Cape Town-based Optimal Energy plans to mass produce its fully electric vehicle, Joule, in South Africa from 2012, but we can expect to see pilot fleets on our roads and internationally from next year, the company says.

California start-up Aptera’s unusual, three-wheeled electric and hybrid-electric cars will be humming along California’s roads from October this year if all goes according to plan. The company apparently has 4,000 customer orders already for its head-turning two-seaters.

The National Energy Regulator (Nersa) is due to introduce the renewable energy feed-in tariffs for South Africa by the end of this month. These will determine how much local producers of renewable energy will be paid per kilowatt hour for their electricity and help them to decide whether it is worth investing in the industry. [...]

Nissan’s Pivo 2 electric concept car has a cabin that can rotate 360 degrees so you never have to reverse again – and it comes with its own robot.

• Green car needs greenbacks: The global credit crisis could delay production of South Africa’s Joule electric car as the manufacturing company, Optimal Energy, needs to raise more than $130-million dollars to build an assembly plant. [More].
• Please release me: A rare female whale shark being kept as an attraction in an aquarium in Sol Kerner’s recently opened Atlantis resort in Dubai (he also built SA’s Sun City megaresort) has provoked the ire of environmentalists and the public. A local newspaper has launched a “Free Sammy the Shark” campaign and a Facebook group has been set up calling for the shark’s release. [More]

At the beginning of the year the electric car seemed but a distant dream. But in the past few months there’s been a rash of announcements about new electric cars – even a South African one. We’ve compiled a list of 12 + a plug-in hybrid that we’ve found on the Internet of late. It’ll be interesting to see how many of these make it to market.