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The Japan Electric Vehicle Club, an association of citizens dedicated to the development of electric vehicles, managed to drive a light car with a distance exceeding 1,000 km without making a single battery recharge.

The Japanese government has made development of electric vehicles a priority to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases in the country. If electric motors have long proved that they were in no way inferior to internal combustion engines (the project of Eliica Keio University has led to building of a car that reaches 370 km/h), electric vehicles are regularly criticized for lack of autonomy. In fact, one of the cars currently sold does not run more than 150 kilometers.

By performing this type of demonstration, the association hopes to make people aware that the issue of autonomy can be resolved and it will be longer hinder the development of electric vehicles. The association had thus made the first trip between Tokyo and Osaka, traversing the 555.6 km separating the two cities without recharging the batteries of their Daihatsu Mira EV. However, the vagaries of traffic increasing the acceleration and braking, which results in a premature discharge of batteries. The team has decided to retry the adventure, this time on a track of 689 m in circumference of Shimotsuma located in the department of Ibaraki (East Tokyo).

The car has a lithium-ion batteries made a total of 8320 cylindrical elements provided by Sanyo. The maximum total capacity of 74 kWh. 17 pilots have lined up to make 1456 laps, traveling 1003.184 km at an average speed of 40 km/h, and consumes a total of 63 kWh (an average consumption of 62.8 Wh/km).

Even if it’s only a prototype, this is the first time ever an electric vehicle travels a distance of over 1000 km without needing to recharge the batteries. These results are encouraging for the future of electric vehicles.

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