Brusa Evergreen EV First EV to cross the Alps on one charge

The electric-drive Evergreen - evocative of the classic BMC Mini - was developed in the 1990s in Ibach, Switzerland by Andreas Klasen and the the firm COMminiCATION. It used some of the mechanical components of the original Mini to reduce development costs.

The Evergreen was built with a self-supporting lightweight fiberglass composite body. Thanks to simple design - a cabrio / targa body with cloth top and doors - all up the basic vehicle weighed only 330kg (725lb). Yet it was able to carry a battery of up to 470kg - a remarkable 140% of its own weight.

This allowed for a range of around 120km (75 miles), even with a cheap, simple lead battery. With 470kg of today's advanced lithium EV batteries, an Evergreen could achieve over 500km (310mi) of range. Alas, COMminiCATION stopped building the Evergreen in the early 2000s.

In the mid-1990s, Alex Krause of Brusa Elektronik AG, a Swiss EV components designer and manufacturer founded in 1985, scored one of the few existing copies of this featherweight EV. He fitted it with what was then Brusa's largest liquid-cooled motor, their most powerful inverter (AMC-325), and a 180 volt, 100 amp-hour (18kWh) battery made of liquid-cooled Saft nickel-cadmium EV modules. As of 2001, he had driven it over 80,000km with essentially no decline in battery capacity.

In 1997, Krause took his Evergreen from Gams to Stabio for a business meeting - a distance of 220km (132mi). He made the journey with no charging stops, though he did charge during his meeting at Stabio. This would be a more than respectable accomplishment for any EV of that vintage, but this trip involved crossing the Alps. The car had to climb 1140m, descend 1350m, and then reverse the elevation change to return.

The following description of the car and the journey is adapted from one published by Brusa in the early 2000s.

Mini Evergreen

Owner

Axel Krause
BRUSA Elektronik AG
Neudorf 14
Postfach 55
CH-9466 Sennwald
Schweitz

We started in Gams around 0630 with a fully charged battery. It was dark for the first two hours of the drive, so that we had to use about 2% of the battery capacity for the headlights.

We reached the San Bernardino tunnel entrance at sunrise. By that time, we had already used 74% of the battery capacity and had covered just over half the route.

On the first part of the steep descent, we were able to recover about 5% of the total battery capacity through recuperation. From kilometer 140, the downward gradient was less, so that we could cover the next 20 km without appreciable consumption. Thanks to the recuperation, we reached Bellinzona, the lowest-altitude point of the journey, with the same amount of energy in the battery as at the San Bernardino Tunnel. This means that we covered approximately 50 km essentially without consuming any energy.

In Stabio, we charged during a meeting with a business partner. Thanks to the 10 kW charger, the battery was fully charged in 2 hours. During the return journey, again we needed no intermediate charging. This was thus the first time in history that an electric vehicle crossed the Alps from one valley to another, without any intermediate charging -- and, at that, twice on the same day.