Green Bluecar

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.