Electric cars to get longer legs?

Japanese research company Sim-Drive has announced that its experimental SIM-LEI vehicle has achieved its target range. The company's press release stated:

The target performance of SIM-LEI was to achieve over 300km [187½ miles] of range per charge, which is generally pointed as the major concern for the electrical vehicle to promote in the market.




The prototype achieved this target by 333km [ just over 208 miles] of range per charge by JC-08 mode, which represents general urban traffic condition in Japan. The battery capacity to achieve this target is 24.5kWh as almost the same level as other electrical vehicles presented in the market.




Alternating Current electrical power consumption rate is 77Wh/km. This is equivalent to 70km/L [about 164½ miles per US gallon] of the fuel efficiency rate with gasoline as the energy consumption rate.

There's more at the link.

That certainly sounds a lot more promising than the Nissan Leaf, currently the only all-electric car in production by a major manufacturer, which (according to the EPA) gets 73 miles (116.8 kilometers) per charge. It'll be interesting to see if the technologies being developed in the SIM-LEI program are ready for production in 2013, as planned.

Peter