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Home | Green Cars News | Concepts | Eight Wheels Electric â€œEliicaâ€ Japanese Car

Eight Wheels Electric â€œEliicaâ€ Japanese Car

06 April, 2007 12:00:00

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Imagine a 21st century family sedan that can do 400 kph and doubles as an mobile conference room, while being powered by a 640 hp, pollution-free electric drive system.

To illustrate the potential of the car, the students created a video that depicts the car as it might be used by a business to travel to a meeting.

It has eight wheels and needs to be recharged for ten hours, but Japanese engineers believe the Eliica electric car could be the future of environmentally friendly motoring.

The vehicle, which has cost millions of pounds to develop, goes from standstill to 60mph in less than four seconds and has a potential top speed of 250mph.

Eliica concept car - 6min. video

Eliica beats Porsche

Powered by eight 55kW electric motors and a huge bank of lithium-ion batteries, the five-passenger vehicle is designed around two basic models: Type A with a top speed of 400 kph and a range of 200 km between charges; Type B with a top speed of 190 kph but a range of 320 km. Measuring 5.1 meters long by 1.9 meters wide, the car cost an estimated 500 million yen, provided by corporate sponsors.The experimental vehicle is unlikely to go into production in its present form, but has been developed to show the potential for electric-powered vehicles in the future. Professor Hiroshi Shimizu, of Keio University, who developed the car, said: "When you're dealing with technology that is thought by most people to be too heavy, slow and lacking range, you have to do better than just equal the current crop of supercars. You have to outclass them and make a statement. "We built this car to show just how fast, stable and fun an electric car can be."