In 2008, Pininfarina and battery maker Bolloré set up a 50-50 joint venture with the purpose of designing, developing, manufacturing and distributing an electric car.
The results of that alliance – the Pininfarina-Bolloré Bluecar – was shown for the first time last October at the Paris Mondial de l’Automobile.
The car itself is a four-seater, five-door hatchback powered by Lithium Metal Polymer (LMP) batteries as well as an array of supercapacitors that store energy during braking instead of dissipating it as heat as with a conventional brake.
Both the batteries and the supercapacitors were developed at the research centre of the Bolloré Group at Ergué-Gabéric near Quimper in Brittany, France.
The two companies claim that the batteries in the vehicle can be recharged in six hours from a standard power socket, and and only two hours on fast-charging outlets.
One charge can provide enough power to provide the vehicle with a 250km range. If need be, the batteries can be fast-charged for five minutes, giving the car enough power to run 25km.
To provide additional power, the roof of the car as well as part of its bonnet have been fitted out with an array of solar cells.
In terms of performance, the Bluecar will feature a top speed that is electronically capped at 130km/h and will be able to accelerate from 0 to 60km/h in 6.3 seconds.
The car will go into production in Italy at Pininfarina starting in 2010. Production on an industrial scale will take place between 2011 and 2017, with 60,000 of the vehicles expected to be produced by 2015.
Powered by LMP batteries and supercapacitors, the Pininfarina-Bolloré Bluecar has a range of more than 250km
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