The Yugo was supposed to unite the Balkans under an umbrella of capitalism, to infuse the area with much-needed jobs and cash. Instead, the car was crap. Still, there’s something endearing about the little hatchback, something honest and pure. That’s why it still has a special place in our hearts—and why designer Milos Paripovic has re-imagined it as an electric. Oh, and also because he wanted to poke fun at electric cars.

Paripovic initially designed the ZUGO as a joke, equipping it with awesome features like a heated rear panel for when you and your passengers have to get out and push.

The concept also uses lightweight composite materials—again, making it easier to push when the batteries run out. And there’s also rear-mounted pressure sensors and and LCD display so you can tell who among the passengers is pushing hardest. It’s funny in a har-har kind of way, but the design is actually quite good. Good enough to win 5th place in a European design contest. 

It’s a sweet-looking little city car, even with its receding headline and ’80s-style headlights. From the rear three quarters view, you can even imagine a “sport” version.

What do you think? Would you consider the above car? Maybe if it had a Renault or Peugeot badge?

The new Varley evR-450 electric super car can hit 62 mph in just 3.8 seconds, packs 900-plus torques and looks like a Nissan R390. It costs $200,000. It’s also based on the awesome, gas-guzzling $40,000-ish Superlite SLC coupe.

The evR-450 is assembled in Australia by Varley Electric Vehicles. It’s super-trick, featuring twin carbon ironless core AC motors with totally awesome-sounding Tritium Wavesculptor inverters. It has a semi-monocoque TIG-welded aluminum chassis with an integral space frame and weighs just 2750-ish pounds. Range? A comfortable 100 miles. Top speed? A disappointing 100-ish miles per hour. Are the batteries worth the extra cost of $200,000? Hit the jump to find out.

The Varley

But here’s the thing: It’s based on the Superlite SLC coupe, a kit car that can be had for around $40,000. A kit car that’s made (in part) in Michigan. The SLC is made to take any LS-series Chevrolet V8, so there’s no upper limit to horsepower and torque. Even fitted with a standard ‘Vette mill, the SLC should be able to match the evR-450 in acceleration and completely destroy it in a top-speed run. Plus, it would have a nearly unlimited range.

The Superlite

So are the torquey electric motors and Tritium Wavesculptor inverters worth the extra cash? Or is the evR-450 just a toy to clear a rich enviro-crusader’s conscious?

My vote is for toy. The evR-450 absurdly expensive when compared to its dino-juice-powered cousin. And its slower. And it doesn’t sound nearly as good.

Engineers are taught to constantly think outside the box. They’ve been programmed to question that whatever exists today, can be made better tomorrow as long as you align the right pieces of the puzzle. Take the engineering students from the University of Adelaide in Australia for example. You see they’ve just invented an electric vehicle that they’ve name the Diwheel and according to them it’s half motorbike, half unicycle and could, if they play their cards right, be a glimpse into what we’ll be seeing on tomorrow’s roads. The Diwheel is made up of two mammoth outer wheels that enclose a center mounted cockpit for the driver. It also utilizes active rotation damping so as to keep the cockpit centered when the vehicle comes to a stop. Granted this contraption is a bit unconventional, but hey, so are the engineers who designed it. Click through for the video.

the leaf rides the wind
lightning in its belly
mother earth cheers

The Nissan Leaf Nismo RC. It’s a Nissan Leaf wrapped in carbon fiber and dipped in matte black paint. And it’s wicked. Hit the jump to watch it yowl around a track.The Nissan Leaf Nismo RC is a sickening little jelly bean of a car, a vehicle so cute you want to puke. But Nissan knows how to make fiendishly dark automobiles. Example: GT-R. It’s a proper samurai. A fat samurai with too many electronic gizmos, but a samurai nonetheless. The Leaf RC is the child of the two, an angry little Pokémon with something to prove.

The car is based on a standard Leaf, but it’s lower, longer and wider. There’s a lot of carbon fiber in there, too, and tons of Nismo suspension bits. A big wing sits out back, just to remind you this little Leaf is all business on the track.

Nissan recently gave the Leaf Nismo RC to racer Tsugio Matsuda for testing. His verdict? Very fun to drive on the track. Huh.

The visionaries at Nissan foresee electric race series held indoors or at night. They imagine drivers chatting with other drivers or even the audience while piloting their whisper-quiet racers at triple digits. Really.

The Leaf Nismo RC isn’t completely quiet, however. In fact, it sounds like a proper UFO, a whining, whooshing, wailing testament to technology. Check out the video and hear for yourself.

It has potential. It looks good, sounds good, and from what Tsugio says, drives good as well. Will it be as exciting to watch as a gas-guzzling racer? Only time will tell.

The real hope here is that Nissan will let some of the car’s style and technology trickle down to a consumer model. Nissan Leaf GT-R, perhaps? Now that would be an exciting electric vehicle.

Electric motorcycles can be ponderous things, battery-laden hulks that awkwardly lope around the track. But not the Amarok. It’s light and lithe, a nimble and ferocious beast that tears at the tarmac. It’s the creation of Canadian builder Michael Uhlarik and at just 325 pounds, it’s the lightest TTXGP racing bike ever created.

Amarok is Inuit for “wolf” and the bike certainly looks like a gaunt predator. Uhlarik built it from scratch in his Quebec garage using common lightweight materials like aluminum and chromoly steel. And unlike most electric race bikes, it was designed from the ground up to run on batteries. In fact, the Amarok is batteries. The entire bike is built around a compact and lightweight battery box backbone. Everything bolts to the battery core, making a significantly lighter bike. That also makes the Amarok more efficient—it can run on a 7.5-kilowatt-hour battery whereas most race bikes need 12 kwh or more.

The Amarok uses the same powerful Agni 95 motors as the venerable Mavizen (and Chip Yate’s 190-mph beast), but in the Amarok they’re pushing less bike. That makes the Amarok one of the quickest-accelerating electric race bikes ever made.

The Amarok is one of only a few in the TTXGP that were designed from the ground up to be electric bikes. Others include the MotoCzysz E1pc, which won at the Isle of Man and Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca last year, the Brammo Empulse RR and the Mission R. And all those were built by relatively big shops. Uhlarik hopes to best those outfits, which would be a big win for backyard engineers everywhere.

Source: Wired Autopia

Can someone please tell me when good old fashion exercise got replaced by electricity and pedal powered mopeds? It seems like people, especially intercity hipsters, simply love to feel as though they’re doing something that saves the planet. They’ll go out and purchase electric cars and hybrids, join environmentalist groups and buy things like the mini-electric scooter you see here. Called the Voltitude, this Swiss-designed mini-ped concept will apparently get your lazy ass from point A to point B at the blazing speed of 15 mph. It’s got a pedal-assisted range of 12-25 miles, weighs in at over 50 lbs., and will fold up into something that’s still too big and heavy to hide away neatly. You can call me a skeptic and hater or whatever, but at the end of the day I find contraptions like this to be utterly useless and a complete waste of money. The Voltitude is scheduled for release at the end of 2011 and is sure to come with a price that will probably be too high and sold to people that love to wear knit caps in the summertime.

Here’s an idea though… how about all you people that are interested in this just do the right thing and purchase a real life bicycle. They’ve been around for years now, have a tried and true design and last time I checked, came with unlimited mileage capabilities.

Source: Gizmag.com

Prices for premium fuel are bouncing over $4.25 here in the Northeast, which means I’m seriously considering picking up a fuel efficient beater car to have as a daily driver. I’m looking at everything from used Toyota Tercel’s to Honda Accord’s and everything in between. There is however one major catch – my budget is $1000.00. Obviously a 1k budget eliminates anything that one would consider to be “nice”, but as I already have a nice car, I’m not too worried about its looks. What I am concerned with however is how the car runs and has it been serviced regularly. Now some of you may be thinking that you can’t find a good car for $1000.00, but I completely disagree. In fact I’m betting I can find a good old lady car for a G-note right in my neighborhood if I look hard enough.

First off you’ve got to lower your expectations about driving anything nice. Setting your sights nice and low means that things can only get better. Next you must identify your targets, for example stick with budget cars from the mid-1980′s to the mid-1990′s and you’ll be fine. Cars like the aforementioned Toyota Tercel, old Buick Century’s, Regal’s and Chevy Cavalier’s are a dime a dozen and all get upwards of 25-30 mpg on 87 octane fuel. Once you’ve identified your targets look at multiple cars, throw out a low ball price and go from there. My bet is that you’ll get something better than you originally thought and come in under budget. Stay tuned because I’ll keep you posted as to what I find.

Audi's A3 TDI: ja, bitte. Image: Audi

I hate to be Captain Bringdown, but conventional wisdom says that gas prices are only going to go up as summer approaches. In past years, they’ve gone up at Easter, but dropped prior to the inevitable Memorial Day price spike. Given what’s going on in the MIddle East, combined with rising demand for autos in India and China, we may not see any price decreases this year. If you’re shopping for a new car, chances are good that fuel economy is a major concern, and may even be the reason why you’re looking for a new car in the first place.

Below is a list of the top ten most fuel efficient vehicles, excluding hybrids, according to the U.S. government. Why am I eliminating hybrids from consideration? They’re (usually) more expensive to purchase and with a few exceptions (like Toyota’s Prius) depreciate at a higher rate than gasoline fueled cars. They’re also inherently more complicated, with more potential points of failure than a conventional, gas or diesel fueled car. Read on to see which cars make the cut.

Tie: VW Golf TDI, Jetta TDI, Jetta Sportwagen TDI, Audi A3 TDI

Volkswagen and Audi are two of the few automakers who understand that America is the land of opportunity for clean, fuel efficient diesels. All of these cars get 42 MPG on the highway and 30 MPG around town, and demand for them remains high. In other words, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a good deal on one, and paying sticker price is the norm. The best part? These cars are actually entertaining to drive, something I really can’t say about their hybrid counterparts.

Tie: Hyundai Elantra, Ford Fiesta SFE

Both the Hyundai and the Ford get 40 MPG on the highway and 29 MPG around town, but I’d give the nod to the Hyundai for interior room and comfort.

Chevy Cruze Eco

If you need justification to learn how to drive a manual transmission, here it is: the Chevy Cruze Eco gets 42 MPG highway and 28 MPG city when equipped with a stick; the automatic gets 37 MPG highway and 26 MPG city. If fuel savings is your primary concern, wouldn’t you opt for the variant that gets the best fuel economy?

Mini Cooper

Equipped with a manual transmission, the Mini Cooper gets 37 MPG highway and 29 MPG city; with the automatic, those numbers drop to 36 MPG highway and 28 MPG city.

Toyota Yaris

The Yaris is rated at 36 MPG highway and 29 MPG city. Funky styling aside, the car is a cult classic in the Japanese market, where tuned variants are as common as sushi bars. The earthquake and tsunami in Japan has temporarily halted Yaris production, so U.S. inventory may be limited for a while. Expect to pay sticker or above until the supply increases.

Hyundai Sonata

The Elantra’s bigger brother gets 35 MPG highway and 24 MPG city when equipped with the 2.4 liter inline four and a manual transmission. Automatic-equipped cars still get a respectable 35 MPG highway and 22 MPG city.

Image: Porsche

I’m a skeptical guy by nature; some would call me a pessimist, but I prefer to think of myself as a realist. My wife sees me as somewhere between those two extremes, and calls me a “dark realist”, which is a tag I can live with. With that in mind, when an automaker tells me their next supercar, will have a combined output of 718 horsepower, sprint from zero to 62 miles per hour in under 3.2 seconds, lap the Nürburgring in 7:30 and still yield fuel economy of 78.4 miles per gallon, I’m inclined to doubt them. When they open the order books while the car is still in early development, and ask customers to part with $845,000 (plus tax) to take delivery some nineteen months in the future, I’m inclined to yell “fraud”. Unless that automaker is Porsche, and the car in question is the new 918 Spyder.

Image: Porsche

To put it bluntly, Porsche has drawn so much attention to themselves with this car that they can’t afford to screw it up. At launch, it had best be able to meet or exceed every single goal Porsche has defined to date, or the automaker risks a substantial loss of credibility (and, potentially, market share). I have no idea how Porsche will fulfill the commitments made to date, because the technology to yield such performance and fuel economy doesn’t exist to my knowledge; then again, Porsche has a whole lot of smart engineers working for them, and failure is not an option.

If you’re one of the 918 people worldwide who will put money down on the 918, Porsche also wants you to know they have a car to make your 19 month wait for delivery more bearable. You’ll soon be able to take delivery of a 911 Turbo S “Edition 918 Spyder”, in coupe or cabriolet style, that comes in the same color as your 918 Spyder, has green piping and interior trim and includes limited edition badging to match the serial number of your yet-to-be-built 918 Spyder. These 911 Turbos start at about $245,450 for the coupe and $261,455 for the cabrio, but those are just Euro prices translated to dollars. If the limited edition 911s are sold in the United States, Porsche will likely price them more competitively with current 911 Turbo variants.

Source: Porsche

For the first time in quite awhile people are purchasing automobiles based on fuel economy more than emotion. They’re shopping with their brains more then their hearts, which means that the performance based automobile may be looking at a tough road ahead. 550 hp cars are wonderful things and as journalist we’re pre-programmed to like them because let’s face it, they make our jobs fun. However when it comes time to filling their fuel tanks our love for them tends to diminish. The new Cadillac CTS-V line for example is one of our favorites, but the thought of putting $65.00 worth of fuel in those suckers every 225 miles is simply not appealing. Don’t get me wrong, I’d buy one in less than a heartbeat if I could, but I’d also have to have something fuel efficient parked next to it in the driveway. The question though is which type of fuel efficient car should you purchase.

Hybrids, turbo diesels, small displacement turbo petrol engines and electric cars all have their pro’s and con’s, but in the end there is actually a fair amount of research that needs to be done before pulling the trigger. Hybrids for example offer great fuel economy by combining electric drive with small gas engines, however they’re about as exciting to look as a pair of old people power walkers (think Toyota Prius). Small displacement turbo engines offer great fuel economy and come in some nice wrappers, i.e. Chevrolet Cruze, but they lack any sort of real grunt and with full electric vehicles you’ll be constantly suffering from range anxiety.

Personally, I’m a big fan of turbo diesels. Cars like the BMW 335d and Volkswagen Jetta TDI are clean burning, offer great fuel economy and have power and torque to spare. Sure they may be a bit pricier, but in the end I think they offer the best compromise between performance, style and economy.