Romanian students build electric car

Students from Transylvania university have built an electric car. This is a project created by students that are now enrolled in the Mechanical engineering department.

The students have used an old Smart car which was made in 1999 and have converted it in an electric car. The car used to have an engine of 599 mc, with a power of 45 CP and it had a maximum of 125 km/hour.

Now, after conversion, the car has 30 CP and 32 batteries that are being charged over 3 hours. The car is able to function independently for 50 kilometres with a maximum speed of 80 kilometres per hour. It costs around 3 lei to charge the car which means it costs 6 lei per hundred kilometre of driving.

According to bzb.ro  the first electric car that was built in Romania was a iMiEV from Mitsubishi. Romania has quite a low number of electric cars, although the government has encouraged people to buy them by offering an ecoticket of 4,500 euros for buying an electric car.

The government has also promised to install over 10,000 charging stations across the country. Now there are only 50 stations in Romania. As a comparison, Norway has over 50,000 electric cars.

According to bzb.ro people are not really encouraged to buy electric cars due to lack of infrastructure and the batteries do not last long.