First Drive: Australia's Electric Mazda2

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First Drive: Australia's Electric Mazda2

The evMe is an Australian-designed electric car based on a Mazda2 small car.

evMe

While Tesla’s electric cars grab headlines across the globe, a company in the NSW country town of Armidale is quietly developing its own contribution to carbon-free motoring.

The evMe doesn’t have the sleek looks or rapid acceleration of the Tesla roadster, nor the Hollywood client list. It looks like a normal petrol-powered Mazda2 on which it is based.

Flip the petrol cap open, though, and you’ll find a humble domestic power point that means its owner will never have to visit a petrol station.
The evMe electric car project is led by local Armidale academic and organic cattle farmer, Dr Phil Coop.

Dr Coop and his small team of software experts, engineers and mechanics have spent between $2 million and $3 million developing the evMe for commercial use.

This week, the first car was handed over to retired Glen Innes businessman Howard Eastwood, who paid a premium of roughly $50,000 to have an electric, rather than petrol version of the Mazda2.

Coop’s company, Energetique, plans to build 100 evMe’s a year, priced at $70,000, and claims to have more than 100 expressions of interest for the vehicle, mainly from corporate fleets looking to score “greenie” points.
Before it was handed over, Drive got the opportunity to drive the first evMe around the streets of Armidale.

At first glance, the unique badge is the only sign that there is something different about this Mazda2. But climb into the cabin and there are a couple of tell-tale signs this is not your average car.

The first is a silver lever on the floor near the handbrake; a kill switch that allows technicians to cut the electricity while they work on the vehicle. Just above the lever, the automatic gear selector is also different. As the evMe has no gearbox, there are only three selections available: park, drive and reverse. A trip computer-style read-out in the instrument panel next to the speedo tells you which gear you’ve selected. It also gives information about battery voltage, remaining charge and range (up to 280km).

Eventually, the evMe will have three modes: performance, normal and limp home.

Today, we only have access to normal mode. To switch the car on, you simply turn the key and select a gear. The only sign that the engine is running is noise made by some auxiliary systems. You can hear the faint hum of the brake booster pump but apart from that everything is silent.
Backing out of the small workshop, the evMe feels a lot like the Prius, which can crawl silently at low speed before the petrol engine kicks in.
The comparisons end when you plant the accelerator.

The evMe gathers speed without any of the usual aural and tactile sensations you’d expect from a car. There’s no kickdown through the gears, no gradual build-up of noise as the revs get higher (even though the engine reaches a sports car-like 11,000rpm). All you can hear is the whine of the Mazda’s conventional differential.

You immediately become more aware of noises you would never have heard in a normal petrol car. A warning to manufacturers: Customer complaints about rattles and squeaks are likely to soar when a car goes electric.

Acceleration feels on par with the normal Mazda2, although when you plant the pedal to overtake, there is none of the immediate kickdown response you get with a conventional automatic gearbox. Rather than give you a shove in the back, the evMe continues to push seamlessly ahead.
It can take some getting used to and feels as if you’re somehow missing out in the power stakes, but if you look at the speedo it is making the same progress.

The car excels climbing hills, which is no surprise given its big torque – or pulling power - advantage over the petrol Mazda2. While the standard Mazda puts out 76kW of power and 137Nm of torque, the evMe puts out 89kW and 220Nm.

On a long, steep freeway incline the evMe kept pulling effortlessly when a conventional petrol engine would have been revving hard.
As the car was being delivered to its proud owner at the end of the week, we didn’t test the handling limits, but in normal driving it seemed to lack none of the original Mazda2’s poise and control through corners.

The designers of the car have gone to great lengths to ensure the car’s weight balance is not upset. The 96 kitchen tile-sized battery packs are mostly packaged beneath the floor to keep the centre of gravity low.
They weigh roughly 200kg, but once you replace the conventional petrol engine with an electric motor, the car weighs roughly the same as the standard one.

Charging takes 14 hours from a standard plug or just four hours from the heavy duty power outlets you get at a powered caravan site.
Dr Coop doesn’t expect the evMe to become a volume-seller. In the first instance it will appeal to early adopters prepared to pay a large premium for what is essentially a city commuter car.

It’s still a long way from a success story, but this innovative electric car from the New England tablelands is enough to make Detroit’s big three blush.

Source: Richard Blackburn, The Age, March 21, 2009

[Team Green]

seen that on omc and have had remarks about a certain 2 and ones age...

[tricache]

amazing work but still...its pretty much a full size RC car

[EVILMPS]

amazing work but still...its pretty much a full size RC car

Yeah, a $70,000 R/C car!!!!!
Jeebus, why would you pay 70k for a Mazda 2???
The thing that still concerns me with electric cars is this: where does the electricity come from???

Burning fossil fuels...So wilst the driver themselves is not contributing to green-house gasses directly, they are still being made else-where!

Ah well, as long as the tree-huggers can sleep well at night.
Besides, more petrol for us then!!!