Electric Vehicles

Racing improves the breed, they say, and the guys at Brammo are taking that to heart with the Empulse RR, a one-off racer built with an eye toward developing the company’s next electric street bike.

The RR was designed strictly for competing in the budding electric motorcycle racing scene, so you’ll never see it on the street. But the Ashland, Oregon company is far too small to spend time developing anything it can’t make money on. So just as last season’s Enertia TTR race bike influenced the new Empulse street bike, the Empulse RR is a blueprint for future models.

The big question about the Chevrolet Volt was answered today when General Motors said the car will cost $41,000. Add in the federal electric vehicle tax credit and you’re looking at $33,500. Yes, that’s a lot. But the General says you’re getting a lot for your money.

GM begins taking orders today and says the first Volts roll into driveways by year’s end. The brass were quick to call this “a historic day” and they rarely miss a chance to call the Volt “a game-changer.” Hyperbole aside, the Chevrolet Volt and the Nissan Leaf we’ll see later this year are the first mass-market highway-legal electric vehicles to hit the market.

Team Agni made a strong showing in the second round of the British electric motorcycle grand prix series, finishing one-two after leaving the rest of the field well behind.

The crew from London found some mojo in the second round of the TTXGP UK Championship after finishing third and fourth during the season opener at Snetterton. Still, the same riders finished in the top four at each race, suggesting the rest of the field has some work to do for the remaining two races.

Wow. It’s already been more than a year since Azhar Hussain and his crew at TTXGP pretty much launched the electric motorcycle racing scene. To (belatedly) mark that anniversary, they’ve put together a cool highlights reel of action from different races.

An EV that twice set the lap record for electric cars at the Refuel electric road races can be yours — if you’ve got a cool quarter million.

The KleenSpeed WX10 prototype, developed with West Racecars and drven by KleenSpeed founder and president Timothy Collins, averaged 94 mph over the 2.24-mile, 11-turn course at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca. That topped last year’s record of 93 mph, also set by the WX10.

Volkswagen is diving into electric vehicles with the goal of selling 300,000 annually by 2018, and it has tapped an early pioneer of the modern EV to help hit that goal.

VW Group hopes to move 10 million vehicles a year worldwide by 2018, and company boss Martin Winterkorn says cars with cords could comprise 3 percent of that.

“In urban centers, this share could be a lot higher,” Winterkorn says, according to Reuters.

Honda, realizing this electric car thing isn’t a fad, says it will have a plug-in hybrid and a battery electric vehicle on the road in 2012. But that doesn’t mean it’s giving up on hydrogen.

CEO Takanobu Ito (pictured) laid out Honda’s timeline for advanced technology vehicles today, promising to have a demonstration fleet of cars with cords on the road in California by the end of this year and in showrooms by the end of 2012. He also said the nickel metal hydride battery pack in the Honda Civic Hybrid will be replaced with a lithium-ion pack next year.

This just in from Tokyo: Honda plans to roll out a plug-in hybrid and a full EV within three years.

Honda honcho Takanobu Ito is expected to announce the company’s plans during a press conference Tuesday, Japan’s business daily Nikkei reports, according to Reuters. There are no details beyond Honda’s claim the plug-in will go 60 kilometers on a liter of gas, which is 141 mpg by our math. (Please let us know if we’ve screwed that up.)

The announcement shows Honda is hell-bent on going toe-to-toe with Toyota in the hybrid, plug-in and battery electric arena.

Walter Roehrich knows how to build fast motorcycles, having won the Battle of the Twins with his impressive 1250sc. Now he’s turned his attention to the burgeoning e-moto scene with not one but three electric crotch-rockets.

Toyota and Tesla Motors are going back to the future to update the RAV4 EV, essentially resurrecting an excellent electric vehicle the Japanese company killed seven years ago.

The two companies announced today that they will develop the vehicle with a goal of producing it in 2012, bringing cheers from EV advocates thrilled by the return of a vehicle they adore.

It’s a brilliant move for everyone involved. Toyota, which has so far been lukewarm about EVs, gets something on the road quickly and cheaply. And Tesla gets its drivetrain in more vehicles and its name in more headlines.