The UltraCommuter was a series-hybrid electric car developed in Australia by HybridAuto Pty Ltd. Members of the Sustainable Energy Research Group at the University of Queensland first conceived and designed it; the group had grown out of the university’s solar racer Sun Shark. With the university and industry sponsors, the group built a lightweight rolling chassis in 2001–2003. It used a Lotus Elise aluminium tub, all-aluminium double-wishbone suspension of the group’s own design, alloy wheels and low rolling resistance tyres. In 2005 a complete mock-up body was built for the centenary exhibition and road show of the Royal Automobile Club of Queensland.
The design combined an aerodynamic body of aluminium alloys and carbon fibre with a kerb mass of 650 kg. Drive came from two direct-drive wheel motors of 500 Nm each, one in each rear wheel. An 8.6 kWh lithium-ion battery fed them, with a 400 W solar array built into the body and an on-board engine-driven generator able to run on unleaded petrol, natural gas or ethanol. HybridAuto stated 0–100 km/h in under 8 seconds, a top speed above 160 km/h, fuel use of about 2.0 l/100 km and an electric range of about 200 km.
In 2006–07 HybridAuto and the Department of Engineering of the University of Waikato in New Zealand, led by Dr Mike Duke, built an all-electric prototype under the UltraCommuter name. It had a honeycomb aluminium chassis funded by the engineering firm Page Macrae, together with HybridAuto’s suspension, wheels and wheel motors. The red two-seater had gull-wing doors and ran in the experimental prototype class of the 2007 World Solar Challenge.
