Geoff Hoon, Britain’s transport secretary, has announced that the government has decided to offer a £100 ($155, €125) million aid to the development of electric cars and other ultra-low emission cars. Ford Motor, Mercedes-Benz, Citroen and Land Rover are among the 10 companies that will compete to supply low-carbon vans to local councils and government bodies, such as the Royal Mail, and city councils including Glasgow, Leeds and Liverpool.

The British government told that this funding was necessary to give an initial boost to electric car sales, which aren’t the most affordable vehicles out there, due to the expensive batteries, plus the problem of recharging mean. Beside that, Mr. Hoon also announced that an extra £20 million will be allocated for research and development in technology to make electric cars more affordable.

And it looks like Europe is really starting to support electric cars, because, this month, French president Nicolas Sarkozy also announced a 400 million Euros funding for electric cars development.

Read More: "British government gives £100 million aid to electric cars research"

In a recent interview for Business Week, Elon Musk, Tesla Motors’ CEO talked about how the current economic situation is affecting Tesla. After Musk got more involved in the company where he’s also an investor, the Tesla Roadster proved to be quite a success, with 1,200 back orders for the $100,000. However, the future’s not so bright. Musk’s dream of creating more affordable electric cars is currently going through some rough times. After some time ago he announced that the company’s planning on going public next year, after securing verbal commitments for $100 million in private capital and federal loan guarantees geared at jump-starting development of alternative vehicles. However, after the United States has been hit hard by the credit crunch, investors tried to impose tougher terms, and the negotiations are currently not going so great. Musk, who was the co-founder of PayPal and has a current net worth of more than $300 million, had to invest more from his own money to keep the company’s development plans alive.

Still, the $60,000 Model S sedan, which was scheduled to enter production in 2010, was postponed. And this could mean big trouble for Tesla, analysts say: “If the market wants [electric cars] in the number Tesla is talking about [..] a larger auto company will bury them on cost.” Many auto industry giants, including GM, Toyota, Nissan or Daimler currently have an electric car in development, and Tesla can’t keep up with them.

Read More: "Tesla Motors not doing so great"

Wow, this really is something unexpected. I mean, in the last coupe of weeks we’ve seen several spy shots of an electric MINI, but we weren’t really expecting something like this. It looks like MINI is in the final development stages of an all-electric car, called MINI E. As part of a pilot project, 500 all-electric MINI E’s will be made available to select private and corporate customers from California, New York and New Jersey.

The MINI E is powered by electric motor that delivers 200 hp (150 kW) and 220 Nm of torque, transferring its power to the front wheels via a single-stage helical gearbox. Performance figures are pretyt impressive, the car going from 0 to 100 km/h (62 mph) in 8.5 seconds and up to an electronically limited top speed of 152 km/h (95 mph). The engine is powered by a high-performance rechargeable lithium-ion battery, made up of 5,088 cells grouped into 48 modules. The battery takes two and a half hours for a full recharge and offers a driving range of 240 km (150 miles). The only downside is that the back seats are out, to make room for the large battery, so the car is offered as a two-seater vehicle.

The 500 MINI E’s will be built at the Oxford and Munich plants through the end of 2008 and during the entire testing period, qualified personnel will perform maintenance and repair work on the MINI E’s electrical components. The car will debut at this year’s LA Auto Show, in November.

Read more in the official press release and check out more photos after the jump. Read More: "The all-electric MINI E announced"

The Nissan Nuvu concept made its world debut at this year’s Paris Motor Show and it shows Nissan’s ‘new view’ (new view, nuvu, get it?) on urban transportation. The electric car concept is only 3 meters long and has an interesting 2+1 seating: 2 regular seats and a third one that can be folded down when required, and which has a center section made from hardwearing netting that allows cool or warm air to circulate around the occupant’s body. Nissan says that, before deciding on this seating model, they made a research which showed that for 90 percent of the time, people who drive in the city, do it alone, five percent of the time there was one passenger and four percent of the time there were two passengers. This is actually pretty interesting.

According to Nissan, the Nuvu is more than a concept, a fully working mobile test bed for much of the technology that will be used in Nissan’s production EV to be launched in 2010. This is one reason they didn’t release full info about the technology behind the Nuvu. What we do know is that the electric motor has a driving range of 125 km (approx 78 miles) and top speed of 120 km/h (75 mph). It’s laminated lithium-ion batteries are developed in cooperation with NEC Group, and a quick charge from empty to full takes between 10 to 20 minutes while a full charge should take between three to four hours from a domestic 220v socket. The Nuvu also uses a set of solar panels, that Nissan claims help save the equivalent of one full overnight charge each month.

Read more info about the Nissan Nuvu concept in the official press release, and then check out the photos we took at the Paris show. Enjoy!

Photo Gallery: Nissan Nuvu Concept at the Paris Motor Show

Read More: "2008 Paris Special: Nissan Nuvu Concept"

Yesterday, San Jose authorities approved the lease of nearly 90 acres of city-owned land and Tesla Motors announced that they’re planning on building a $250 million facility in California, where they’ll assemble the upcoming Model S electric sedan. Tesla was planning on building the plant in New Mexico, but Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and state Treasurer Bill Lockyer worked out a tax break for the Silicon Valley company. Actually, Arnie is such a big fan of the project that he, along with several other celebrities, like George Clooney and Kelsey Grammer, allready placed their orders for the Roadster.

According to Tesla, the new facility will create around 1,000 jobs and will produce 1,500 Roadsters starting next year and 15,000 Model S, after the electric luxury sedan will be launched in the fourth quarter of 2010. Though the Model S will be priced at around $60,000, Tesla’s CEO Ze’ev Drori announced that they’re also planning on creating cheaper and more affordable electric cars, that could appeal to a larger audience. “It is our intention to service the entire market [..] We are not a niche player. We are going to work down the road on cars which will be substantially less expensive again.”

Read More: "Tesla chose California for its Model S electric sedan production"

Fisker has announced that they’ve managed to complete a $65 million financing round. Beside the existing investors, Palo Alto Investors and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers who also contributed, a new investor showed up, Qatar Investment Authority (QIA). The money will be used to complete the development of the Karma four-door plug-in hybrid and Fisker hopes to get the car marketed starting with the 4th quarter of 2009. If everything works out like Fisker wants to, they estimated an annual production of 15,000 units.

“We are extremely pleased to have closed our C financing round at this time, particularly in light of the current market conditions,” said Henrik Fisker, CEO, Fisker Automotive, Inc. “This shows once again that Fisker Automotive has a solid business plan and a globally experienced automotive team with very strong investors behind the company.”

Read More: "$65 million financing round for Fisker"

Introduced in 1999, the Audi A2 was never a success for the German company so the model was discontinued in 2005. When the A2 production ended, Audi announced that its replacement, the Audi A1, will be unveiled in 2009. However, according to Car Magazine, the A2 will be reintroduced and will benefit from an electric package. If this rumors are true, the A2 will be built as a lightweight aluminum spaceframe (ASF) city car adapted for battery operation. And that’s not all. Though the development will be very expensive and the platform won’t be shared throughout the VW Group, its basic underlying concept might be flexible enought to be the starting point of a Porsche electric powered part.

Read More: "Audi to bring back the A2 as electric powered car"

Looks like Tesla Motors is becoming a pretty attractive destination for highly qualified personnel and a threat to the other carmakers. After yesterday we wrote about Franz von Holzhausen, which resigned from Mazda and was hired by Tesla, today we found out about Deepak Ahuja, which is Tesla’s new chief financial officer. Ahuja stepped away from Ford, where he was the controller for the company’s small cars product development program.

Tesla Motors CEO, Ze’ev Drori said: “Deepak’s experience as CFO of multibillion-dollar business units with global sourcing and manufacturing operations makes him the ideal person to lead our finance organization through the company’s next period of rapid growth [..] The addition of another seasoned auto industry executive to the senior management team at Tesla demonstrates that Tesla is focused on combining the best of what Detroit and Silicon Valley has to offer in building the next great American automobile company.”

Read More: "Tesla continues its hiring spree"

Today, Nissan unveiled that it’s working on an electric vehicle prototype based on the Cube minicar currently available in Japan. However, the production version will have a new unique look. The front-wheel drive prototype is powered by a new 80 kW motor and uses an advanced laminated compact lithium-ion batteries developed by the Nissan-NEC joint-venture, known as AESC (Automotive Energy Supply Corporation). The batteries are installed under the floor, so no cabin or cargo space is sacrificed.

According to Nissan, they’re planning on introducing the all-electric vehicle in 2010 and mass market it globally in 2012.

The British car maker Lightning Car announced, last year its plans to design an electric super car. Now, in the second half of the month, they will present, at British Motor Show, the new Lightning Car. Even tough there are just a few days until then, Lightning Car didn’t announced the price of the new super car. Probably Lightning GT will have a price of about 180.000 euros.

The car will be equipped with a traction control system, a sound system which imitates an internal combustion engine, electric windows, sporty seats, low alloy wheels and LED lights. As optional you can have magnesium-carbon alloy wheels, air condition and a navigation system. Lightning GT will have four electric engines (one for each wheel), producing a total power of 700 bhp. Each engine will have a torque of about 749 Nm, that can be obtain theoretical from 0 km/h.

All that power is going to be stored in a revolutionary battery that uses titan structures instead of traditional graphite, which can offer a 400 km range. The battery can be recharged in only 10 minutes and it has a life of 12-20 years or 15,000 charge cycles. It’s estimated that the car will reach 100 km/h (62 mph) in only 4 seconds.

Check out more photos after the jump.
Read More: "The Lightning GT electric sports car"

In the past, Chinese car makers were accused of lack of originality and copying designs from European producers. One thing can be said about the Tang Hua electric cars. They sure are original. Not in a good way, but original. I mean, c’mon, what are these? The guys over at Autoblog call them “Disneyland rejects” and I think they’re quite gentle when they say that.

Read More: "Detroit Auto Show: Tang Hua, weird Chinese electric cars"