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Electric Car Sighted on Highway - Who Makes It?
moophus managed
to spot an interesting vehicle on the roads: "Spotted: one electric vehicle
on the highways of Atlanta, Georgia. Sighted around 6:30pm EDT, going south on
I-85, traveling ~60mph (had a cool hum). It was a single seater, three
wheeled wonder. Can anyone identify make, model? Any details on this
bugger, like: range, efficiency, top speed, acceleration, cost, and cell type?
I could only get several pictures which didn't turn out too well, since I had to gamma correct two of them.
Another interesting thing that I've heard about electric cars: they have purposely
put in noise makers in the wheels (like those plastic tri-cycles back in the
day) because they just ran too quiet to be safe. Is this true?" The
pictures didn't turn out too badly, as you can definitely make out
much of the shape of this thing. It's more like a motorcycle than a car, but
it still looks interesting enough. Hopefully more vehicles like this will be
making their way on to the markets (and the roads) sometime soon.
"Spotted: one electric vehicle on the highways of Atlanta, Georgia. Sighted around 6:30pm EDT, going south on I-85, traveling ~60mph (had a cool hum)"
"I could only get several pictures"
Is anyone else worrried about people driving at 60mph snapping away?
Is it a corbin sparrow? Looks v.similar and they're Atlanta based.
"Pure hydrogen gleaned from fuel cells"
From dictionary.com:
glean \Glean\, v. i. 1. To gather stalks or ears of grain left by reapers.
And she went, and came, and gleaned in the field after the reapers. --Ruth ii. 3. 2. To pick up or gather anything by degrees.
As you can see, you DID say that they made hydrogen. Fuel cells dont act as the source of the hydrogen, they use the hydrogen.
Remember, there were no nuclear weapons before women were allowed to vote.
BTW...
crafty use of the marquee tag on their site
Great, so go to the Corbin Sparrow website (it is a Sparrow) and find out about fuel cell options for it.
As far as two and three wheeled vehicles on highways go, I would happily drive one of those down the road. I am a motorcyclist and have never had any problem on the highways avoiding scared and poorly skilled drivers of 4 wheelers and up.
And yes Dorothy, it is street legal.
:::Horrendous Experiences Make Amusing Anecdotes:::
My boss's name was Gumby, and his car was orange, so we were careful never to call it Pokey.
That reminds me. Cliff, what's your favorite color?
Moophus,
:)
:) .
I've had my eye on those vehicles for 2 years
The car you are looking at is called the 'Sparrow'. . It is manufactured by Corbin Motors of San Francisco (actually, their main factory/headquarters is in Hollister, CA, 30 miles south of San Jose; but few people know where Hollister is). It's a one person vehicle. It has a 60 mile range and can go up to 60 mph. Cost is $14-16,000 It's available in North America, Europe & Asia.
I've sat in a Sparrow, but I've never driven one. It's a comfortable, but spartan interior.
Corbin Motors deal mostly with motorcycles, but has this small electric vehicle business on the side (and good luck to them!).
Their main showroom is located 1.5 blocks from the 'South Park' area in South of Market in San Francisco. They are surrounded by a bunch of former dotcom buildings (and a few surviving dotcoms, like mine
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
now I'm thinking hybrid gas-electric is more practical, at least until we get to fuel-cell cars. Not that it isn't great there are lots of options now, but I still think something like the Toyota Prius or the Honda Insight would work better for combined city/highway driving.
I sure hope they put noisemakers in those things. Just a few days ago, I was walking past a car that didn't strike me as all that special until it started moving without making noise. It was a Prius, I think. I sort of freaked out and almost shouted, "Dude! Your car isn't making any noise!"
I then realized that if electric cars become more prevalent, I am *so* dead. When crossing roads these days, I'm often in too much of a hurry or just too lazy to look both ways and all that jazz, so I just rely on my ears to hear any approaching bringers of death and/or mutilation. If cars go silent on me, I'll be roadkill in no time!
Has anyone else taken a few good looks at a vehicle like this and wondered about safety?
I currently have 2 different cars (a 1995 Z28 and a 1978 Cougar) and I worry about SUVs, Trucks etc in my Z28 regularly (not so much with the Cougar, the land shark that it is.) Obviously, my 2 cars definitely don't qualify for the emissions or fuel economy award (not by a long stretch), but I would worry about being in this car, in rush hour traffic, and someone barreling over me with a vehicle bigger than mine (anything bigger than a small motorcycle, anyways.)
They (corbin motors) do have some safety items listed (as far as what's used in the car to make it safer in an accident), but there's no crash data. I'd for one like to see that, but in all honesty, I could see paying about 8-10k for one. A price tag of 15,000USD is a little steep; I would probably go for a used civic or something along those lines for better gas milage, but more safety (at least in the thought that bigger may be better, compared to some cars on the road...)
Any thoughts?
Karnal
Yup, there are very unsafe, especially for any small mammal who thinks hiding between the lights will save it. They ain't called "hedgehog killers" for nothing...
3 wheeled Robin Reliant: it has an impeccable safety record
I distinctly remember seeing a 'That's Life' (the UK consumer affairs program of the time) special about steering failures in Reliant Robins - Reliant is the manufacturer (not Robin), who also made the interesting all-fiberglass Scimitar coupe/estate.
Here it is: Possible loss of steering column control. They may be generally safe (I don't know), but loss of steering is not 'impeccably safe'!
"don't fall into the fallacy of believing that Perl can solve social problems. Maybe Perl 6 can, but that's a ways off"
Here is a series of pictures of the gentleman purchasing the sparrow.
As for the lead acid batteries, almost all are recycled now. The few that aren't are because of idiots who don't realise that they can be exchanged for $$$ at the recycler. The recyclers want that lead, plastic, and acid back as all can be recycled. The only part of a lead acid battery that isn't recycled is the label.
According to this article by Western Driver http://www.westerndriver.com/information/test-driv e/2001-corbin-sparrow.html the vehicle registers as a motorcycle, so I'm sure it meets all the safety requirements of one. It also says in most states it doesn't require a helmet or a motorcycle indication on a license, but that it might be hard to find insurance.
0 .html Its written by an owner doing their 2000 mile review.
This article has a lot to offer about performance and potential problems of the car: http://www.electrifyingtimes.com/corbinsparrow200
Most people would die sooner than think; in fact, they do.
He was driving that in ALTANTA traffic? There's a death wish if I've ever seen one. Maybe people should test these out in a more tame environment first, like Gainseville, GA or how about Greenville, SC, where people still can't drive but at least there aren't that many and they're not going that fast. If that guy keeps driving that thing on I-85, he's going to end up getting picked out of the grill of a semi.
Oh and one more thing... does he get to use the HOV lane?
~ now you know
Electric cars may have something going for them in terms of safety if we can get rid of those massive land barge lead-acid batteries. Even though some cars are light, consider the following:
Weight is inversely proportional to agility.
Agility multiplied by driver skill plus that extra weight equals safety.
A land barge is only safe when the driver has no skill. Marginally at best. This formula may explain why some people seem to avoid accidents and not get hurt, while others are magnets for disasters.
Does anyone else think this Sparrow looks like the old Messerschmit Bubble car?
Pictures here and here
No sharp objects, I'm a programmer!
Yeah, but when you're sitting in traffic in an electric, you're just sitting in traffic.
When you're sitting in traffic in a gas-powered car, you're burning fuel, getting zero mileage, and pumping hydrocarbons into the atmosphere for no reason.
Absolutely, and I wouldn't want to be in this vehicle surrounded by soccer moms in SUVs. I'll stick with my trusty and rugged 1976 Dodge Ram, thank you very much.
Now, prior to modding me down or flaming me because you disagree with me, I'm a BSc EE. So, unless you're capable of explaining to me - mathematically, no less - how a ferrous laminate core in saturation will behave, I suggest you sit down and shut up.
Unfortunately, I think most Slashdot readers have a problem with reality. They're conditioned to hard disks that double in capacity every 16 months and processors that double in speed every 18 months and have been doing so for the 15 years they've been alive.
However, they fail to understand that battery technology is mature, or that the electric car is not a new idea being stifled by the big mean oil companies.
Edison built an electric car in the 1890s, before the internal combustion engine (or any other technology) had emerged as the way of powering cars. Many other people tried it, too. Electric cars of the 1890s weren't too different from the electric cars of today - big pile of lead-acid batteries (which some modern electric cars use), electric motor(s) driving the wheels directly, some even had simple regenerative braking. And yet the rickety and cumbersome internal combustion engines of the day still took over, for much the same reasons as the gasoline engine still rules today: electric cars simply are not practical.
Let's look at Los Angeles as an example, since they've got millions of commuters and a smog problem.
Remember California's power crisis in the summer of 2000? Rotating blackouts, etc? How do you think that's gonna be when 10,000,000 people are plugging in their electric cars every night? That power has to come from somewhere, you know.
So, since SoCal really doesn't have enough water to build too many more hydroelectric dams, the electricity to recharge the cars will have to come from either coal or nuclear power plants. Forget the solar cells, wind and wave power; they still haven't graduated from the realm of high school science fair projects and the whimsey of Bachelor of Arts in English Literature people who think they can solve the world's problems.
With either coal or nuclear, you have the NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) syndrome. I don't think political pressures would allow sufficient power plants to be built close enough to L.A. to recharge all those cars without transmission (power line) losses wasting more energy than you're actually using.
Net effect? If electric cars start to catch on, start buying candles; the laws of supply and demand suggest that electricity will become very expensive.
The cars themselves are an issue, too: a comparatively small container of gasoline is dangerous enough. Electric cars will have to be packed to the tits full of efficient batteries to maintain the kind of range people need from their cars. And the more efficient the battery, by necessity, the more nasty the chemicals it's got inside it. Fender-benders will mean haz-mat team calls and chemical burns, as batteries are ruptured onto the highway. Gasoline is unpleasant and flammable, but it's relatively benign compared to the sulphuric acid in a typical car battery (1890s technology), let alone the bizarre concoctions in a modern highly efficient battery.
I'm not too keen on driving around in a car with raw hydrogen on board, either. Hydrogen sweats through cast iron tanks like acetylene, and is far more flammable. I don't feel like being incinerated the first time someone cuts me off on the 405.
Yup. I'll stick with my internal combustion engine, thank you very much. My 1976 Dodge Ram burns ethanol, methanol and gasoline very happily with only minor adjustments between fuel types.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
The car is a sparrow . Check out the web site, there are some other cool cars, even a roadster!
Heh. My Ram is hardly efficient. It's got a 400 and gets about 7 MPG on whatever I pour down the tank.
But the point is well taken, and when I slap a Slant-6 and A-833 four speed with overdrive manual transmission in there, I'll be running about 25 MPG. Not bad for a brand-new full-size pickup truck, let alone one that is 25 years old.
As for the fuel flexibility, that's the beauty of older cars. Stick an oxygen sensor into the exhaust system and a meter under the hood. Make sure your carb has a soldered brass float, not a plastic one. Replace your fuel pump with an aftermarket hi-perf pump, and the little 1" long sections of hose on your fuel filter. Pour in the methanol, tune and time for best meter readings, and take her cruising. Ideally, you should get a cam ground for the new fuel and play with your ignition timing curves, but they both burn similarly enough to gasoline that the engines run perfectly happily and cleaner than the law requires 'em to.
On a similar note, I have a 1974 Dodge Dart with a 383.Very nice! I've also got a 1970 Dodge Dart and a 1974 Valiant Brougham. They're both 4-door. The Dart is a little granny car with that great front end. Since its motor isn't original, I think I'll put the big block from my truck in there so that I can have a bit of a sleeper. The Valiant is like a miniature New Yorker, born of the oil crisis: smallest car Chrysler made at the time, but with a gorgeous crushed velour and leather interior. Oh, and shag carpeting; it was the 70s.
With no catalytic converter, and no emissions equipment whatsoever, it passed the IM inspection with better marks than my wife's poorly tuned toyota tercel.Yup. Few of the tree-huggers who promote catalytic converters know that it reduces gas mileage which causes more gas to be burned and therefore more pollutants to be released. They also don't understand the basic chemistry behind it, and how it is that cataclysmic converters help to cause acid rain. But they're all happy, sitting around in healing circles, playing folk guitar and slapping themselves on the back for being good people.
What a crime. Think of how nice the exhaust from a modern fuel-injected multivalve car, running without a catalytic converter, would be.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
see www.corbinmotors.com/sparrow.htm
they're made in Hollister, CA.
an outgrowth of a company known for motorcycle
after market products. It's a 3-wheeler with belt-drive
to the rear wheel. In California it is classified as a motorcycle
and is allowed in the carpool lanes.
Yeah, I guess "tree huggers" are to blame for the problems you're having killing the environment in precisely the way that you want to.
Every other kid has an asthma inhaler or is on some kind of allergy medication, but don't let that stop you from putting a bigger gasoline engine in your 2-ton pickup truck and hauling ass.
Running on 50% ethanol, I put out less H2SO4, less NOx and less CO than a fail for a NEW Toyota RAV4 and only marginally more unburnt HC than the average new pickup truck, according to my last emissions test. So I guess my rigorous tune-up schedule keeps a few kids off inhalers.
Building an engine for performance is simply a question of making it burn fuel as efficiently as possible. Even if you've only taken high school chemistry, you should still be able to see that the point at which an engine produces the most power is also when it produces the least emissions. And I've got a lot of money invested in maintaining that stoichiometric ideal.
So, how's that oil-burning Hyundai Excel of yours, anyway? Yeah, it's cleaner than your VW Microbus with the tie-dye paintjob and black stain over the exhaust pipe. Feel good about yourself, driving that to environment rallies?
Go take your bachelor of arts and your Bjork CDs and make out with a birch. Come back to discuss it with me when you understand a little chemistry, physics and engineering thermodynamics.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
Right there is a good example of clean, efficient transportation. Until chemical/energy storage becomes more efficient, a clean IC engine is the way to go. Bonus points for multi-fuel.
Further evidence of why we need to get rid of catalytic converters in cars, isn't it?
Pretty much any spark-ignition engine will run on pretty much any fuel, as long as you can vapourise it in the inlet tract. Gases? From hydrogen upwards, no problem. Liquid fuel? As long as it's volatile enough to evaporate quickly... The trouble is, catalysts require complex fuel injection systems which you can't really adjust to run on anything other than two-star petrol.
You can actually run a (carburettor equipped) petrol engine on diesel. The diesel has to be extremely hot, the engine has to be extremely hot, and it produces lots of whitish smoke and not much power. But it does work. I used to run my '86 Nissan Micra on anything that would pour. 100LL aviation fuel was good fun. The look on BMW drivers' faces as you pull away from them in a cloud of slightly oily smoke...
But basically, yes, most old non-catalyst equipped cars can be tuned (with a bit of care) to have *cleaner* exhausts than their newer counterparts.
So I guess my rigorous tune-up schedule keeps a few kids off inhalers.
Ah. You have it right there. *YOUR* tune-up schedule. My tune-up schedule is a little more restricted, because of the injection system in my '89 Citroen XM (lovely cars, nice soft hydraulic suspension that switches to very hard for roadholding when you go round corners - complex but fun) but I keep the air and fuel filters clean, and gap the plugs etc. Keeps it sweet, keeps the fuel consumption down and the exhaust clean.
However, it's not you, it's not me, and it's probably not most of the people you know. It's the people who can't stop driving their Mitsubishi Shoguns 2 miles to work and 2 miles back for one afternoon to put it in for a service. If people actually stuck to the service intervals, cars would be much cleaner. There is, after all, a reason *why* you change the oil every 6000 miles...
and your Bjork CDs and
Hey! I like Bjork! Anyway, have you seen the insane 4x4 vans they have in Iceland? I think you'd like them.
Yeah, like they're the *only* ones with steering problems...
These guys should know better, then, shouldn't they?
Anyway, it sounds like a simple check and replace steering UJ thing, an hour's work.
Did you visit the link? Probably not. It was meant to be funny. At least, I thought it was.
Anyway, Rant Time: all cars are inherently dangerous. It doesn't matter if there is a recall, if the manufacturer can be held liable, or anything else. It's up to *you* to make sure it's safe to use, before you use it.
I hate tree-huggers. I say, fuck the trees. If god can't provide us enough tree's, then he doesn't mean us to have enough trees. What ever god provides is all we should use. Like my 94 ford f250. It has a 450 in it, and it ge about 5mpg. I can afford the gas, so who gives a fuck if I spend MY hard earned money on fuel. God is the "mother nature" that tree-huggers like to talk about. Just like I said before, if God doesn't provide it, he doesn't mean us to have it.
Heheheh...
You know, in all seriousness, nature would have eventually oxidized (burned) all that petroleum anyway. Man's modern cars simply do it more stoichiometrically than any way nature would have consumed it.
Environmentalist groups should therefore be grateful for the internal combustion engine; every time you fill up your SUV, you help to avert an eventual environmental catastrophe which would have made the Kuwaiti oil well fires look like a Zippo flame.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.