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

it must be asked

[Anonymous Coward]

was it an african or european spa- oh, wait. nevermind.

Maybe they wouldn't fail

[mrwonton]

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

Here's another

[EdgeShadow]

Not so tiny.

I got to test drive a Sparrow

[bzipitidoo]

I'm not crazy enough to ride a motorbike, but I thought a 3 wheeler might be a good deal safer so when I had a chance I stopped in. They were nervous about letting me try one because another customer had crashed one earlier that day. Um....

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?