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!"

Comments

Maybe they wouldn't fail

[mrwonton]

if they tried designing electric cars without abandoning all automobile design conventions.

Re:Maybe they wouldn't fail

[khb]

As opposed to a purely theoretical interest, I own a Sparrow. I've got a bit over 13K miles on it, mostly on my 50mi commute (25x2).

The most fundamental errors were business not technological (failing to hire engineers in general, firing the ones they had, not paying suppliers, creating a massive dealer network before there was a solid design, etc.). The next batch of errors were in execution (no two assembled out of the same parts and bulit exactly alike, no quality control, no torque specs, changed suppliers for key components before the new components were tested, etc.).

The Sparrow is a wonderful proof of concept, one can build a usable commuter, battery powered EV with no breakthrough (or even leading edge) technology. However, tossing aside convention is a must (not a flaw). Light weight, and small size, and lowered rolling resistance confer a great many technical advantages.

It's gone the way of the C5

[Lucky Kevin]

Surprise, surprise, it was an ugly looking thing, I used to see them in a shop window in San Francisco.
So it's followed the C5, remember Sinclair's triumph?

Um...

[Chicane-UK]

Wasn't it Goldmember himself who drove the Sparrow in the movie? Austin Powers was chasing him in a Mini! :)

Economy of scale...

[zipwow]

Every time this argument is made "that electricity has to be made somewhere!", someone has to reply "Yes, but it can be done more efficiently if its all in one place."

Just like when you're coding, if you have one function in once place, you can tune its performance, if you have your power generation in one place, you can tune its efficiency and polution.

Even if we stay with our current very dirty approach to making power, electric vehicles would still greatly reduce pollution. Small gas-burning engines pollute much more than large plants, which can have scrubbers, specialized parts, etc.

And when you're ready to swap out your file-reader for a SQL database, there's only one place to fix. Same goes with energy production. When we finally run out of oil and are ready to move onto something else (whatever it is), we only have to upgrade the plants, rather than 10 hojillion individual cars on the road.

Lastly, the subsidy comment. From what I've read, Corbin's books didn't have large government grants. There are a few tax breaks and other, pretty minor, incentives out there. However, given the above statements about reductions in pollution and the easing of the future transition to cleaner energy, I'd say that more subsidies is what we need.

-Zipwow

MOD UP INFORMATIVE!

[Anonymous Coward]

I was not aware it was Groovy until now. Thank you!

Corbin has this reputation.

[forii]

I'm not surprised that Corbin motors went under. The people who run Corbin seem to have a problem with building a business to match their products. Their motorcycle seat business is the same way: nice products (I have one for my Ducati 900SS), but the company is known for extremely poor service and support. Reading the article just reinforces my opinion that they just don't understand that there's more to a successful business than having a decent product.

I saw a bunch of their car/motorcycle things here in Silicon Valley, but I'd never drive one when I could ride a real motorcycle. (And yes, that's a Corbin seat there as well).