Zoomi Life

The Green Car Company in Seattle will auction its first 2009-model converted Plug-in Prius on eBay and donate the proceeds of the profit to Plug In America, the nation’s leading advocacy organization for plug-in vehicles. These Plug-in Prius hybrids feature the crash-tested A123 Hymotion Li-on battery pack installed by Hymotion CHIP-certified technicians.

Read More: Green Car Company to Auction its First 2009-model Converted Plug-in Prius on eBay

We Americans have the Tesla Roadster, the electric car which does zero to sixty in four seconds. The British now have the Lightning, the electric car which does…you guessed it, zero to sixty in four seconds.

Built by the Lightning Car Company of England, this all-electric sports car has some impressive features (to go with its impressive price tag). It’s 700hp electric motor system has a top speed of over 130mph and has an innovative design.

Read More: Tesla’s Lightning Competition

Who Killed the Electric Car? General Motors, of course, that’s what the movie said. Right? Well, those GM EV1s are now quite the collector’s item. Most of them were returned to General Motors and destroyed, since they were leased (not owned) and at the end of the lease, they were still GM’s property. Because the car was a financial failure and because the oil crunch of the 80s was very much over, there wasn’t much call to continue making an electric car. So GM discontinued the series.

Read More: Used EV1 Sells for Almost Half a Million Dollars

To Australia, anyway. They’re to be wind-powered, available in select cities such as Westminster, and are a combined effort of three Australian firms. Better Place is partnering with AGL and Macquarie to pull together the resources needed to make this happen.

Read More: Wind-Powered Electric Vehicle Charging Stations Coming Soon

With the resurgence of electric vehicle mania, but with costs for these vehicles still high relative to their gasoline counterparts, much of the focus on these cars in America has been in high-end (and costly) sports cars. Considering the requirements of a great speed demon, it’s little wonder electric is catching on so fast. I know I’m not the only one looking at converting my gasoline powered car to electric, and many car companies like Shelby are doing the same.

Read More: Supercars Go Electric With the Aero EV

Electric dirt bikes are hitting the mainstream with KTM, one of the leaders in race bikes, announcing their plans to roll one out in about two years. The bike’s current specs are pretty competitive, at 29.5 foot pounds of torque and lithium-ion batteries supplying about forty minutes of race-condition power.

Read More: KTM’s Race Ready Electric Dirt Bike

London’s famous black cabs may be going electric soon. The current cabs are made by a company called Manganese Bronze, which is owned by the Chinese company Geely and they have been in talks with the UK’s government for conversion of the fleet of cabs to electric.

Read More: London to get Fleet of Electric Taxi Cabs

Zero Emission Motors’ Volt electric scooter

If you’re looking for an inexpensive electric scooter tailor-made for city driving, then the new Volt electric scooter from Zero Emission Motors might be just the ticket for you. The new Volt electric scooter (named just like the newly-announced electric car, but unlike the car, available today) is a new electric scooter just released by our friends over at Zero Emission Motors - we got the opportunity to meet Adam Maoz, president of the company, a couple of weeks back at the Kick Gas festival in San Diego, and got to see the Volt in person.

Read More: Zero Emission Motors Unveils Volt Electric Scooter

A couple of weeks ago, we reported on the Kick Gas Festival in San Diego - the place to go to meet EV and gas motor heads. One of the folks we met at the event was Todd Kollin, owner of Electric Motorsport, of Oakland, CA. Electric Motorsport has been a well-respected motorsports part shop for many years, and they are now getting into a whole new game - electric motorcycles.

Read More: Electric Motorsport Unveils GPR-S - First Street and Freeway-Legal Electric Motorcycle

Everybody loves the idea of electric cars. Renewable, rechargeable, no emissions, silent… but is silent safe? After all, as pedestrians, we rely on our sense of hearing as much as our sight to detect oncoming traffic when we’re out and about.

Many people have postulated that as electric vehicles become more mainstream, it is possible that the silent nature of the vehicles might cause increased traffic accidents because no one can hear them coming. In fact, the National Federation for the Blind is strongly backing a proposal to add some kind of warning noise to hybrid and electric vehicles for just this reason.

Read More: Stanford Inventors Create Fake Engine Noise to Make Electric Cars Safer