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Keep Your Eye on the Electric Sparrow
WC as Kato writes "Corbin Motors, the company that made the cute electric Sparrow car driven by Austin Powers in Goldmember, has gone into bankruptcy. SJ Mercury News has details of the dead bird..er Sparrow. Another electric car bites the dust!"
What a Groovy Bird baby... Yeah baby... yea
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Sorry, it's tiny, the original site seems to be gone now.
Not so tiny.
Sadly, the answer is:
G) Massive technical difficulties, including its tendancy to drive away while plugged in if it's raining. Oh, and lawsuits.
I mean, reading the article, it sounds like the car just *didn't* work, and tipped over more than a few times. Normally I'd be sad a company like this folded, but it doesn't sound like they were doing a very good job.
... considering the article didn't have any.
Try:
www.firstmoto.ch/F6/design/Sparrow.html
You've got a point but a lot of the changes are done for effeciency reasons. I think they need to learn moderation though. Start off with something similar to the Honda Insight and gradually whittle down until you find the point people stop buying the cars at.
My favorite EV's are old muscle cars that have been overhauled into EV's. A 60's Mustang as an EV is really pretty hot. I really want an old GTO converterable made into an EV.. someday. *Dreams*
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
First thing I asked them was how prone was the Sparrow to tipping over. There was a lengthy silence so I moved on to other questions.
Once at the wheel, I was super cautious. Never got over 30. Motor made a high pitched whine even at 5 MPH and just kept winding that pitch up beyond dental drill range. There was a drainage channel angling across the exit (they were at the end of a turn-around circle). I had visions of the Sparrow flipping over if I took that exit with any speed at all-- left wheel down as that side hit the dip, then left wheel up and right wheel down, perfect conditions for tipping over. So I didn't try it.
Aside from being a 3 wheeler, the big problem was the electric part. 60 mile range (at best) before needing hours to recharge was bad enough. Then to learn that the batteries would only last 2 to 4 years before I'd have to replace the lot for several hundred dollars convinced me it wasn't even a little bit practical. You're not doing the environment any favors when you're going thru lots of batteries. Far friendlier to use a conventional car.
Corbin was hard at work on a gas powered 3 wheeler called Merlin at the time. Wonder what became of that effort?
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
For those of you wondering what they look like, here's a pic:
http://www.photowords.com/Earth7408.jpg
Courtesy Google Image Search
The reason for the strange design was to make it licensable as a motorcycle.
According to the law (at least in CA) three wheels = motorcycle and four wheels = car. Motorcycles are given much, much more latitude in designing for safety regulations.
Bumpers, crash resistant doors, even safety belts are technically optional on a "motorcycle" but would require expensive and heavy designs if it were a "car." They got a chance to save cost by going with three wheels, but most importantly they got to save weight which is the bane of any electric vehicle.
It's true that they could have gone for a golf-cart like vehicle, but the other major design consideration was to make this thing fast enough for the highway. Regulations limit NEV's (Neighborhood Electric Vehicles - the golf-cart thingys) to something like 35MPH while the Sparrow zipped along at 65MPH.
> the company is known for extremely poor service and support.
That was my experience with them, too.
I have an older Yamaha, one that I know Corbin made a seat for a decade or so ago. I didn't see it on their site, though, so I gave them a call.
The Guy X said "Sure, we can do that. All of our work is custom. We kick ass. Call Guy Y tomorrow and talk to him."
Guy Y said, "I doubt it, you should call Guy Z and ask him."
Guy Z said, "No, we threw away that mold a long time ago. We can't make one."
A friend of mine just got a Corbin for his FZR. It took at least six months to get the order filled.
You are creating more mis-information by modding the parent post up. Batteries contain materials that pollute just as much as fossil fuels, and the FACT that all these batteries still require a source to be charged. It's a pipe dream to think that the sources are all going to be wind, hydro, or solar powered. It's going to be Nukes, coal, gas, and oil.
...there are starting to be a fair number of E85 outlets, mostly in the Midwest (where the crops from which ethanol is made are grown), and the changes needed to enable a gasoline station to handle E85 are even smaller than those necessary for M85. Elsewhere in the nation, E85 stations are rarer than M85 stations; in particular, I don't think there's a single one in California.
I quote:
Fuel Source
Ethanol, or grain alcohol, is produced by fermenting biomass, commonly corn (though other, lower-value feedstocks have been tested in an effort to reduce costs, like brewery waste and cheese-factory effluent--blecch!). It is thus inherently a renewable resource, and contributes nothing in itself to greenhouse-gas loading of the atmosphere (and with efficient modern farming techniques, there's still an improvement even when you add in the petroleum-based fuel burned to plow the fields, make the fertilizer, etc.). As an alternative motor vehicle fuel, it is usually blended in a mixture of 85% ethanol, 15% unleaded gasoline, whence E85. (It is also used in up to 10% blends with gasoline (gasohol) to oxygenate the gasoline, and this mixture can be used by most modern gasoline vehicles.)
Wholesale Availability
E85 is, in many ways, like M85, the other alcohol fuel made with methanol instead of ethanol blended with 15% gasoline. There is no national distribution network on the scale of those for gasoline, diesel, and natural gas; however...
Retail Availability
Advantages
Ethanol, as noted above, is a renewable resource that contributes nothing in itself to global warming concerns. Like methanol, it can be blended with any amount of gasoline in the tank of a flex-fuel vehicle, which is what automakers are selling these days. In fact, starting with the 1999 model year, some automakers are making every one of certain vehicle models capable of using E85 in any mixture with gasoline, at no extra charge. Thus buyers will not have to do anything extra at all to have a vehicle capable of using an alternative fuel, though they will still have to find an E85 fueling station to take advantage of that capability.
Disadvantages
The main disadvantage of E85 is the price of the fuel, even with the available subsidies. However, research is under way to enable the fermentation of lower-grade feedstocks (think of using not only the corn squeezin's but also the cob to make alcohol!), which should help a lot. Ethanol is somewhat corrosive, though less so than methanol, and concerns about vapor lock, cold starts, and flame visibility like those for methanol have led to the same standard blend of 85% alcohol with 15% gasoline.
These minor problems are so trivial that once there is money behind it they can be solved by using Titanium parts.
Oh well.. of my soapbox.
1) Lead batteries are the most recycled product on the face of the earth. No kidding. The only part not always recycled is the plastic shell. The lead and electrolytes are all reused.
2) There are plenty of them (and tons that drive more like the gas econoboxes that are more common than the gas sports cars). You can see some here, here, here, here, and here. Or peruse the entire album of EVs great and small, ugly and beautiful, slow and fast at the EV Photo Album.
Also see The National Electric Drag Racing Association and the electric supercar, the T-Zero
3) I'm sorry when did you get a muscle car with a 400 mile range? Generally (even with an oversized gas tank) these cars come in at the 200-300 mile range per fill-up at best. Are EV's there yet? Not quite. 150 miles per charge is about the upper limit right now. But guess what? 95% or more of most Americans driving is less than 50 miles per day.
4) Since the car is plugged into the wall every night and charges while you sleep you're not having to blow 5-10 minutes pumping gas and that's excluding any time and effort it takes you to detour to the gas station.
However, a significantly shorter recharge is easily done with higher Amperage circuits in your home (typical EV car can recharge in only a few hours anyway) and/or a battery based dump station that can recharge your pack in 10 minutes or less. The EV dragsters use such (admittedly somewhat frightening) dump packs on a regular basis.
5) Oh and most of these supposedly wimpy electric car conversions can eat your American muscle car for lunch. It's nice being able to have your full torque available through your entire power curve.
Heck some electric cars can even eat exotic sports cars for lunch.
Once more unto the breach dear friends...
Bah weep granah, weep ninny bong!
:)
You forgot the second 'n' in "gran'nah"
Oh, and that darn comma's superfluous. Some hyphens may work, though.