Though most of the world associates green with environmentally-friendly technologies, Mercedes Benz and a few others use the color blue name as "greenly-environmental". The latest development in the blue-themed line of Mercedes offerings is a BlueZERO electric vehicle concept being presented at the 2009 Detroit Auto Show. 
The car is both an example of clean technology and a preview of the styling for the next generation Mercedes B-Class. For design, this cuddly city car looks perfectly a Mercedes. It's no S-Class, but the all the traditional Mercedes styling queues are still there. 
As for technology, the Concept BlueZERO comes in 3 variants for engines. The BlueZero E-Cell uses a 35 kWh lithium ion battery pack to provide a 120-mile range. The BlueZero F-Cell variant gets a 90 kW hydrogen fuel cell for a 240-mile range. The efficiency of the fuel cell version is rated at the equivalent of 81mpg. The E-Cell Plus adds a 67hp three-cylinder engine from the Smart ForTwo mounted in the rear, where the spare tire would normally go. The ER-EV variant cuts the battery size in half as well as the electric-only range. The range extender, however, bumps the total range to 360-miles. So what ever variant people will drive, it'll surely be green (ops, I mean blue).
Mercedes also announced that it will begin low-volume series production of the fuel cell B-Class later this year and follow that with low volume series production of a battery electric vehicle in 2010.Source: [Mercedes-Benz]
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment