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Yep.

http://www.sandsmuseum.com/cars/elise/thecar/engine/toyota.html

You may now kill yourself in shame.

It is recommended that you stop every couple of hours or so for a break (though I know I tend to "press-on" when I'm driving!), so if you can charge up when you stop for lunch (maybe an hour?), and stop for a coffee every now and then (half hours?) this would increase your range a bit, but this is indeed the real problem, because the 100km range wouldn't be enough between coffee stops, unless you drive so slow you could drive Miss Daisy!

But don't most people have more than one car? An EV commute vehicle for driving into town to work, or local shopping, and an IC car (maybe a hybrid!) for longer distance! Think how much nicer towns/cities would be if most people were in EVs.

I'd have a EV for local driving if there was one I liked. MG Rover had an MGF mule which had 4WD by adding electric motors to the front wheels (last one on the page). I'd have one of them in a heartbeat! There was an Electric Elise too. Where do I sign!

Look at the history of pinball machines to see what could happen to the entertainment software industry.

Patents are a great way to research old pinball machines. Many patents were developed during the creation of the game and the companies used the patent as a tool to protect their intellectual property.

Patents not only contain mechanical drawings but also wonderful descriptions by the engineers on what they expected from the game or the mechanism. Often schematics are included as well.

Seems a good idea, until you realise what happened to all the companies:

1999 - After just two Pinball 2000 releases, Williams Manufacturing (WMS) exits the pinball
machine business for good, but continues on as a maker of gaming devices for the
global gambling industry. Also in this year, Gary Stern buys Sega Pinball, renames
the combined firms Stern Pinball and continues on as the only pinball producer
in the world today (as of early 2004).

What about this engine ?

number of batteries this car needs are enormous. Sure, you can put it in an elise (probably not, but just work with me) but you'll have enough charge to get up to 30mph before it dies.

Maybe I'm missing something here, but there is an Electric Lotus Elise. It has quite reasonable acceleration performance (but is speed limited to 150kph/90mph I think). There's some details here but a lot more links are listed on google.

I'd be tempted but I've already got a Lotus. :-)

Simon

they where not trying to rip off either Lotus Elise or the Electric Tropica ......

they where not trying to rip off either Lotus Elise or the Electric Tropica ......