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Electric shock: it's faster than a Porsche 911

Sydney Morning Herald, November 12, 2004

A Japanese professor wants us to switch on to battery powered vehicles, Peter Lyon reports.

This radical eight-wheeled, 600kW rocket from Japan is proof that electric cars can be fast and fun.

Called Eliica, short for Electric Lithium-Ion battery Car, it boasts a neck-snapping 0-100kmh time of just four seconds and a 0-160kmh time of seven seconds, which means the Eliica accelerates faster than a Porsche 911 Turbo.

Professor Hiroshi Shimizu, of Japan's Keio University, believes his team can make the electric car popular. He feels that the movement towards stricter emissions laws will favour these zero emission vehicles.

"If we continue producing current levels of CO2, we will face a global-warming crisis well before 2040, a long time before fossil fuel reserves run out. We need to halve these emissions now," he says.

Earlier this year, at Italy's Nardo high-speed test track facility, the Eliica recorded a top speed of 370kmh. Shimizu says the car would break 400kmh on a smoother surface.

"We need to reach 400kmh to make an impact on a gasoline car-dependent world," Shimizu says. "When you're dealing with technology that is thought by most people to be too heavy, slow and lacking range, you have to do better than just equal the current crop of supercars. You have to outclass them and make a statement.

"We built this particular car to show just how fast, stable and fun an electric car can be."

It's more than five metres long, is shaped like a bullet and carries its batteries, software and motors in a narrow chassis bed, giving it a low centre of gravity. Headroom is extremely limited and it's built for no one taller than 178 cm.

On an exclusive drive at the Keio University test facility near Tokyo, I set the Eliica in motion by simply disengaging the foot brake and punching the D for drive button on the dash. Flattening the accelerator pedal caused a barely audible whir from the eight in-wheel motors and the sprint to 100kmh was smooth, effortless and quiet.

The mind-boggling acceleration is similar to a 370kW racing car, the only difference being that without a transmission there is no gearshift shock and the linear acceleration pushes the driver back in the seat.

With its low centre of gravity, the car handles well, with almost no body roll, no acceleration squat and no nose-dive when braking. The only downside, apart from the tiny cockpit, is that it takes 10 hours to fully recharge, and costs around $400,000 in prototype form.

Shimizu suggests a comparison with laptop computers, digital cameras and iPods.

"With each generation, they get smaller, yet they have more memory and longer battery life. In a few years, car batteries will be lighter, smaller, have more power and have a longer life too. It's just a matter of time."

However, to bring Shimizu's electric vision to reality, he needs a major company's financial power to back him.

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