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By
EWAN KENNEDY
2 March 2009
Subaru
Australia flew a Stella EV (Electric Vehicle) to Australia to
display at the Melbourne International Motor Show and has allowed
selected motoring journalists to sample it.
The Japanese company's vision for the future, the Subaru Stella is
a pure-electric plug-in vehicle, not a hybrid. It's still in
prototype format, but is close to production reality, albeit in
limited numbers, and only planned for sale in Japan at this stage.
We've just completed our initial drives of the Subaru Stella
around a closed test track, in city traffic in Melbourne and on
motorways. Naturally, this car is aimed at congested areas, but
the motorway testing was done at 100 km/h to confirm that Stella
is capable of keeping up with normal traffic flow. It's flat out
at that speed, but was stable and competent on the road.
First impressions were that the Stella was pretty much like any
other car to drive. Which is exactly its designers’ intent.
There's almost no sound from the electric motor, and because the
motor is off when the vehicle’s stationary it's eerily quiet. On
the move, tyre noise is about normal so Stella sounds much like
any other car.
From the outside, though, Stella doesn’t sound like any other
car. Indeed, it doesn’t sound like anything at all, because it's
almost completely silent at slow speeds. Pedestrians accustomed to
listening for cars – and, believe it or not, that's most of us
– were taken by surprise on two occasions during our slow run
through busy Melbourne city streets, only noticing us visually at
the last moment.
If electric cars are the way of the future, then either
pedestrians will have to mend their ways, or some sort of
artificial sound will need be built into the vehicles. It would be
a shame if it had to be the latter because city streets are
already unpleasantly noisy.
Performance from a standstill is excellent because the electric
motor develops its maximum torque the moment it starts to turn and
continues to do so until it reaches 2700 rpm, which is almost
halfway to its 6000 limit. It doesn’t like hills, however, and
is noticeably slower off the mark under those conditions. Perhaps
not frustratingly slow, but it's close to it.
Handling felt fine for a small runabout, though we really
weren’t able to push the car to make definitive checks. The
batteries positioning under the floor and within the wheelbase
make for a low centre of gravity and better balance than in a
conventional car.
The batteries hang too low and are likely to be damaged on rough
roads, even on steep gutter crossings and driveways.
Subaru Stella could be charged from an Australian home electricity
supply without too many modifications. A full charge of the
lithium-ion batteries would take about four hours and cost around
75 cents. That would give a range of about 80 kilometres, enough
for the typical suburban commute or shopping run.
Even better, a special charging unit could give an 80 per cent
charge in only 15 minutes. This could result in special charging
stations being set up in the manner of car-wash cafes. Recharging
your body with a latte while watching your car getting its own
charge could be a pleasant experience.
Stella is smaller than any four-seat car currently sold in
Australia. It can transport four adults with a bit of a squeeze.
My six-foot (1.82-metre) frame was cramped for elbow space and
needed more legroom. To gain the latter would have resulted in
making life uncomfortable for anyone sitting behind me. The boot
is small but should cope with a week’s grocery shopping for a
couple.
Subaru's Stella runs on nothing but electricity so produces no
tailpipe emissions. However the electricity has to come from
somewhere and most of Australia's power is produced by burning
comparatively dirty coal.
In Japan, creating the electricity to power the Subaru Stella
results in about 41 grams of CO2 being produced per kilometre
travelled. Japan uses clean generators for quite a large
percentage of its electricity including nuclear power stations.
Subaru estimates the CO2 output to power a Stella in Australia
would be approximately double that of Japan.
The greenest cars in Australia produce a little over 100 grams of
CO2 per kilometre. So if the Stella is responsible for about 82
grams it's significantly better. However, the Stella is a fair bit
smaller than the cleanest four/five-seat cars, so it's not quite
an apples-versus-apples comparison.
Modern electric cars are still relatively early in their
development stage and it's to be expected that there will be
greater advances in their technology than in that for engines that
run on derivatives of crude oil. Australia is slowly improving its
methods of energy production, but there's still a long way to go.
Stella was brought to Australia by Subaru to showcase a possible
future of the motor vehicle in this country. There are no plans to
introduce it here at this stage. It wouldn’t be cheap, we
estimate it selling in the low- to mid-twenty thousands, though
the current currency crisis could further inflate that. As
electric car development progresses over the years, prices would
presumably be trimmed.
© Copyright
Marque Publishing Company
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