At the plugin hybrid vehicle symposium in San Jose last week JB Straubel, Tesla Motors‘ CTO, announced plans for a sports compact EV to join the stunning roadster (just starting to ship now) and the sedan that they announced for 2010 a few weeks ago. They expect sales of the new sports car to reach 100,000 units.

My December this year they are hoping to be producing 100 cars a month at their San Carlos factory in California (some of the slow production to date has been intentional as they wait for development of an improved powertrain). They also hope to reach sales of 20,000 units for the $60K (est.) sedan.

[Via Max Gladwell]

TreeHugger has an excellent round up of electric cars today, including a number of concept and university projects that are not often included in EV articles. The beautiful Tesla roadster is, of course, number one on this list too!

Sure, the Tesla roadster is not for everybody, but it is a car that appeals to the early adopter community, and makes headlines outside of its niche. Both of those things are very important for a nascent technology like EVs.

Also, be sure to check out the comments for some other electric vehicles that they don’t have in their 17.

It seems to be electric car day here at Vertography! Over at Wired’s blogs, Chuck Squatriglia reports that BMW is having 500 Mini cars made at the factory in England without any engine, transmission or fuel systems. The cars are being shipped to Germany where they are fitted out with electric transmissions and batteries, and then they’ll be off to California. Ten of the cars will be used by BMW as show cars, the other 490 will be leased to “select” customers.

Sounds like the primary reason for these cars being made is to help meet California’s zero-emissions vehicle mandate, but the official line is that it will help BMW understand more about electric vehicles. Shame it is just 500, but let’s hope they are just the first 500 of many.

Many people have heard of the Tesla electric roadster, but there’s another fast electric car around the San Francisco bay area too: the Wrightspeed X1.

Unlike the Tesla, the X1 is still a one-of-a-kind proof of concept vehicle that is not available for purchase. Whereas the Tesla gets its chassis design, and some other components, from Lotus, the X1 gets its chassis from another British car company: Ariel. Based on the Ariel Atom design, the look of the X1 is a little different too, bearing more of a resemblance to track racing cars or some of the classic British kit car designs like the Caterham 7.

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