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Will it even do 120, or a 12 second quarter mile on the electric motor?

Back on topic - a small electric vehicle with responsive brakes and steering and maximum torque available from zero up has the potential to be a lot of fun - even in traffic.

Got a hundred grand on you?

I still prefer the Tango.

Yes, the V2V stuff is very interesting, and I see a lot of future potential there. But Tangos are being built right now today.

The prototype runs for 35 miles, at a top speed of 35 mph, on lithium-ion batteries.

The Tango runs for 150 miles and has a top speed of 135mph. That's around 4x the range/speed of the PUMA. Of course, the PUMA is projected to cost a lot less, assuming they come to production.

Let's look over the pros and cons again.

• Tango
• faster
• safer
• greater range
• fully enclosed
• actually exists right now

• PUMA
• cheaper

Just because the PUMA is cheap doesn't mean I'd want to buy one. YMMV

Four wheels, the safety standards have been going up. That's part of the reason many manufacturers are making 3-wheelers....3-wheelers only make sense for legislative reasons, not practical.

Which make this a case where our legislation is working against us. How much more stable would these vehicles be in the corners if they had four wheels? Maybe a new classification of road vehicle needs to be made. 1/2 lane car, under 1000 lbs should have safety standards half way between motorcycle and car. This VW wouldn't be alone in that category, the Tango would fit in that class as well. I think that 1/2 lane commuter cars will eventually be a part of everyday life, planning and structuring the safety standards now will make that transition much smoother.

What, No Tango from Commuter Cars? That is the one I'm looking for. I've got no room in my garage for my car (bicycle stuff and other crap) and the Tango is just what i need for small commuting (98% of my driving).

Heh, of course if I had a Tango I would bicycle to work less......

To generate the vast amounts of electricity needed for electric vehicles that would replace all/most of the gasoline powered vehicles in use today, Atomic power plants are the answer.
Here's a car that is not yet in full production, but would need a lot of electricity, rather than solar-cell generated power. This particular car boasts 0-60 in 4 seconds, and has so much torque that it can burn the tires off of it. This is an extreme example, most electric cars of the future will need to be much more conservative, and less dangerous than this one.

Many of these are more-or-less performance oriented vehicles. . .

Tesla Roadster: http://www.teslamotors.com/

Tango: http://www.commutercars.com/

UEV Spyder: http://www.universalelectricvehicle.com/spyder.htm l

Wrightspeed X1: http://www.wrightspeed.com/x1.html

ZAP-X: http://www.zapworld.com/ZAPWorld.aspx?id=4560

Silence: http://www.silenceinc.ca/accueilEN.htm

VentureOne: http://www.venturevehicles.com/

Phoenix SUT & SUV: http://www.phoenixmotorcars.com/

As is Commuter Cars.

That car sounds really interesting...........

until you look at the damn thing!

http://www.commutercars.com/images/gallery/seattle /index/indexfiles/IMG_2188.JPG.jpg

"I guess these are the reasons that EV's never really caught on."

Or, it could be that they are still prohibitively expensive and nothing but a toy for the rich.

The EV's name that the article fails to mention actor George Clooney purchased for $108,000 is the CommuterCar Tango T600.

http://www.commutercars.com/

This company has been around for years. Out of Spokane, WA, they are currently able to make only their flagship model, the Tango T600 until they get enough money to pay the millions necessary to design, test and meet federal requirements for the two lower-tier models.

The article also didn't mention the raw numbers of the EV vs. ICE. Performance-wise, the T600 rocks. I'd love to have one of these around town... From their website:

"As far as performance goes, the Tango is no slouch. Since electric cars--especially small ones--are generally thought to be slow and weak performers we set out to blow some minds by designing the Tango to accelerate through the standing 1/4 mile in 12 seconds at over 120 mph and travel from 0 to 60 mph in 4 seconds."

The X1's charge isn't as fast @ 4.5 hours versus the Tango's three hours. Again, from their website:

"Its 80-mile range is nearly 4 times the distance the average commuter travels per day. With high-tech batteries, range could exceed 150 miles per charge.

To minimize any day-time inconvenience, the Tango can charge to 80% in just 10 minutes from a 200 amp charging station. This gives approximately 50 additional miles of range per quick-charge. Typically one would just plug in each night to a dryer outlet and get a complete charge in less than 3 hours and be ready for work the next morning."

Besides the other pluses of having a roof over your head, a NHRA-certified rollcage, a nice stereo, and (gasp) even A/C, I think the Tango is more for me.

now... if I can only remember where I put that pesky $108,000 that was cluttering up my bank account.

Here you go! http://www.commutercars.com/

Dont forget the tango that came out in 2004, electric and does 0-60 in 4 seconds. Also kinda neat that it came out in Spokane Washington and not backed by a bunch of Silicon Valley money men.

There's a lot of misinformation in your response as well. The EV1 was not underpowered and had full modern safety equipment. As did the RAV4 EV from Toyota, the Ford RangerEV (only sold as a fleet car), and the Chevy Silverado EV (also only sold as a fleet vehicle). The performance of the EV versions of the gas cars was identical except for range, which has been corrected since these vehicles first came out with LiIon batteries (which are much lighter with better energy density than PbA batteries). Latter version os the RAV4 EV and the EV1 took advantage of early LiIon packs to achieve 120-175 miles per charge.

Modern LiIon batteries from folks like Kokam can be recharged from empty in as little as 2 hours with high amperage chargers like the ones from Nazita Micro (http://www.manzanitamicro.com/chargers3.htm). AGM VSLA (PbA variant) batteries like the Optima Yellow Top or Excide Orbital can be dump charged (one pack to another) in a few minutes. Chargeing off a 50 amp charger from 80% DoD is about a 2 hour affair.

Electric cars ain't slow, either (http://www.nedra.com/). The fastest electric dragster out there run 8 second 1/4 miles regularly. The owner races in Arizona NHRA bracket racing competing with top fuel rail dragsters and was second int he state last year. He's looking for sponsors so he can build his sub 6 second electric dragster.

The top completely street legal electric car (with street tires on) does the 1/4 in 12.245 @ 104.50 mph (http://www.plasmaboyracing.com/videos/pir%20oct.2 2%20run%207.MOV). These are all home made conversions no less. Without access to the money and technology available to major auto manufacturers.

The Tango (http://www.commutercars.com/) may look a little funny, but it has better safety features than modern passenger cars, outperforms the Viper RT/10 and get close to 100 miles to a charge on PbA batteries. George Clooney bouight one recently.

There is really no reason that a 200-300 mile per charge EV that recharges in under 2 hours, carries 4, with all the modern safety features, and better performance than your average sedan. Other than there is no market pressure to create one.

I leave you with a little 6 minute video showcasing the amatuer EV world in all it's weird and wild glory at the Woodburn races in 2003. The original prototype Tango shows up in the second half:

http://www.deadwarrior.com/downloads/AustinEV/wood burn_2003_small.avi

When all cars are as solid as motorcycles, all cars will be as dangerous as motorcycles.

Not true

Universal Electric Vehicle has the Spyder in pre-production stage.

Commuter cars has the little electric commuter thing that looks quirky but supposedly works really well.

Electric cars will be back in vogue sooner than most people think.

It's simply that americans dont want a single seater commuter

Speak for yourself. I'd love a Tango. Unfortunately, the $85,000 price tag is a bit too, er, steep.

Show me where I can get a good, reasonably performing electric commuter with fair range for under twenty grand and I'm in. And don't even mention those little three wheeled Corbin cars... Nobody in their right mind would merge onto a freeway with traffic moving between 70-80mph in one of those.

the weight penalty for the FC system is 50% more than a 60 kWh Li-ion battery pack.

Which was clearly just completely made-up. I've already linked to the heaviest component in a production fuel-cell system, the cell, and it only weighed 212 pounds.

Furthermore, you keep insisting on comparing "real cars" yet you can't even find one that has any of the mystical properties you attribute to lithium-ion electric cars, especially economic properties like price and lifetime.

Now, since you're claiming I haven't answered questions that I have, you ignored the same question posed directly to you:

• How much does [a PEM FC] cost, and how long does it last?

• Lead-acid is already cheaper than gasoline if you don't push your depth-of-discharge. (source)
• diverting energy through hydrogen gives fossil supplies no advantage, but costs renewable energy sources a 50% penalty (here).

How about this. Instead of continuing to throw worthless links at me about $50,000 sports cars that need $3000 worth of batteries every year and a half, with no weight or mileage numbers, how about you pick a battery pack with a price, weight, lifetime, power output, and energy density.

I'll then be happy to crush every one of those specs with a hydrogen fuel-cell-based system.

When gasoline becomes a non-option, it will be hydrogen.

Have you ever actually seen a fully electric car?

The Simpsons joke isn't far off.

Advanced [batteries] are little more than reversible fuel cells.

Electrolysis is more like 90%, and usually even higher.

Electricity at even $0.10/kWh is so much cheaper than gas it's not funny.

there's nothing stopping [fuel cells] from also being 90% efficient.

Easier for whom? Easier for the people whose homes are demolished to make way for the coal strip mines?

Go electric, and people will be able to make their own "motor fuel" with panels on the roof or some airfoils in the breeze (someone else's panels or someone else's airfoils will work just fine too). They won't have to buy another expensive piece of hardware to take water apart so that the car can put it back together again, and they won't have to pay for the losses of the double conversion. As for batteries, the iron lithium phosphate chemistry has gotten rid of the cobalt and thermal runaway issues in Li-ion, and the price has been coming down steadily year over year. They'll be ready before hydrogen fuel cells will, and then we won't need hydrogen fuel cells (unless we want them to be one more source of juice for the grid, rather than the sole source for the car).

Batteries with enough performance to go 300 miles cost too much today, but that's not a problem. Outfit hybrid cars with enough batteries to go 20 miles before they have to start burning gasoline, and you can replace something like 2/3 of all gasoline with electricity. Batteries enough to go 20 miles are fairly cheap.

What if the global warming nuts turn out to be right?

Could you please point me to where I can find these numbers, then?

You've got to be ready to cross-check numbers to be sure they're legit.

It's that I though that... batteries (and especially the charge cycle) are also rather inefficient.

Do you have any figures as to how much power you have to put into these batteries to charge them up to 60KWH?

A Newton is the force required to accelerate one kilogram at one meter per second squared (kg-m/sec^2). A Joule is a unit of energy equal to one Newton-meter. A Watt is a Joule per second. That's where you start.

There is a National Electric Drag Racing Association
http://www.nedra.com/

Also, The Tango can go 0 to 60 in 4 seconds. This is designed for commuting, rather than for family traveling. Most cars on the road today are primarily used for commuting. http://www.commutercars.com/

http://www.commutercars.com/

And it's from Spokane, WA.

While General Motors is busy destroying its last EV1-s and getting people arrested over it, the French have debuted a new electric vehicle concept at Geneva Motor show.
Here is the press kit and images of the BlueCar, designed by Philippe Guedon and sponsored by Vincent Bolloré.
In other EV news, Commuter Cars Tango is reportedly close to producing its first vehicles, one of the first ones sold to George Clooney

Yeah, but it gets a bit compicated when you want to insta-charge your tZero, Venturi Fetish or simply have a Tango

This one: commutercars.com does it in 4, for a mere $85,000. It also claims that it can legally lane split, being 5 inches slimmer than a Honda Goldwing (which requires Moses at the helm to pull off a decent whiteline maneuver)

Commuter Cars Company was featured as having a pretty sweet little car called the Tango. They claim that it will do 0-60 in 4 seconds (better than most high-end sports cars), will finish a standing 1/4 mile in 12 seconds @120 MPH. On top of this, it is electric, not hybrid. On top of that, it will go 80 miles before needing a recharge. A 10 minute charge from a 400 amp feed will charge it for 50 miles (80% full) whereas a full charge is achieved in less than three hours. Check out the movie of the Tango cornering on a closed track. Very impressive!

Commuter Cars Company was featured as having a pretty sweet little car called the Tango. They claim that it will do 0-60 in 4 seconds (better than most high-end sports cars), will finish a standing 1/4 mile in 12 seconds @120 MPH. On top of this, it is electric, not hybrid. On top of that, it will go 80 miles before needing a recharge. A 10 minute charge from a 400 amp feed will charge it for 50 miles (80% full) whereas a full charge is achieved in less than three hours. Check out the movie of the Tango cornering on a closed track. Very impressive!

This car has been on /. before but you may not have seen it. Of course it is a strictly commuter car sort of deal, what with the 80 mile range... but it has me looking twice. If they ever got it manufactured to their target price then I would be tempted to buy one (used) from someone else. hehe I still won't fork over the money for a brand new car, especially a future car like that.

But it would satisfy all my commuting needs. The only concern I have is the 4" clearance... They must not expect this car to be driven in a city with speed bumps.

jason

Commuter Cars

I also heard somewehre they use embedded linux to control their battery charging mechanism. Dont quote me.

While we're talking about small cars, check out this electric powered beauty.

Does that tango thing actually exist? The picture of it looks CG.

Strike 1: it's electric. After listening to the Big 3 say for years and years no one wants electric cars, the public doesn't want electric cars. Baaaa.

Strike 2: single seater. After listening to the Big 3 say for years and years that SUV's and trucks can do more for you, the public won't care about a car with a single seat. Baaaa.

Strike 3: limited range. After listening to the Big 3 say for years and years that a car should be able to drive across the US or Canada on a moment's notice... eh, you get the idea.

Sparrow concept = neat
Sparrow sales will = bleh

Personally, I like the Tango more than the Sparrow.

If you take a look at that graph, you'll see that even a lead-acid battery can last many thousands of cycles as long as they are shallow. The Yellow Tops in question are, I believe, rated at 55 AH (20-hour rate, don't ask me what discharge rate was used for the test) or about 660 WH nominal. The total throughput over 4500 cycles to 25% depth of discharge is over 600 KWH.

Let's make an assumption here. Let's assume that mass-production batteries like the Yellow Tops would cost about the same per AH as a deep-cycle trolling/starting battery does now. I bought a 105 AH unit for about $65 a couple years ago, assume $70 today or $0.66/AH or $55/KWH nominal. 4500 cycles to 25% depth would cost $(55/1125) or 4.9 cents per KWH. Depending where you're buying your juice, this is somewhere between one-third to one times the cost of your off-peak electricity.

Gasoline costs quite a bit more. At 6.67 lb/gallon and 0.4 lb/HP-hr, you'd get 16.7 HP-hr/gallon or 12.7 KWH/gallon; this is about 36.5% of the 119,000 BTU/gallon of energy that gasoline really carries. At $1.50/gallon you're already talking 19 cents per KWH. Hybrid propulsion using reclaimed (regenerated) energy appears to be quite a bit cheaper than making power from scratch, and charging from the grid when opportunity allows would be cheaper than buying fuel even at today's US prices. At typical European prices, it's a no-brainer.

That said, it makes you wonder why the in-wheel-motor hybrid scheme hasn't been done for the last 50 years. I recall seeing one of Ferdinand Porsche's early attempts to power a string of trailers using in-wheel electric motors... for World War One, to move war materiel. There is very little that's truly new under the sun.

check out commuter cars corp.

My two biggest gripes are still the weight and the charge time-- not so much the capacity.

I don't know about you, but when I stop, 15 minutes isn't a big penalty. If I could get 180 miles of range on the motor into the batteries at the same time I put 5 gallons into the tank, 15 minutes would be a very reasonable stop. It takes me that long to set up the pump, pee, check the snacks and pay. If I could snag a charge at highway rest areas and restaurants, I'd be even better off.

How long is the charge cycle for a car-sized Li-ion battery? If I drive to chicago, and have to stop 3 times on the 180-mile trip, that's no big deal.

And what does 1000lbs. of extra weight do to the performance and efficiency of a vehicle?

If we get better batteries, i'm all for it. Anything that gets us off of systems fixed to one energy source.

Hybrids are far and away the most practical solution available now, but fail to wean us off gasoline.

Imagine cutting your gasoline consumption by 2/3, with no sacrifices. It's doable, hell, it's off the shelf. We should demand that it be done.

My two biggest gripes are still the weight and the charge time-- not so much the capacity.

I don't know about you, but when I stop, 15 minutes isn't a big penalty. If I could get 180 miles of range on the motor into the batteries at the same time I put 5 gallons into the tank, 15 minutes would be a very reasonable stop. It takes me that long to set up the pump, pee, check the snacks and pay. If I could snag a charge at highway rest areas and restaurants, I'd be even better off.

How long is the charge cycle for a car-sized Li-ion battery? If I drive to chicago, and have to stop 3 times on the 180-mile trip, that's no big deal.

And what does 1000lbs. of extra weight do to the performance and efficiency of a vehicle?

If we get better batteries, i'm all for it. Anything that gets us off of systems fixed to one energy source.

Hybrids are far and away the most practical solution available now, but fail to wean us off gasoline.

Imagine cutting your gasoline consumption by 2/3, with no sacrifices. It's doable, hell, it's off the shelf. We should demand that it be done.

Top speed, however, will seem stunted in comparison to that available from an internal combustion engine ...

But if they followed the lead of the Tango and put a transmission in the thing, they would be able to match the top speed of most vehicles with an internal combustion engine.

They obviously never heard of the Tango, by Commuter Car Corporation of Spokane, WA. It does 0-60 in 4 seconds, with a top speed of 130 mph. They are now attempting to get funding to go into production.

Mike

What about the Tengo?
It gets 0-60 in about 4 seconds, and a top speed of 130MPH. That is certainly better than 3.6 and 60.

okay, for starters, How hard is it to make a hyperlink to the site you're talking about?

you want to know why this thing will never sell? it looks stupid, and, imagine getting broadsided by H2 in this. no, don't imagine- here

I'm planning on purchasing a 2004 Toyota Prius this fall, when I move to California. The 2004 series has an AT-PZEV (advanced technology partial zero emissions vehicle) rating in California, and also qualifies me to park at meters for free and use the carpool lane with only me in it.

The 2004 model is very different from the 2003 model, and I would not have purchased the 2003 model (instead opting for a Honda Insight or Honda Civic GX). But the 2004 model has that much lower emissions rating and gets around 55mpg average, which is on par with the Honda Insight. The old Prius averaged 46mph according to EV World. It also has a larger size, moving it out of the compact and into the mid-size category. It also performs as well as a non-hybrid/electric car, according to people who have test drove it. It has a range of ~550 miles on a full tank.

The feature set is also very impressive--much better than that of the Insight or Civic GX, for the same $20k price range. I plan on getting bluetooth and the JBL six-speaker setup, at least. There's also the automatic parking feature, although I'm not sure if that will be available in the U.S.

The nice thing about the Civic GX is that it runs on natural gas. If you buy the Phill, partly financed by Honda, you can refuel in your own garage. But you don't have as much range as a Civic Hybrid. The Civic GX is also AT-PZEV, along with the Civic Hybrid. Unfortunately the automatic Insight is only SULEV, and the manual Insight, which gets better mileage, is only ULEV.

If you're only going to commute, then I might suggest the Twike. You'll have to custom order it, but if I only needed to commute then that's what I'd get. Unfortunately it is also $20k. The Tango is not yet available.

I think it's one thing for a little team to build a narrow electric car where the government spent billions and failed, but another entirely to do sub orbital flights where the resources of NASA are still not enough to prevent tragedies like the shuttle accidents. Serious life loss is surely imminent, but the most ironic thing of all is that even if some people do make it up and down again, it can surely never lead to actual orbital flights as the engineering and physics problems associated with getting in an out of the atmosphere really do need astronomical resources to solve?

Being from the little town where Bennet is from

From the commutercars.com website: specifications

Battery replacement is the largest portion of the cost-per-mile for an electric car. To demonstrate how this works, we use Optima's cycle life vs. depth of discharge graph. This graph applies to laboratory-controlled charge and discharge cycles, yet is quite indicative of the effects of driver habits. If the Tango were driven to 80% DOD (depth of discharge) or more (approximately 64 to 80 miles regularly between charges), the pack will only yield 250 cycles. This works out to approximately 16 cents per mile with current Optima Yellow Top prices of $100. However, if discharged to 25% DOD (20 to 24 miles between charges), the chart shows 4,000 cycles can be achieved yielding 80,000 miles with a cost of only 3.1 cents per mile.

You can compare prices of the Smart car
and the specification of the Smart and the Tango.

Tango:
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
Top Speed: 130 MPH

Smart:
Acceleration 0 - 100 km/h (62.5 mph) - 17.2
Top Speed 135 km/h (84 mph)
Fuel Consumption Urban - 5.8 litres/km - 48.5 mpg

http://www.commutercars.com/intro.html#safety

Because safety is such a concern for small cars in particular, we have designed the Tango around a roll cage that meets or exceeds both SCCA and NHRA regulations. These are racing organizations that specify cage design to protect the occupants of cars crashing at over 200 mph. In addition, the extremely high strength-to-surface area ratio of a steel roll cage allows superb visibility from within the Tango. Rollover too is a great danger for many vehicles. The Tango, being so narrow, would look to the layman's eye to be unstable. But in fact, the Tango has stability that exceeds that of most sport cars.

Hey, it can't be worst than riding on a motorcycle (aka donor-cycle).

Here we go.

Take a look at the video of this thing whipping around before you make assumptions.

Cost per Mile (ICE vs Tango)

You'll get maximum mileage from your batteries if you only drive the car 20-24 miles per charge; the chart indicates you'd get ~80,000 miles from the batteries. If you max out and drive 80 miles per charge (the maximum range), you'd cut that total down to ~16,000 miles.

At that point, the car really loses it cost effectiveness, as each battery pack costs $2,500. Driving it 80 miles per charge would probably make it as expensive to drive as the Hummer H2. Still, can you imagine what an improvement in battery technology could do for a car like this? It would push the TCO (total cost of ownership) of the car way down............

From the manufacturer website:

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.

Link To Reference Here

And yes, parking looks like a dream.