Peak Lithium 2015?

Mitsubishi knows full-well that it may be a possibility, as they themselves have stated recently that lithium demand will outstrip supply as early as 2015. While we all expect and hope that prices will fall as production and popularity of EVs increase, prices could possibly rise instead, forcing us to other automobile alternatives (air-compression technology perhaps – see http://www.mdi.lu/english/). With such a demand on batteries worldwide for all sorts of applications, the implications pose new challenges to make better more efficient batteries using less lithium.

And competing countries are getting the edge over the US, who seek funding to stay ahead of the battery pack –http://earth2tech.com/2008/12/18/us-tech-companies-unite-for-car-batteries-seek-gov-aid/.

Where to get more lithium? Bolivia may come to the rescue – if only they can sort their internal political/economic issues first…

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jun/17/bolivia-lithium-reserves-electric-cars

Ya Gotta Love Panel Beaters

The guard on my car needs a fix after a bump – oops – a simple job one would expect, but shopping around for a good panel beater is difficult as most don’t want to guarantee their workmanship on anything that could bring on the slightest hint of rust. I have a spare guard but it has spot rust in a corner. The little dent can be hammered out and re-sprayed. A recommended panel beater turned out to be indolent and over six weeks promised the world and offered nothing, except personal comments about my looks, boobs, etc. I’m lucky I guess; a friend left his EV with a panel beater recently who drove it around happily, not caring for the ‘fuel empty’ alert and in so doing, wrecking a couple of the batteries.

It’s a bit of a battle in a bloke’s world – whaddya do? Anyway, at least Nathan is good at cutting holes and has done an excellent job on the car – he knows what’s important and takes advice on-board instead of saying ‘I know better than you’ like a lot of fellas do. As he’s said, we’ve both learned a lot in the past year.

Bodgy mounting? No, because it's mounted on the inside firewall and easily accessible.

‘Mounting my Charger’

Me being a picky, persistent and annoying person at times, (okay okay, often), I didn’t want the Zivan to be mounted somewhere awkward and intrusive. The shape of the car is restrictive but clues on where to place stuff were staring me in the face. Some time ago I said, why not mount it in the pillar? After some research and legality-checking, Nathan agreed it could be a good place so I mocked up a dummy Zivan. Always mock up components if you have space issues! The Starion pillar has a kind of natural venting which is assisted by a small fan. It’s still easy to reach the Anderson connector should I need to. Oh, and the DC-DC is mounted on the opposite pillar – neat.

Nissan Gearing up for Competition

The Nissan Nuvu (aka ‘new view’) announced some time ago may finally be arriving in Australia next year to compete against the Mitsubishi MiEV (and possibly Toyota iQ if they sort their red tape with the government) in what is gearing up to be a new spark of electric auto competition. An alternative to the Nissan Cube, this little cutie will be in a price range to match the MiEV and it is expected fleet and government sales will take up a large chunk of first shipments.

The Nissan Nuvu

This design features a pretty windscreen/roof overlay of solar collectors integrated into a conduit that leads to the battery pack…