Mercedes BlueZero Concept @ 2009 NAIAS

FOR FULL DETROIT AUTO SHOW COVERAGE: http://blogs.edmunds.com/straightline... The difference between each of the Concept BlueZero cars amounts to range. The BlueZero E-Cell, the car in the booth, is an all-electric car powered exclusively by a 47-hp lithium-ion battery pack -- apparently two packs will fit in the car's floor structure. And we'd guess you'd need both packs to meet Mercedes' claim of zero to 60 mph in under 11 seconds. Range is 125 miles, and in the interest of preserving that, top speed is limited to 93 mph. The Concept BlueZero F-Cell presumably uses just one of the battery packs, as it also has a hydrogen tank and a fuel cell stack. Its range is 258 miles. Meanwhile, BlueZero E-Cell Plus is a series hybrid like a Chevy Volt. It uses the Smart Fortwo's 67-hp three-cylinder gas engine as a range extender (to drive the electric motor and recharge the battery pack). Its claimed max range is an utterly livable 375 miles. None of these cars is going into production anytime soon. Given the power density limitations of current lithium-ion battery technology, a Mercedes engineer tells us, electric cars still need to be very small. So Mercedes is planning to build an electric version of the smaller A-Class sometime in 2010. We'd guess the production run will be very small, too.

2010-01-26T19:01:50+00:00
Duration: 01:04