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Recharge Wrap-up: Grimsel electric car breaks acceleration world record, electric Ford Raptor ATV debuts

An all-electric version of the Ford F-150 SVT Raptor is now available... as an ATV. Made by Caddyshack Golf Cars, it features officially licensed Ford badging borrowed from the super-macho pickup. It has a lifted chassis with leaf springs in the front and rear, hydraulic shocks and off-road tires. Powered by a 48-volt motor, it can do 0-25 mph in 2.9 seconds. Range is an estimated 30 miles - plenty to get you through 18 of the most rugged holes of golf you've ever played. Caddyshack also offers other miniature electric Fords, including a Shelby GT500, Shelby Cobra and 50th Anniversary Mustang. Read more at Green Car Reports. Lexus takes a crack at the BMW i3 in a new video from Funny or Die. In the decidedly anti-EV film, a group of guys drives to Las Vegas for a "dad-chelor party" in a Lexus CT 200h and a BMW i3. The Lexus hybrid makes it to Sin City without any problems, while the BMW's occupants need to make several lengthy stops to charge along the way, missing much of the fun. The video lampoons the inherent range limitations of the EV (the BMW group ends up driving slowly through the desert with no AC or radio to save energy), all in a well produced, if somewhat misguided, short comedy film. Perhaps they should have considered the i3 with a range extender? See the video below, or read more at Green Car Reports. Students from ETH Zurich and Lucerne University have set a new EV acceleration world record. Their "Grimsel" racing car was able to zoom from 0-100 kph (0-62.137 mph) in just 1.785 seconds in less than 30 meters (98.425 feet), crushing the previous record of 2.134 seconds. Even more impressive is that the Grimsel was built by the students themselves, as part of the Formula Student team at the Academic Motorsports Club Zurich. The car weighs just 370 pounds and provides 200 horsepower and 1,202 pound feet of torque from the four hub motors. The Grimsel uses traction control to manage torque for maximum acceleration. See the record acceleration run in the videos below or read more at Gizmag, at Electric Autosport or in the press release from ETH Zurich below. 'grimsel' breaks world record The 'grimsel' electric racing car today broke the previous world record for acceleration in electric cars. The vehicle accelerated from 0 to 100 km/h in 1.785 seconds in under 30 metres. The new record was set by students from ETH Zurich and Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, who also designed and built the vehicle.

BMW predicts US will be biggest i8 market

BMW will be showing a production version of its new i8 plug-in hybrid supercar at the upcoming Frankfurt Motor Show, and while we're quite excited about seeing the company's second i product in the flesh. According to a new report from Automotive News Europe, BMW is expecting its largest markets to be the United States, United Kingdom and Germany. Notable for its absence in that list is everybody's favorite mega-market, China.
Automobilwoche, a German-language publication of Automotive News Europe, spoke with the i8's product manager, Hendrik Wenders, who declared, "The US will be by far the largest sales market for the i8." Wenders stops short of actual mentioning what percentage of i8 sales will be in the US, but does mention that it should arrive in showrooms around the world in about nine months. The simultaneous rollout will occur in 50 different countries.
Check back for our full coverage of the i8's debut at the 2013 Frankfurt Motor Show. If you just can't wait until September, then check out our first drive of the i8 Prototype.

All 25 James Bond movies ranked only by their cars

There is no shortage of lists ranking the best James Bond movies. Ditto lists about the best or worst James Bond cars. I know, I've written some of them. As such, why not combine the two ideas into one new list that ranks all 25 official James Bond movies based exclusively on their cars, or more accurately their car content. I would then pull from my 25 years of James Bond nerddom plus the excellent "Bond Cars: The Definitive History" and our interview with long-time Bond special effects supervisor Chris Corbould to provide tidbits and factoids about the cars and their roles in the movies. And yes(!), this list now includes "No Time to Die," which impresses by adding plenty of car content to the series. It's now available on Blu-ray and download. To determine the list, I considered the inherent coolness of the cars as well as their importance to Bond, film and car history. I considered their importance to the story as well as the quality/excitement of the chases and scenes they participated in. Finally, I tried my best to divorce the car content from my opinions about the movies in general. That my personal list of best James movies looks nothing like this shows I was at least partially successful.     25. 'Moonraker' There are virtually no cars in "Moonraker." None. Oh, there's a gondola on wheels that makes a pigeon do a double-take, but that's not the same thing as a car. Neither is a golf cart. Or an ambulance. Or a space shuttle.   24. 'From Russia With Love' The literary James Bond mostly drove an ancient Bentley, and "From Russia with Love" is the only film in which it appears. It stays parked and the coolest thing that happens (by 1962 standards) is 007 answers its car phone. Thereafter, we get some old cars (even by 1962 standards) driving around Istanbul and a yellow truck. So yeah. Classic Bond film, a must-watch, just not for its car content.   23. 'Dr. No' History records that the first "Bond car" is the Sunbeam Alpine in "Dr. No." The car itself was literally borrowed from a Miss Jennifer Jackson of 53 Lady Musgrave Road in Jamaica for 10 pounds per day for two days during filming. Also, the stunt where it drove under an excavator blocking the road was entirely conceived because the filmmakers showed up to the road they intended to film on and discovered an excavator blocking the thing. Sadly, those are really the only two things interesting about the Alpine, which is a pretty small and dainty thing by Bond car standards.