Slashdot Mirror

From the car's website:

The average round-trip commute in the U.S. is 20 miles according to the 2000 report from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics.

For that average commute of 20 miles and up to 24 miles per charge, the total cost per mile of the Tango is approximately 30% lower than that of a Honda Insight. This includes battery replacement, maintenance, and the cost of electricity at $.05 per kWh (as in the Northwest). The Honda Insight has an EPA rating of 56 mpg city and 57 highway. Please see the Cost-per-Mile Spreadsheet for details. This spreadsheet shows how the Tango compares with other vehicles, both Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) driven and hybrid. It includes gasoline and recommended dealer maintenance costs for the gasoline cars and electricity, maintenance, and battery replacement costs for the Tango.

In California where electricity rates are nearly $.15 per kWh, the total cost per mile for the Tango becomes roughly equal to that of the Insight. Electricity cost per mile runs from 0.9 cents to 2.6 cents as cost per kWh goes from 5 cents to 15 cents.

Check out their website at http://www.commutercars.com . Under the gallery section, they've got a video of it in action. Pretty neat-o.

Maybe I'm a hippie, but I can't wait to kick some obnoxious Viper driver's ass in this electric car. I'd pay the $80G's just to see the look on the loser's face when I pass him!

So if we work this out (.42 x 12 hours x 130W/m^2) we end up with 655W per day per square meter.

The EV1's standard battery compliment is a 18.7kWh valve regulated lead acid battery assembly. The EV1 will go about 130 miles at 45mph on a single charge. In order for your PV setup to generate enough power to recharge your EV1 once a day you'll need 28.55 square meters of PV paneling plus inverters and batteries to store the power while your EV1 charges at night.

I have difficulty overstating the effect of this revised assumption. If you assume that the batteries will be drained every day and they aren't, you'd have the great majority of your solar generation going to waste. You'd expect that to raise your costs ridiculously high, and sure enough, it would.

Check out the pricing, a 12kW system even after California's $4/W rebate costs you over thirty six thousand dollars ($36,000+). Adding the cost of a 6kW and 12kW system to recharge your EV1 you're out more than $54,000 up front.

Your unit errors above roughly quintuple the required investment, even granting your pessimistic assumptions about daily driving range.

If you need the self satisfaction of owning a PV system and an electric car and have almost ninety grand to plop down then your idea has merit. For the rest of the country and ostensibly world reality is a harsh mistress.

The problem with the Sparrow was not in the concept, but the implementation. The EV1 was a good implementation, and would have sold well if GM had let it. Now we have to wait for the Tango to sell well enough to well-heeled drivers so they can afford to bring the much less expensive Foxtrot to market. GM could have done this years ago if they wanted to.

And you can put your order in today! Sure it looks geeky, but just imagine the look on the faces of every ricer, porsche, ferrari and viper driver as you leave them behind at the stoplight! More info here.

I take it that none of you have seen a little car being developed here in Spokane, WA - the Tango. Uses off-the-shelf batteries and

Range: 80 miles

Cost per Mile: About 1/2 the cost of a gasoline car for the average commuter.

Acceleration: 0 to 60 MPH, under 4 seconds. 1/4 mile time under 12 seconds at a speed of approx. 120 MPH

Top Speed: 124 MPH

Using different gear ratios can up the top speed to 160, but would make it difficult to get traction at lower speeds.

This car is for real. There are videos on the web site showing how stable it is and how well it corners. The only drawback seems to be its price, which is about the same as a Dodge Viper - $80k.

I'd like one, but my commute is 50 miles round trip (Hayden Lake, ID to Liberty Lake, WA), and the battery life would not be so good for that much deep-cycling. They recommend an average of about 20 miles between charges, which is about the average of most commuters in the states.

I take it that none of you have seen a little car being developed here in Spokane, WA - the Tango. Uses off-the-shelf batteries and

Range: 80 miles

Cost per Mile: About 1/2 the cost of a gasoline car for the average commuter.

Acceleration: 0 to 60 MPH, under 4 seconds. 1/4 mile time under 12 seconds at a speed of approx. 120 MPH

Top Speed: 124 MPH

Using different gear ratios can up the top speed to 160, but would make it difficult to get traction at lower speeds.

This car is for real. There are videos on the web site showing how stable it is and how well it corners. The only drawback seems to be its price, which is about the same as a Dodge Viper - $80k.

I'd like one, but my commute is 50 miles round trip (Hayden Lake, ID to Liberty Lake, WA), and the battery life would not be so good for that much deep-cycling. They recommend an average of about 20 miles between charges, which is about the average of most commuters in the states.

How does 0-60 in 4 seconds sound? You can get an electric car (built for "commuting" heh heh) now that does just that.

I agree Hydrogen's a safer fuel than gasoline, but all the same, a pressure vessel filled with 20 Kelvin liquid seated behind my arse doesn't tickle my fancy either. However, there are much safer ways to store Hydrogen. Metal hydride and carbon adsorption looks promising, asnd great strides are being made in fuel cell technologies. But the one I hope really succeeds is plain old Borax!