Li-Polymer? Seems quite obvious, but I will answer for those who haven't thought it out:

1 That would have made sense?

2 They got a good deal on Sony's recalled batteries?

3 When the car dies on the side of the road and the batteries burst into flames there is no additional requirement to set out road flares. (In the court documents this will be listed as a Major Safety design feature. But you read it in ElReg first!!!)

I'm not sure how a car that requires fossil fuels to be burned to create electricity, which is then transmitted across power lines, through several transformers, then into a domestic supply where it's turned (via another transformer) into heat and (electro)chemical energy is all that green? Then there are the batteries, which will need replacing at some point, at huge expense. Add Lithium batteries' poor cold-weather performance, and their liability to burst into flames at the slightest provocation to the equation and this starts to sound like a rather flaky idea.

Don't get me wrong, I've used electric vehicles in warehouse settings, and can imagine they'd be great fun on the road, but I don't see how they can be taken seriously as anything but a toy.

<<French cars are an urban myth - they don't really exist>>

No the French DO make cars. They only drive in reverse.

All German cars are silver, a fact easily verified by simply looking for the nearest Merc. Painting the metal any other colour is inefficient.

They should follow the practice of an earlier Lotus-teched US sports car, move production to Northern Ireland. I'm sure HMG would be happy to sponsor it. Maybe we'll even get a couple of fun movies out of the car too.

Pure electric cars are not likely to ever be viable in Northern climes due to the high energy needs of interior heating. Does the motor provide enough waste heat to heat the cabin? Doesn't seem likely. And what about AC? AC is not just a luxury, take for example health care workers. They need to arrive at work clean and dry.

I never see heating/AC viability discussed.

As for torque, in industry we use DC motor drives to manipulate armature and field voltages and thus control motor speed and provide constant torque across a range of speed. You don't just apply full voltage to a large DC motor and let 'er rip, which is where the torque chart would apply.

Certainly that technology is also being used in automobiles.

I don't understand why people don't research more into vortex engines. I wonder if that would be green enough for ya.

http://www.rhfweb.com/schauberger.html

I'm sure the black heli's will be coming for me now... every conspiracy contains a bit of truth...