The Aptera and the VW GX3 would be very different rides

The Atera and the VW GX3 both are three wheel cars with two front wheels and one back wheel. There the similarity ends. The Aptera was originally designed as an electric car that has added a hybrid twin. The VW is strictly gasoline.

The Aptera gets about 120 miles per charge in the electric concept car or about 230 mpg in the hybrid. Although Aptera will exceed 85 mph and will go from 0 to 60 in under 10 seconds, the car is designed to be safe, affordable, and energy efficient. The futuristic design has greatly improved the aerodynamics to decrease wind resistance and increase fuel efficiency.

The VW GX3 was designed with power in mind to be a ” pure driving machine”. This three wheel convertible, will reach speeds of 125 mph and will go from 0-60 in 5. 7 seconds. The car is mostly engine and gets 46 mpg.

Although the Aptera is classified as a motorcycle, the company has built the car to meet or exceed safety standards as well as include comfort. The car includes airbags, a formula one standard composite safety cage and a reinforced roof and doors that exceed the required safety standards for cars. The instruments include a rear facing camera and GPS as well as a display panel in front of the driver to increase situational awareness without the need to take eyes off the road.

Helmets are not required even though the Aptera is listed as a motorcycle and there is room between the seats to fit a baby seat. The passenger side airbag can be turned off for small children or baby seats placed in the front. The Aptera is also expected to have a stereo system, cup holders, a 12V charger for cell phones and possibly a USB port.

The GX3 emphasizes its motorcycle aspects in many ways. The interior of the car or “cockpit” is sparse with 5 point racing harnesses, motorcycle type instruments and stainless steel shifter. It is a cross between a sports car and a motorcycle with the emphasis on motorcycle.

The body is composed of a high density stainless steel “space frame” over laid with composite fiberglass panels both inside and out. The GX3 includes roll bars and definitely requires helmets.

Not just the interior and exterior amenities differ between the two vehicles but the cost differential is considerable as well. The estimated cost of the Aptera is $26,900 for the all electric version and $29,900 for the hybrid. The VW GX3 is expected to sell for $17,000. The Aptera is clearly the “luxury” version of the three wheel car while the VW GX3 is the “sport” version three wheel vehicle.

Aptera is expected to go into production at the end of this year. The GX3 was expected to be produced in 2007. There is some speculation that the GX3 was shelved due to safety reasons. If so, what a loss.

Hybrid cars: Great on gas, but too quiet?

OCALA - In recent years, hybrid-powered vehicles have become mainstream on American roads.

Toyota dealer Frank DeLuca said his Ocala dealership was selling three or four Prius hybrid cars a month two years ago. Today, sales are more than 20 a month, he said.

With electric motors to supplement gasoline engines, the hybrids can offer better gas mileage and generate less air pollution than their gas-only counterparts.

But advocates for the blind say such vehicles pose a potential threat to blind people because of their low noise level relative to gas-powered cars.

"Blind people are unable to hear them, and of course, hearing [cars] is how we navigate safely and effectively," said National Federation of the Blind spokesman Chris Danielsen. "Blind people cannot hear these vehicles ... There have been blind people who have had some very close calls."

At the urging of the federation, U.S. Rep. Cliff Stearns, R-Ocala, has co-sponsored a bill that would require the federal Department of Transportation to conduct a two-year study of the potential risk.

"I thought it would be good to have, see if we should have auditory cues," Stearns said.

The federation initially sought a bill requiring hybrids to make a certain minimum noise level, Stearns said, adding that he wouldn't support such a mandate at this point.

The National Federation of the Blind doesn't oppose hybrid vehicles, Danielsen pointed out.

"We are not saying cars need to run on gasoline," he said.

The federation has had no reports of any blind person being seriously injured or killed by a hybrid vehicle, Danielsen acknowledged. But the potential risk also applies to joggers, children and bicyclists who might not hear a hybrid vehicle approaching, he added.

"We're not advocating at this point any particular decibel level," he said. "The [federation] believes that cars should sound like cars."

DeLuca argues most hybrids don't sound much different. As an example, drivers drove slowly through the parking lot at DeLuca Toyota on Wednesday in a standard Camry with gas engine, followed by a hybrid gas-electric Camry at the same speed.

Although the hybrid Camry was quieter than the gas-only model, the car's engine was still clearly audible, as were the sound of tires on pavement, even over the noise of the adjacent State Road 200.

"It's not like coming through on a bed of air," DeLuca said. "You're listening to the gear mechanism, you hear wheels."

While a hybrid vehicle might be silent while sitting at a traffic light, engine noise begins as soon as the driver steps on the gas, said DeLuca sales manager Mark Dorey.

The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, an industry lobbying group, has taken no position on the Stearns bill, spokesman Charles Territo said.

Beijing auto show spotlights automakers hopes for China

BEIJING (AP) — On display at next week's Beijing auto show: Global automakers' hopes that booming China will drive sales this year as demand elsewhere slumps.

General Motors Corp. plans to show 42 models at Auto China 2008. Volkswagen AG is debuting two cars designed with domestic partners for the China market. More than 100 others ranging from luxury automakers Daimler AG and Bentley to ambitious Chinese upstarts are showing off compacts, sedans and SUVs.

"The interest is unprecedented for automakers. It's become one of the industry's main events," said Tim Dunne, director of Asia-Pacific market intelligence for J.D. Power and Associates.

The reason is simple: Sales in China — already the world's No. 2 vehicle market after the United States — are forecast to rise by 15 percent this year, in contrast to flat or falling sales in the United States, Europe and Japan.

"Both for volume car makers and luxury car makers, they all are looking at China as their main growth engine," said John Zeng, China auto industry analyst for the consulting firm Global Insight.

Chinese automakers, little known abroad, hope to use the show, which opens to the press on Sunday and to the public on Thursday, to build global brands even as they face growing competition at home from bigger, richer foreign rivals.

China's Chery Automobile Co. says it will display 26 of its own vehicles in Beijing, ranging from subcompacts to an SUV. Chery has a deal with Chrysler LLC to produce a low-cost car for the U.S. market but the release has been pushed back as the partners reportedly work on improving the vehicle's quality.

Another Chinese competitor, Geely Group Ltd., says it will show 23 models and a concept, or display, car.

China overtook Japan as the world's second-biggest vehicle market in 2006.

Last year, Chinese drivers bought 5.5 million cars, minivans and SUVs and 3 million commercial vehicles. That was up from a total of just 1.6 million vehicles sold in 1997. J.D. Power says sales should grow by 1 million vehicles annually through 2015.

Demand is driven by economic growth that has topped 10 percent for the past five years and reached 10.6 percent for the first three months of this year.

"Other developing markets might have fast growth but not the volume and consistency of China's growth," Dunne said. "The biggest growth potential is in China."

The officially endorsed car culture has transformed China.

A country that had almost no private cars 15 years ago is crisscrossed by new highways. Ancient city centers have been bulldozed to make way for car-friendly avenues. Cities are surrounded by American-style shopping centers with sprawling parking lots.

But the car culture has left major cities choked by smog and rush-hour traffic jams. It has boosted dependence on imported oil, which worried communist leaders see as a strategic weakness.

Automakers are so eager for a share of China's market that they are willing to bear the high cost of two Chinese auto shows — one in Beijing annually and a second every other year in Shanghai.

Most shows are so expensive they usually are held once every two to three years. In Europe, the Paris and Frankfurt shows are held in alternate years. Tokyo's auto show takes place every other year.

GM hybrids get off to a slow start in first quarter

Sales of new General Motors hybrids, including its touted full-sized SUVs, are taking off at a crawl.

GM sold 843 hybrids in the first quarter--655 of them the Two Mode hybrid versions of its full-sized Chevrolet Tahoe and GMC Yukon SUVs. The rest are mild hybrids: the Saturn Aura Green Line, Saturn Vue Green Line and Chevrolet Malibu Hybrid.

Sales are slow because the Malibu Hybrid and the Two Mode SUVs are just entering the market, says a GM spokesman. "We talked about a model-year volume of 8,000 to 12,000 for the Tahoe and Yukon, and that hasn't changed," says GM spokesman Brian Corbett. "Generally hybrid vehicle sales tend to be a little slower initially compared to regular vehicles. We're expected to increase sales as awareness increases."

GM has been advertising the Tahoe and Yukon Two Modes since the Super Bowl in February, says Don Butler, executive director of Chevrolet truck advertising.


Pitching mpg
GM is also advertising the Tahoe online and in print publications such as Runner's World magazine and The New Yorker. GMC has targeted high-profile events such as the Academy Awards. A 30-second spot that will run this month will emphasize that the Yukon hybrid gets 50 percent better city mileage than the nonhybrid version, says Steve Rosenblum, GMC marketing director.

The two-wheel-drive Yukon hybrid is rated at 21 mpg city/22 mpg highway, compared with 14 mpg city/20 mpg highway for the nonhybrid model. The nonhybrid has a 5.3-liter engine, while the hybrid has a specially tuned 6.0-liter V-8 and other features that enhance fuel economy.

"Our strategy was to come out with a large awareness bang and then back off to follow up in the nontraditional media," Rosenblum says. "We're early on, and our plans haven't been all that realized yet. We're just starting out."


'Cutesy' ads?
But analysts say there has been no bang so far.

"The marketing for selling hybrids is too soft and squishy," says Jim Hall, director of industry analysis at 2953 Analytics in suburban Detroit. He says the hybrids are "in a cutesy-pie commercial that doesn't scream this is the product you need to buy."

For the Two Mode hybrid, GM is using a demonstration vehicle at dealerships for test drives. Customers then must order the vehicle. Butler says it's a way to gauge where to send inventory.

Hall says Americans don't like to have to order vehicles and wait but says it is a reasonable approach.

But Americans' love affair with hybrids might be waning, says J.D. Power and Associates analyst Jason Rothkop.

"We're seeing a softening in broader interest," Rothkop says. That's because of "the gap between the actual fuel economy and claimed fuel economy," he says.

That gap makes it difficult for automakers to maintain price premiums.


More green to buy green
The price for the mild hybrid system, such as that on a Malibu, is about $3,000 more, Hall says. The starting sticker price on a four-cylinder Aura is $20,695, compared with a Green Line at $24,290. Both prices include shipping.

A mild hybrid system cannot drive the vehicle on electric power only. The Two Mode, a full hybrid, is capable of going about 30 mph on electric power.

The Chevrolet Tahoe base model starts at $35,530, and the top-end four-wheel-drive Tahoe LT starts at $40,460. The hybrid starts at $50,490.

The GMC Yukon starts at $36,245, and the top-end all-wheel-drive Denali starts at $50,380. The hybrid starts at $50,945. All prices include shipping.

Because the hybrids also feature specialized equipment such as lightweight body panels and aerodynamic bumpers, it is difficult to isolate the premium for the hybrid powertrain system itself. Hall estimates that the Two Mode hybrid system alone adds about $5,000 in cost.

GM remains confident it will meet its hybrid sales targets.

"Even 8,000 to 12,000 vehicles over a full model year isn't a lot of vehicles when you consider how many Chevy dealers there are," Corbett says. "We just need to build awareness."

General Motors Volt: Plug-in future

Hybrid cars that you can recharge from mains electricity are going to change the world. Andrew English gets a sneak preview of General Motors' plug-in Volt and reports on recent American legislation changes that will affect us all

There should have been maroons over Michigan two weeks ago when California's Air Resources Board (Carb) plumped for plug-in hybrids over battery-electric and hydrogen fuel-cells in its latest legislation. California is the world's largest and most influential car market - the state's inhabitants buy more than two million new cars each year. Carb's anti-pollution rules are highly influential across the globe and are mandated by another 13 states in the USA. Hybrid petrol-electric and diesel-electric cars, along with bioethanol from crops, are America's big ideas for saving fuel and the planet, as well as reducing dependency on imported oil. Even presidency contender Barack Obama has sponsored a bill, "Health Care For Hybrids", on Capitol Hill, to encourage US car makers to speed development of these vehicles in return for government help in alleviating the burden of healthcare for retired workers.

Plug-in hybrids are the acme of this hybrid thinking and you might have thought that General Motors, with just such a world-first, mass-production car at an advanced state of development, would be blowing its trumpet to the world news agencies. But no. Instead of celebrating, GM maintained an inscrutable silence as it revealed the inner secrets of its plug-in petrol-electric hybrid car, the Volt, which is slated for launch in 2010 or 2011.

Actually GM doesn't refer to the Volt as a plug-in hybrid, preferring to maintain a lofty distance between it and lesser machines by using the term "extended-range electric vehicle" (E-Rev). It does have a point, for while the Volt shares its petrol engine/generator/battery pack with independently produced rival plug-in hybrids, it is also designed to run 40 miles solely on its lithium-ion batteries before its engine will start, which betters rivals by a considerable margin.

"This is not about the vehicle so much as the propulsion technology," says Volt project head Frank Weber. "Other plug-ins will all switch on the engine within five minutes of you leaving home."

The Volt's 40-mile electric range means that almost 70 per cent of American commuters will not need to start the engine during their daily drive, which brings its own set of problems. As Volt powertrain chief Alex Cattelan says: "For the customer who is doing less than 30 miles a day, the engine will never run and the fuel never gets used, so how do we keep its fuel and oil fresh?"

Equally, some lazy customers are never going to plug this vehicle into the mains, which means the conventional internal combustion engine will have to run virtually all the time. The development problems have been novel and in some cases unique for this amazing car.

Amazing? Well, sort of. The Volt first appeared at last year's Detroit auto show as a snazzy four-seat coupé (above), but that's not the Volt that will go on sale in two years in the US (European sales should start a year later). Instead the Volt will be a five-door hatchback, based on the pressed steel underbody architecture of the replacement for the Vauxhall Astra, or "Delta" platform as GM calls it.

A five-door Astra? Whichever way GM spins it, the Volt will be a long way from the visionary picture outlined by talented GM design engineer and Briton, Christopher Borroni-Bird, back in 2002: "Electric power means a new sort of car, built in modern factories, supplied by high-tech, low-cost suppliers. GM is creating a new world order of personal transport." So is GM killing the electric car once again?

The answers are complicated, not least because under the skin the Volt is revolutionary and the effects of what GM's CEO Rick Wagoner calls "the electrification of the automobile" might have unforeseen effects far beyond mere transportation…

Under the skin

The heart of the Volt is a 16kWh, 160hp/ 273lb ft, 375lb (170kg) T-shaped, liquid-cooled battery pack that takes three hours to charge using 220v, 3.3kW mains electricity - in the US, with its 110v supply, it will take six hours. Since the pack charges faster when it is empty, one hour's charge will give Europeans about half a charge, or 20 miles of electric-only running.

The two competing suppliers, Compact Power Inc/LG Chem and Continental/A123Systems, have already delivered cell packs to GM for advanced heat, cold, vibration and charge/discharge testing for their target 10-year, 150,000-mile life.

You might boggle at the thought of GM returning to battery technology after the debacle of the EV-1, a lead-acid battery-powered car produced between 1996 and 1999. These sleek, 80mph coupés were the subject of Chris Paine's 2006 documentary Who Killed The Electric Car? GM leased out more than 800 EV-1s in the US, but if you took away the government subsidies, each one would have cost GM just under $1 million to produce. Eventually the company recalled all 1,100 EV-1s and crushed most of them, although it retains two at its technology centre in Michigan in the same low-roofed workshop where their batteries underwent development - ironically, it's also where the Volt's battery pack is being developed.