Turning cars electric, cheaply (Image: Comstock/Getty)

IT COULD take a “perfect storm” to create electric cars that match gas-powered cars’ range – a mix of motor-industry investment, infrastructure change and advances in battery technology. Instead of waiting, a new project aims to build cheap vehicles good enough for short commutes.

Huge effort has been expended on untested new technology, says Illah Nourbakhsh, leader of the Charge Car project at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He suggests an alternative: “Let’s use the cheapest hardware possible by making the smartest possible management software.”

His team has designed a novel electric-car architecture that …