I always envied the type of guys that had a lab of their own, equipped with all that a lab has to have, and performing all sorts of experiments inside. That’s a dream of mine, but when that lab is backed up by MIT, the story changes radically, and you can play with toys you wouldn’t normally afford as a student or home DIYer.
Radu Gogoana, a Romanian student from MIT (I’m proud of Romanian students, btw, I am Romanian), leading a team of other students have an ongoing project aimed to build an electric car able to drive 200 miles on a single charge and charge in about 10 minutes. As you can see in the video below, they use A123’s batteries on a modified Mercury Milan. A123 is already being recognized as the best car battery producer that has caught the wave and the attention of electric vehicle manufacturers.
The MIT team uses almost 8000 Li-Ion batteries that cost almost $80,000. Those batteries will give the car’s engine 250 horsepower and an acceleration of 0 to 60 in less than 9 seconds. I guess it would do better, but considering the car’s weight (almost 2 tons), it’s a good compromise between range, acceleration and maximum speed (100 mph).
The project is called “elEVen”, and is planned to be completed by the end of 2010.
Watch the video about these guys and their electric car below:
