The T.27 is designed to be driven in the city. Since it’s ultra-light, Murray says it will be the most efficient car in its class, which probably sits somewhere between golf carts and failed European mini cars from the ’60s. The most innovative aspect is that it’s made using a process called iStream: Instead of stamping metal sheets like in normal car factories, this manufacturing method welds metal sheets together.

That results in factories that are one-fifth the size of traditional ones, less energy consumption and a car that looks like crap. And that, my friends, is the problem with the T.27: If something looks like crap people won’t buy it no matter how green and efficient it is.

Update: And yes, it looks like crap even with the fibre covers. People want real cars that feel solid. Not glorified golf carts painted in bright colours. [Daily Mail]

The project wants to make this happen by using a lithium-air battery, which…

couple to atmospheric oxygen-essentially harnessing the oxygen in the air as the cathode of the battery. Since oxygen enters the battery on-demand, it offers an essentially unlimited amount of reactant, metered only by the surface area of its electrodes. IBM believes its nanoscale semiconductor fabrication techniques can increase the surface area of the lithium-air battery’s electrodes by at least 100 times, enabling them to meet the goals of the project.

If you think the consortium will deliver a fantastic car by the time you need to trade in your current vehicle, you should hold off on getting so excited. IBM says it’s going to be another two years to even see if the lithium-air batteries can be used to make the goal happen. [Smarter Technology via Slashdot]

Someday electric sports cars like the e-WOLF here will be THE guaranteed way to pick up robotic prostitutes along the superhighway. [Autoblog via Boing Boing Gadgets]

Nissan’s engineers were originally tasked to simply recreate the sound of an engine. But, says 30-year veteran noise and vibration expert, Toshiyuki Tabata:

“We decided that if we’re going to do this, if we have to make sound, then we’re going to make it beautiful and futuristic. We wanted something a bit different, something closer to the world of art.”

The sound will kick in automatically when the car starts, and turn off at about 20km/h (when tyre noise is enough to warn pedestrians).

Of course, it’s not the first time we’ve seen this sort of tech. Fisker Karma’s electric car will use a similar system designed to sound “like something between a formula One car and a jet plane”. That’s cool and all, but I think I’d still take the Sci-Fi option. [Nissan via Bloomberg via LA Times]

Jalopnik is right. This see-through concept out of the BMW R&D wing would be best served with a side of Tron and a couple of light cycles.

The video above is the official promo for the concept vehicle, which will, sadly, never see a showroom. For more, see Jalopnik, which has up a gallery and oodles of facts and figures. [Jalopnik]

The numbers broke down to about $US20 million in revenue and $US1 million in profit. That $US465 million is set to fund development on the company’s first sedan offering, the $US50,000 Tesla Model S. Not stumbling anymore, it seems. [CNN]

Batteries have been a bottleneck in consumer electronics for years now, and it’s getting ridiculous. Think back ten years ago: You probably couldn’t have imagined all the wild stuff you can do with 2009’s smartphones, but you definitely wouldn’t have guessed that their batteries would last less than two days. It doesn’t make sense, and it’s slowing things down—imagine what our gadgets could do if manufacturers didn’t have to spend so much of their engineering efforts of reducing power consumption.

The problem is, truly new battery technologies require huge institutional investments, the likes of which most companies aren’t able—or willing—to make. As Wired explains, we’ve been stuck for years, but maybe, just maybe, this $US2.4 billion dollars will somehow transmute into a breakthrough battery technology that’ll trickle down to our gadgets, rendering out DC adapters obsolete once and for all. Or, it’ll just sink into some kind of giant corporate money hole, and we’ll just have to charge our iPhone 5GS Nanos six times a day. We’ll see! [WSJ]

Nissan’s quick to separate its newest vehicle from the pack by detailing that the smiling face formed between the car’s headlights isn’t the only friendly thing about it:

Unlike internal-combustion engine (ICE) equipped vehicles, Nissan LEAF’s power train has no tail pipe, and thus no emission of CO2 or other greenhouse gases. A combination of Nissan LEAF’s regenerative braking system and innovative lithium-ion battery packs enables the car to deliver a driving range of more than 160km (100 miles) on one full charge.

Surprisingly, charging the LEAF doesn’t take all eternity and you can be ready to go in less time than it takes to get a sunburn in the Florida sun:

Nissan LEAF can be charged up to 80% of its full capacity in just under 30 minutes with a quick charger. Charging at home through a 200V outlet is estimated to take approximately eight hours – ample time to enable an overnight refresh for consumer and car alike.

We’ll know more about pricing of this zippy little thing as the LEAF gets closer to being on the market (around late 2010), but it’s expected to qualify for an “array of significant local, regional and national tax breaks and incentives in markets around the world.” Saving money and the environment? Maybe this eunuch of a car is worth it after all. [Nissan]

The different atomic structure of the battery and knowledge of nanotechnology are what make this battery different. They used “mesoporous carbon, a material that presents a highly uniform pore structure at nanoscale level,” to allow for a more efficient design:

The team assembled a nanostructure of carbon rods separated by empty channels, sulfur was then melted to fill the tiny voids thanks to capillary forces. All the spaces were uniformly filled with sulfur, thus maximizing the surface area in direct contact with carbon and boosting battery efficiency.

We’ve been needing a new battery technology for awhile now, especially for electric cars, so here’s hoping they can get these lithium-sulfur batteries into production as soon as possible and that they deliver on the possibilities we see here. If it really is capable of three times the batter life, we’re talking about something like a 1200km range on a Tesla, 20 hours on a MacBook, or half a week on an iPod, all without added bulk or expense! [Gizmag via DVICE]

According to the numbers (we only know that it’s “double digit millions”), Jalopnik speculates that Tesla’s valuation is actually less than Twitter. [CNN Money via Jalopnik]