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More on the Tango Electric Car
jj00 writes "Here is an interesting story about a father-son built car in Spokane, Washington. What is most surprising is its top speed (130 MPH) and its weight (about the same as a Camry), and it runs on batteries!"
...how long do the batteries last?
Bash script for FP whores
"Golf cart on steroids!"
Hrm, how about Shiny, Fast, Red Coffin.
I'm all for electric cars, and I understand that the creators wanted something to cut through traffic, but I don't think I'd really want to move one of these things through traffic next to insane soccer moms in their H2s.
It gets 80 miles per charge and has a pretty respectable top speed, but if it's just a small father-son venture then what wider scale impact will it have on cars? Don't take this the wrong way, I'm all for any kind of advancement in electric car mass production, but if this is just a two person personal project then there may not be much point in it.
Of course, I might just be missing the point completely and this is just a cool hack and not something practical.
Bash script for FP whores
Looking at the car, one can't help but wonder about its safety.
"It has jet-pilot seat belts and a racing-regulation roll cage; it weighs more than 3,000 pounds, about the same as a Toyota Camry, including 1,100 pounds of Yellow Top batteries under the floorboards as ballast, so it's not tippy on turns."
If they put air bags in the thing, it'd compress you quite well. They need pictures of the inside of the car as well. I would not like to see this car in an accident. Even the "bumper" if you would call it that, is virtually non-existant.
So you have enough room for a passenger in the back? A comfortable passenger or tightly squeezed passenger?
"A narrow car could or even travel between lanes, like a motorcycle." could it? sure. could it legally? uhh
But it looks in the photos to have a terrible center of gravity problem.. looks like it would roll quite easily.
Funny the article mentioned splitting lanes such as motorcycles... with the roads filling up more and more with SUV's, even the motorcyclists are ending up with more and more rapped knuckles from the SUV mirrors. Somehow I don't think its too practical for anybody to try to split lanes.
And yes, the parking looks like a dream.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
From the article:
At what point did "heavy" become synonymous with "safe"? This car is heavier than mine, and it's smaller!
(The Smart is the Mercedes-built minicar you can see zipping around European cities).
Practical, easy to park, and completely disappointing sales.
Why? Most cars are not bought because they are economical or easy to park. They are bought because they are the meanest, biggest, fastest machines the limited budget will buy. Cars are as much, or more about conspicuous consumption as they are about getting from point A to point B.
It's a nice idea, but won't quite work as a "mine's bigger than your's" concept.
Perhaps they can steal some ideas from how Smarts are sold here: mainly rented out, plastered with advertising, since people love look at them, but hate the idea of doing the morning commute in them.
Make cities smaller, walk more.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
Here in Texas, we believe in burning good old fashioned fossil fuels, and preferably lots of them. Electric cars have no place in our state. Houston is the #1 most polluted city in the USA, and we don't intend to give up the title without a fight.
We suggest you take your electric car back to California where it came from and come back with a proper Texas sized pickup truck or SUV.
Yours truly,
Fmr Guvner of Texas George Walker Bush
Check out their website at http://www.commutercars.com . Under the gallery section, they've got a video of it in action. Pretty neat-o.
Rick's dad, Bill, was an electrical engineer who designed one of the world's first computers, then worked for IBM.
Start the "if computer engineers built cars" jokes already!
thats some mighty whiplash. with a car that slender, it would wobble like you see in those motorcycle crashes...
Notably absent from the article is any mention of the energy efficiency of this beast. At one-and-a-half-tons, it hauls around a lot of mass for a single seater.
We seem to assume that because we can't see or smell it that electricity is 'free energy.' Electricity is not free; electrical energy generation and storage are horribly inefficient and not particularly environmentally friendly. Radioactive waste, diverted watersheds, burnt fossil fuels, or lead-acid batteries are friendly neither to your pocket book nor to your planet.
That said, I do acknowledge that the creators' original intent was to use fuel cells which may prove to be a superior energy delivery system. However, even if I subtract out 1000 lbs for the
batteries, the car is still very heavy for its capacity. Even worse than the new Mini, which weighs more than double the original.
I love it. It's small, efficient, fast, and has plenty range to get me around town. I'm first in line to get the 20 grand "peoples model."
I rather doubt I'd do 130 in it, though. But having 1100 pounds of batteries under the floorboards it great for stability. But in terms of crash safety, something this small and dense (Just shy of a ton with NO batteries) looks like it would get crushed by it's own intertia in a crash with a structure.
At any rate, it doesn't mesh very well with oil companies or automakers, and they will probably pay out the ass to make it fail. GE offered to do a small test run, then rescinded and sued California over the 10% ZEV requirement. I mean, for almost all practical purposes around town this could replace our Camry. Except for long-distance trips or visits to the hardware store, it will do just as well. But it doesn't feed oil companies nearly as much money, and automakers make a bigger profit selling Stupid Useless Vehicles (to most who buy them).
I would have to agree that, for most people, it is indeed un-American to drive an SUV. Most of you don't need the damn thing, and by getting 8 MPG you just give middle-eastern oil theocracies more economic weapons to hold at our throats.
At the moment, however, U.S. Patent No. 6,328,121 (Ultra-Narrow Automobile Stabilized with Ballast) is causing a jam in front of Spokane's Northtown Mall. Traffic stops, drivers gawk.
Holy fuck, they got a patent for a car that's narrow! It's like a regular car, but narrow. Wow that's so fucking novel!
Oh but it's got a low center of gravity too?! No one ever would have thought of that...
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
(im drunk)
Woot! Somethin made slashdot from my area (coeur d'alene, idaho, about 30min away from spokane). I'll have to take a little trip and check this thing out..
Excuse my pessimism
The entire reason why I'd like to shy away from SUV's is that their height and narrowness can easily cause the center of balance to shift in such a way as to cause danger. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't quiiite think a narrow little car like this one taking a gentle highway/freeway curve at even 60mph/110km/h is saying much for safety. I did read TFM, and there was some sort of balancing method, but I didn't understand it completely. On top of that, I don't care how great the rollcage is--if it crashes and I don't die or get seriously wounded, I still won't be particularly happy. Because it just crashed. I still lose a car.
Just wondering, what exactly causes electric cars to be so expensive compared to traditional gas guzzlers? I mean besides the cost that goes into design / research etc. The batteries are expensive, what else?
when was it said that just because a thing uses batteries instead of fossil fuels means its less-pollutant?
electricity has to come from somewhere, coal or nuculear plants. has anyone done the math to count in a battery operated car vs a conventional car?
i'm not trolling, i'm all for new technology. just dont stuff it down our throats because its new or different.
From the article William Garrison, UC Berkeley professor emeritus and co-author of "Tomorrow's Transportation." "People want variety . . . They don't want people telling them what to do. We wealthy people with bleeding hearts say we need mass transit for the poor. The hell with that. The poor need money. If they had money, they wouldn't take transit."
I'm sorry Mr Garrison, but people do want variety. I'm all for effective electric cars, but we should allow our already working mass transit systems be developed to be equally or more convenient to use at the same time. In paris, you don't need a train time table: the trains are always two minutes apart. In Australia, tramstops have little touchscreen kiosks which allow you to plan your route, buy a ticket and even optimise your time.
I want my big SUV to go out bushbashing and hauling lumber in a trailer, I want to be able to rent/buy a small electric two seater so that don't get quashed in a road accident that would have killed a motorcyclist when I go shopping on my own and I want to be able to buy a ticket to a train that runs on time so I can read manuals or highlight meeting minutes or just plain sleep on my way to my tech job in the city where parking is a pain in the ass anyway.
Batteries not included.
Did anyone else scroll back up to check if the author was a woman?
Don't call me chauvanist - any Real Man? would have written:
If the car handles that well with this wide a track, imagine how it would handle with the track of a normal auto. It would also improve safety. It's not going to be legal to park them nose to the curb any time soon because it's clear that they are a car and not a motorcycle (at that weight, there can be absolutely no doubt whatsoever what class they will be in.) You don't need to make the car any longer (though another foot wouldn't hurt it and would buy you a more reclined position) but you certainly need to make it look less goofy. I suggest a lower, wider stance, and a trunk. Or at least looking more like a station wagon and less like a vending machine.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I guess there's a lot for me to understand. Its not a crash with another Tango that scares me, its the crash with the Ford Excursion that scares me... and its not the fact he just hits me, its that not only does he hit me, he then proceeds to drive OVER me. The law of inertia would make this scenario inevitable. I don't know if this car's roll bar was designed to dissipate the energy of a ton of mass heading my way. But then, thats true with any car - its just that if you are physically bigger, you have a higher probability of simply getting pushed out of the way in lieu of being run over.
I know. Call me paranoid. I am this way because I already drive a small car and am I intimidated by these monsters I see all over the road? Hell yes!
My only advantage is I get about 40 miles per gallon.. but the disadvantage is I probably will not survive any substantial accident, due to my much smaller size/mass.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
Back of the envelope rough calculation ...
200A/220V fast charge for 10 minutes = 80% charge
=~ 7.3 KWh for 64 miles distance
=~ 0.114KWh/mile
@ $0.15/KWh, this is around $0.76/mile
A reasonable car can do 30mpg, so this works
out to an equivalent of ~ $22/gallon. Unless
there's something wrong with my math, this looks
like an expensive unit to run ...
shows who is superior. Your days are numbered as a gender, Y chromo boy. You know it and it scares you.
The Toyota Camry with a standard transmission weighs 2,600. With an auto it's 100lbs more, but still not the 3k the article claims. ...Posted with a Sanyo 6400, yo.
Wtf, slashdotters bitch about patents constantly, but me pointing out this idiotic one (a lot more idiotic then most of the patent bitching) gets modded as 'troll'. What the fuck ever. There is absolutely nothing non-obvious about a 'narrow car' with a low center of gravity. Christ.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
You are probably one of those people who think motorcycles are to dangerous.
This looks great for the current traffic problems. Instead of, "Damn these traffic jams!" people will be saying, "Damn it! I got double parked again!"
You know, with talk of electric cars, I wonder what's going to happen in a medium-speed crash with lots of batteries in a car. Sulfuric acid everywhere?
WhilstI would dearly love to end our reliance on fossil fuels (and as a side benefit other than the environment, America could come home and stop trying to rule the world to ensure its own fuel supply), the electric car won't take off because it has an image problem.
People don't want to buy a car because it's good for the environment, they don't buy it for its fuel efficiency, and they don't buy it because it'll seat half a basketball team. They buy a car mostly because they are a status symbol way of getting from A to B. So, to sell electric cars, here's a small list of how to make them DESIRABLE:
1. Make it FAST. 0-60MPH in 4 seconds minimum. (Doesn't matter if you actually USE that acceleration, it's street cred poser value, for the most part the "mine's bigger than yours" syndrome)
2. Make it STYLISH. Not your usual avant garde electric enviro-car. Take a look at rally cars and real sports cars for inspiration. Get Porsche or Ferrari to build one.
3. Get them seen in public, not as show cars, but being used to do things better than their petrol counterparts. Rally driving, motor racing etc. Give them performance in spades, ultra-low C of G, and watch them out-turn regular cars.
4. Get the racing fraternity (all types) to hold competitions. I mean REAL F1 or TOCA type competitions that use cars you'd be able to buy. Not the solar/electric challenge type competition that most people only see as the dead donkey story at the end of the news.
5. Finally, make them rechargeable through simple means ie. domestic power plugs or some other common infrastructure ALREADY IN PLACE. Chicken and egg scenarios are doomed from the get go.
Do those things, and you will sell electric cars. Until then, it's never going to take off.
Visceral Psyche Films
-- Who holds back electric car?
-- We do! We do!
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
his point is obviously not about smog..about our crummy corporatist King George.
From the article
"To save money in mass production, the little red car includes many parts already made in bulk; Cadillac wheelbearings and axles, for instance, and Geo Tracker doors."
Seems to me they should have included air bags. Unless you can conceive of the idea of driving around in a sardine can at 130 mph, which is about 209 kilometres per hour, without ever having crash, some sort of safety gear is definitely needed in my opinion.
If the pattern goes 9am, 10am, 11am, why isn't noon 12am?
It took two to Tango!
Why do they hope to ask $20000 for the mass produced model when one could find much cheaper gasoline mass produced cars?
Electric engines are much simpler, smaller and cheaper than combustion ones and electric cars transmission systems can be much more simplified, thus cheaper. A good set of batteries cannot stand the huge amount of money saved by -not- using a combustion engine.
Plus, current sockets aren't widely available like gas stations.
I like that car, as did most people cited in the article, but they need a killer price to actually make people want to buy it now.
you know you want a Canyonero of your own.
Can you name the truck with four wheel drive,
smells like a steak and seats thirty-five..
Canyonero! Canyonero!
Well, it goes real slow with the hammer down,
It's the country-fried truck endorsed by a clown!
Canyonero! (Yah!) Canyonero!
[Krusty:] Hey Hey
The Federal Highway comission has ruled the
Canyonero unsafe for highway or city driving.
Canyonero!
12 yards long, 2 lanes wide,
65 tons of American Pride!
Canyonero! Canyonero!
Top of the line in utility sports,
Unexplained fires are a matter for the courts!
Canyonero! Canyonero! (Yah!)
She blinds everybody with her super high beams,
She's a squirrel crushing, deer smacking, driving machine!
Canyonero!-oh woah, Canyonero! (Yah!)
Drive Canyonero!
Woah Canyonero!
Woah!
I'll take a tzero thanks.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
funny, I wouldn't even look at it sitting at a light, much less ask where I could buy it. the thing is repulsive!
looks like somthing urkle would drive.
Hmm, this car probably lacks stability and will bump over at the first turn.
You ever seen the buses in Berkeley? They're always half an hour late and try to run over bicyclists. BART is ok, but doesn't get you to the supermarket or whatever.
Cost per Mile (ICE vs Tango)
You'll get maximum mileage from your batteries if you only drive the car 20-24 miles per charge; the chart indicates you'd get ~80,000 miles from the batteries. If you max out and drive 80 miles per charge (the maximum range), you'd cut that total down to ~16,000 miles.
At that point, the car really loses it cost effectiveness, as each battery pack costs $2,500. Driving it 80 miles per charge would probably make it as expensive to drive as the Hummer H2. Still, can you imagine what an improvement in battery technology could do for a car like this? It would push the TCO (total cost of ownership) of the car way down............
It's that sort of short sighted attitude that is the very reason many cities in the states are choking to death on polution fumes from cars.
Go ahead... buy your gas-guzzler, but don't come bitching to the rest of us when you get nailed for higher fuel prices when a environmentally aware government gets in and slugs you at the pump. At current fuel prices it might seem a high cost investment but I'd bet that'll be very differnet picture five years from now.
Go permanent? In your dreams and my worst nightmares.
From the article: "Rick Woodbury starts every morning with silent meditation in a small Tibetan Buddhist temple in Spokane. His prayers call for an end to sickness, war and suffering, but since he doesn't know how to do those things, he decided instead to create an environmental traffic-busting car."
That's pretty cool of them to point out.
_______
2B1ASK1
but creating the electricity charging them
does in many places. The car is only the beginning.
These vehicles do nothing to solve pollution, to get energy you need to have it stored somewhere. Either in a liquid fuel or in a battery. Batteries need charging and so you need electricity, to produce electricity you need to burn stuff, start off some nuclear reaction or use loads of wind power.
:)
All you're doing really is relocating the pollution elsewhere or changing the form of the pollution.
Also the batteries and motors will have a limited life and will need replacing. A diesel engine can last around 200,000 miles, I don't think an electric motor will last that long. These cars do nothing to solve the waste that is used tyres, millions of tyres are used each year and there's no simple way of recycling them.
So guys, stop wasting your time and invent the teleporter!
The segway I didn't understand. This, I do understand.
I am not against making car betters, but giving the fact you have to produce the power the charge these things.
I don't think you will cut down on polution, just change where the polution is being generated.
From the car's to all the power plants that will be needed to supply the power.
Wise men speak because they have something to say, Fools because they have to say something!!!!
SEALED, VIBRATION RESISTANT, AND LEAK PROOF, EVEN WHEN BROKEN
In an OPTIMA battery, the lead plates and separator are wound and tightly compressed into a cell tube so they can't move, shed, or break, even in severe shock and vibration applications. In independent SAE tests, the OPTIMA kept working after being subjected to vibrations up to 5G for 12 hours. As in all AGM TECHNOLOGY BATTERIES, there is no "free acid" that can leak out or spill and the OPTIMA can be operated effectively in any position -- even upside down -- without any risk of leaking and because it is sealed, no corrosion can form on the posts, connectors, or cables.
At DC Battery, we have been shown tests in which the a bullet is fired into an Optima leaving a huge hole in the center. Even with the battery's interior exposed, there was no leakage and when placed into a vehicle, it performed perfectly.
Hardly "completely disappointing sales".
They're all over the place in London, Paris, Madrid, Milan.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
The extra energy for heating and air conditioning tends not to be considered in many of these electric vehicles.
Although for defogging, I wonder how much double-paned windows would help? Or maybe just a hat, a thick coat and lots of ventilation :-(
Both the Tango's website and their battery suppliers (Ovonics) offer info on this. If you use them to 80% depth of discharge (DoD) they'll last 450 cycles. If you use them to 20% DoD, 4000 cycles.
BTW, 20% DoD is 20 miles, precisely the average round-trip commute in the US (U of T survey).
According to Tango's creators, 20% DoD leads to a per-mile cost that is around HALF that of the Honda Insight. (Assumes 5 cents per kWH, WA prices. At 15 cents/kWH CA prices, the cost-per-mile equals the Insight.) Ok, that may prove optimistic IRL, but given the dimensions, it has a decent chance of coming true.
It's always a tough battle when you against the entrenched market.
The strange tall and narrow design seems to be only possible because of the heavy lead ballast. I wonder if you could use a lighter power source and use gyroscopes to stabilize, similar to the Segway.
Eco-geeks might smack me...
Throw in an internal combustion engine and a stabilizing gyroscope. It would be quite the feat to include regenerative breaking and turn it into a hybrid... or, and I've heard of this being tried somewhere, maybe it was done in the '70s... have a mechanical engineering lunatic devise a way of tapping/storing energy in the gyroscope... I suppose you could do it today with some electrical trickery, some fantastic bearings and by lining coils around the gyroscope.
The gyro would have to be on a gimbal to twist on the front-back axis for hills.
I know... too crazy.
O.B. "The Segway sucks" comment.
And also, "want" items generally sell with a lot larger mark-up than "need" commodities. So which will J. Random Dealer want to sell ??
If you recall, there was another Father and Son venture from Spokane, They wrote a little game called Myst.
If by father-son you mean two brothers.
They burn! Someone please shoot me if I ever drive one of those monstrosities.
I'm a fan of large cars - my current car is a '70 Mercury Marquis convertible (it's a yacht on wheels, basically). I bet it's safer than this little thing even though it only has lap belts.
I belong to the ______ generation.
Who in their right mind would drive a car like the tango at 130 MPH? As narrow a footprint that thing has, one slight hiccup on the steering wheel and you'd be doing a long, life-ending tumbler down the road in the blink of an eye.
WIDEN the vehicle if you intend that it be driven at highway speeds (and higher...130 MPH?).
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
"A narrow car could double up in lanes or even travel between lanes, like a motorcycle."
Just in case you were looking for another way to break the law or risk the lives of others.
. Quit playing Monopoly with Bill. Switch to one of many non-Microsoft products today.
I'd really like a tango. I bet I would need a lot of cash for a tango. That would be cool. Cash for a tango. That's cool. With my tango and cash everyone would notice me. Me and my tango with my cash. Me and tango and cash being at the height of coolness. We make a great team: tango and cash and me. Make me feel like a super-cool cop, that tango and cash. *whoop whoop*
On first may 1899, a french car named "Jamais Contente" (never satisfied), driven by a belgian driver called JENATZY, was the first car to pass the 100 km/h mark. It was an electric car.
Of course, 130mph is quite 2 times 100 km/h, but, in 104 year, we could have hoped more progress.
For more infos on this strange vehicule, use your favorite search engine.
Which brings out this question - Why not ride a motorcycle instead of this "car"? I can't imagine it being much safer than a motorcycle (force needs distance to be dissappated), a motorcycle is more efficient (check previous posts for calculations) and performances is pretty much in the upper echlon (a good 600cc will give a Ferrari a run for it's money).
92 million people drive alone burning obscene amounts of fuel... this was the example in the article and the one I'll stick with.
/. shuffle of knee-jerk membership in CAVE--Citizens Against Nearly Everything.
Yes, the energy comes from somewhere. In the US, that is probably a coal burning power plant.
When 92 million people are driving mini fossil fuel plants, there is no reliable way to track pollution output or even suggest improvements. Any changes to the vehicles themselves are ineffective unless everyone is driving with the new technology in their vehicles.
Now picture 92 million people driving on batteries. It still comes from a coal powered plant but instead of tracking and controlling pollution from 92 million points, your sample goes down to a much more manageable number of a couple thousand.
That's easy enough to analyze from an MS Access database. That's easy for congressmen to regulate. That's easy to make rules for. That's easy for the average citizen to make informed political decisions on.
Don't do the
Laws are for people with no friends.
The parent post is very funny but not "interesting"... at best, it's a clever troll.
Laws are for people with no friends.
The discussion on efficiency and total cost of ownership misses the point. All new technologies must start somewhere, and if you can develop it with revenue from early adopters, its much better than raising private investment. If you looked at the very first airplane and calculated how well it would work for travel vs how much it would cost, it wouldn't pass any tests. This car is nice because it has enough features to attract a small portion of the total car buying market, and the revenue can help the company refine the technology, gain practical real-world experience with electric cars, etc. All new technologies have to start somewhere, and this looks like a great starting point.
For long trip, the car only needs a trailer with a gas engine and generator. I remember reading about an engineer who had an electric car he could drive cross country if he wished, simply by hooking up a very small trailer.
Perhaps the trailers could be rented, so you wouldn't have to keep it around all the time when you didn't need it.
It seems to me that it would be smart to market this car in Europe. People there are already used to seeing/driving small commuter cars (some with 3 wheels). Also, it seems that most of the people here are talking about the safety issues. Aren't the safety requirements for commuter cars in Europe easier to meet? I know that some of those 3 wheeled cars couldn't possibly pass the requirement in the States...
Wouldn't that be a good place to get the manufacturing numbers up to a point where the cars become more feasible for the masses?
--If you don't test it, it won't work. Guaranteed.
I would like to see a hybrid electric car that is built for 1 person and a little luggage.
It would have a 40hp electric motor with a small battery pack with just enough power to accelerate to a top speed of about 70mph a few times.
Cruising down the highway and recharging the battery pack would be done with a 10hp rotary engine connected to a generator that powered the electric motor and recharged the battery. I think that it could go 500 miles on a 5 gallon tank.
If done right the thing should cost less than $5,000 to mass produce.
Let's just face the reality that people want to drive to work alone and come up with ways to expedite that. Maybe even have a special half lane for motorcycles and these electric cars and half cost parking for them in the city cause 2 of them would fit in one parking space.
You could pretty much eliminate the acid-spill problem by using Gel-type batteries. These are commonly sold as "maintenance free" batteries for motorcycles (and presumably, cars and trucks too).
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
Whenever energy is converted to a different form there is a conversion loss. To charge an electric car it takes a minimum of 7 conversions. Most of the time there is a fifty percent loss or more. This means that the power plant produces at lest 7 times the amount of pollution to charge an electric car then an internal combustion car produces.
This is a perfect example of what happens when liberal arts majors try to solve real world problems.
that tiny thing weighs as much as a full-size camry. Somehow I don't think it would handle jumps too well.
Many Thanks,
Luke
A very inspiring article for those of us who would have to home-build our own was published in 'Wired Magazine' several years ago: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/7.03/drag.html? pg=1&topic=&topic_set=
Suck Amps!
How a bunch of speed-hungry, rubber-burning, adrenaline-pumped environmentalists get their kicks.
By Charles Platt
FYI
sig mind freed
... and that is if we replace all of our power plants with nuclear power. Otherwise, we will still be polluting the air.
People think car engine horsepower is a proxy for penis length.
I know I shouldn't say this...but...
:)
Up here we look at things like this: If it's done in California then it's wrong. I'm not trying to pick a fight here on this, just pointing out that where I live has a large population of ex-Californians. These are people who firmly believe that California is so screwed up......
Ok, whatever. Just that your subject line set off alarm bells.
Good point on the bike. The capital outlay is a hell of a lot less and I'm sure the TCO can't be beat. The only advantage I can see this car having vs. a motorcycle is the ability to operate it in the rain and stay dry.
For about $65,000 less you could get one of the nicest bikes made, a trailer, and all sorts of accessories. When it rains you just stay home.
(Um.....well, in California you can. We have half a year of snow here so...um....I won't go there).
. Quit playing Monopoly with Bill. Switch to one of many non-Microsoft products today.
What does this have to do with car mass and crumpling?
The answer is intuitive. The only thing worse than being stopped from 50MPH to 0 in two or three feet of travel is being thrown in the opposite direction. Elastic collisions are a bitch on the riders and this is why rigid framed autos favored by Detroit are more dangerous than sheet metal unibody designs of frugal auto makers from countries that have no steel deposits. Imagine riding various objects in your house on collions. Two tennis balls bounce off each other and your ride would be really violent, though not as bad as the riders of two bowling balls. Riders of bean bags would both do better than riders of tennis balls. Now, a bowling ball rider would not even feel the poor bastard in the tennis ball or bean bag.
See there, you knew it all along. A person in a mini is going to be screwed when some dumb bitch in an H2 cuts them off. The H2 occumpant, unless the mini hits the driver side, will do much better. The H2 is ugly for being both rigid and more massive than is reasonable. The best thing is to have a rigid passenger compartment surrounded by collapsable material. The best of all accidents is when the vehicles shear off each other and neither suffers great accelerations as auto body parts yeild and both vehicles keep going. The worst collision is taking your stupid H2 and running into an object that won't yield. Your H2 will recoil, much like a bowling ball, and your poor body will be yanked to pieces inside it.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
...and NO ONE ELSE, really. Can you geek girls get to work on that 24-year-old son?
Sorry, I'm a troll. But not a heartless one!
When I first saw the pictures, I thought the aspect ratio of my moniter or the HTML IMG tags were out of whack. I was just about to press "refresh".
BTW, it looks like there is not a lot of clearence under the bottom. What if it encountered a big rock and there was no time to steer around?
Table-ized A.I.
Take SUVs out of music videos and television shows.
Why not? The kings of bling would still have their Italian gear, Ferraris, Bentleys, and a plethora of ways to illustrate the bigness of their lives. What I'd hope is that by removing them from depictions of cool, teenagers and lesser-minded adults would be less inclined to dream of rolling down the street in a Cadillac Escalade with twenty-four inch chromed rims. We're sheep. We want them because we want to image-engineer ourselves to include that essence of power, excess, and blatant disregard for practical concerns.
Oh, and as for that other demographic comprised of those who regularly go through their video archives of "Dawson's Creek" and "The Gilmore Girls", sorry. You'll have to lose your SUVs too.
This isn't a breakthrough. It's just another lead-acid battery powered car. The limits of what you can do with that technology are well known.
There are no good alternatives in volume production. Even the Texaco/Ovonic joint venture seems be going nowhere:
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If you are looking for industrial NiMH batteries, your choices are limited. There is no distribution network for NiMH batteries above 10-Ampere Hours (Ah). Batteries above 10 Ah are manufactured for specialty uses only. Texaco Ovonic Battery Systems does manufacture batteries above 10 Ah; however, they are produced in a limited quantity.
You'd think that by now they'd have taken over the indoor forklift sector, at least, but no.How about adding a solar panel type roof to give the batteries a little more juice on sunny days?
It seems silly to me that people like to emphasize electric cars because they are "zero emission" (never mind that the electricity comes from somewhere, like coal-burning or nuclear power plants) when hybrid cars are much more practical, much more affordable, and nearly as clean. A Toyota Prius or Honda Civic Hybrid or Honda Insight gets absolutly silly gas milage - up to 68 mpg city for a manual insight - and costs 20 grand, compared to an 80 grand tango. Not to mention the insight can seat two people comfortably (the civic hyprid and prius seat four, but are not as efficient). And you don't have to worry about being stranded when you run out of batteries, like you do with a pure electric, or looking for an outlet to charge it, or have to borrow/rent/buy another car for long trips.
Even an all-gas subcompact is very efficient, and gas cars have gotten way cleaner - PJ O'Rourke pointed out in one of his books that a running Saab 9-3 puts out less pollution that a '68 camaro with the engine OFF
Anyway, the Tango doesn't seem that innovative when you keep in mind that the article says he got the engine out of a '68 Triumph that had already been converted to electric
I have blog like everyone else
"Can the car Rick and Bryan built get traction?"
Come on. We should all know by now that cute little podmobiles simply don't sell in America, just like MS won't cooperate with a Linux XBox and just like the Segway didn't revolutionalize the world. I can't think of any podcar that has succeeded anywhere to be produced in mass quantities for that matter. Aside from the fact that the little bastard strikes me as a rollover nightmare from hell, let alone actually taking it up to any speed above 60mph.
I'll give em props for a nicely finished product. It looks very professional. But hopefully they realize this car is nothing but a stepping stone, because it isn't going anywhere with that design.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
You're talking through the wrong orfice.
Alternatively, they could have used Ni-Mh or NiCads, which will last 5 times longer and have a considerably higher energy density and therefore range. If lead-acid batteries will take the car 80 miles, Ni-Mh's or Nicads would probably take it from LA to San Diego on one charge.
I'm not sure if the charge density difference is that great...
And while they've come up with something very neat, let's face it, the electric car is far from the panacea that most environmentalists claim...
To achieve reasonable range, these things are stuffed with batteries. The greater the energy density of a battery, the more reactive (ie. hazardous and toxic) the chemicals it uses must be. Every car accident on roads filled with electric cars is going to be a Haz-Mat team call, passengers with chemical burns, etc. Gasoline is unpleasant but pretty harmless in comparison to having lead-acid (or worse) batteries splashing their electrolyte in your face.
And that's not the worst of this folly:
Where are 7 million Los Angeles commuters going to get the power to recharge their electric cars every night? Coal kind of defeats the purpose and has less overall efficiency when you count all the energy distribution and conversion steps than simply running an internal combustion engine. Getting solar or wind power (both of which are still (hash) pipe-dreams in any commercially usable quantity) onto the grid requires an energy storage and inversion system to ensure it's a 60Hz sinewave in precise phase with the grid. At best this might one day be (1/sqrt(2))x100% efficient. Never mind that solar energy is only captured during the day, which is precisely when the huge electric demands of most commuters *won't* be parked at home with the car plugged in. Since there aren't too many rivers you can dam in the desert, the slack will have to be taken up by coal and nuclear plants.
Electric cars are a great PR scam. They make the public feel better because the public is stupid and ignorant.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
a photo-shopped picture of a 1998 Mercedes A-Class hatchback morphed to ultra-narrow dimensions,
I would have put more curves into it and made the windows larger. The fiberglass used in the body is much better suited to that than the one they chose that was made for sheet metal and robot arcwelding. Indeed, sharp corners are more difficult to execute and have less structural integrity.
It might be. They could make this vehicle safer then yours if they expanded it further than the reinforced passenger compartment. It would not have to be much heavier, but the additional crush and cargo space would do you much more good than your car's rigid to the bumper frame. The extra mass of your car helps you, but it's at the cost of control and the safety of other people. The mass war is only possible because people value conspicuous consumption and personal comfort over safety for themselves and others. It never ends because people will always feel compelled to buy the new bigger monster for "safety".
The same forces also work to make new cars uglier. Designers talk about making their vehicles "menacing" and talk about apealing to people's "lizard brains". They have realized that fear sells and large cars with grace, designed to convey an impression of strength are a thing of the past, despite the high price they used to command for providing a car with "more". "More" has to be justified with "practical" concerns, like the ability to move farm equipment, and "safety" represented as the ability to intimidate and harm others with impunity. The squared off "utilitarian" lines of Panzer tanks compete with grills that apear as frowns or bared teeth, and body work that simulate flared nostrils and tensed muscles. Menace is always ugly, but these things are going out of their way to look psychotic. Your vehicle was styled on the easy grace of a large cat.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I average 75-85, and I'm not the only one driving that fast, everyone here in utah pretty much averages that. I think top speed should be 90-100. I'd prefer a nice cruising speed to any rapid acceleration. But it does need to be able to maintain 75mph uphill (canyons) and the range needs to be at least 150 miles.
My Linux Command of the Day site : LCOD
Unfortunately for the same reason why you always get genetalia enlargement e-mail spam, most people really want a bigger one of everything. They are just afraid to admit it! So you keep getting spammed because some goof balls are stupid enough to reply, I am just supprised there is no breast enlargement spam scams on the net yet. Maybe women are not quite as stupid. However they get suckered into the bigger everything auto consumer crap just as much as anyone else.
OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
I think we are due for another 70s oil crisis and I will happily contend with my tank a month and 10 bucks a fill up attitude.
FUCK everybody who has an SUV!!!
This is a test. This is a test of the emergency sig system. This has been only a test.
lovely debate in here;
I just thought i'd share a meme that was emailed to me the other day;
H2 Vs. Dodge Ram
This communication is secured using Rot-26 Encryption Algorithm, Unauthorized decryption will be subject to laughter.
...its the crash with the Ford Excursion that scares me...
I may be getting a little bias towards the car..
I read that as Ford Executioner
The only one I've seen had the entire vehicle flying up in the air. Bumper height just didn't seem like an issue.
I've found that my posts don't format quite right w/o a sig.
One has to consider the total amount of oil fuel burned to generate the electicity for the batteries. If everyone needs a big amp tap in their house for their cars how many coal furnaces would we have to construct?
And the speed limit is?
(about half that)
So they must have broke the law, I say arrest them, and impound the plans to this v-e-chile
Aint that right Boss
Yep, thats right, ol'man 'sso says these 're bad boys, lock em up Billy Bob
Taking off my shirt Boss
Okay Queer Fuck
Wiping my brow Boss
Got u Sten
Tossing my cock Boss
Swallow the cum Billy Bob, you fucking fuck wit
I'm probably posting too late, so nobody will read this, but it has to be said.
There is only one country in the world were someone can build a 3100 lbs car the size of a shopping cart and call it practical and economical.
How is it possible that such a small car weights 2000 lbs (without the batteries)?
The car in the article does NOT possess street cred due to its shape. It turns heads not because people look at it as a sexy car, they look at it because it is new and different and half as wide as any other car!
;)
;)
Looking out of curiosity is natural. Looking at it with a feeling of wanting one is something VERY different. Kind of how you look at women (if you're the normal Slashdot demographic) - people will turn their heads and eye off a supermodel when she walks by, out of a feeling of DESIRE. On the other hand, people still turn and stare at an unusually fat woman, but it's a CURIOSITY/REVULSION thing more than one of DESIRE. (I hope!!!
As far as copying the A-Class, it's function (like the Smart etc) is as a city runabout, NOT as a serious all purpose car or sports car. See desirability again.
The speed thing's good, but only being able to go 80 miles on a charge isn't. Make the thing go ALL DAY at speed and I'll be impressed.
Note finally that what I listed is things that IMHO are needed to sell electric cars. I didn't state that the article's car didn't have any of these
Quizo69
Visceral Psyche Films
This is probably redundant, but you're not going to catch me driving that thing...
- Danny
The automakers bought the government long ago, and the two have fostered a conspiracy of destruction upon it's own people... all in the name of profit.
Personal vehicles over 3000lbs should be taxed to fucking death. And so should gasoline.
I live in Spokane and have for the last 9 years (the fact I have time to browse slashdot has something to do with the job market here.)
You could say my kids live at the mall - or at least they would if I let them. I've never seen this car and my kids would be constantly talking about it if they had seen it.One would be telling me how cute it was - I want it -- While the other would tell me it's so stupid.
Me thinks its not quite as reliable as they might imply in the article or maybe they have driven it and some of those H2 drivers gave them a scare. This is SUV country - The thing to do on the weekend around here is head up into the mountains(My former employer uses an H2 a promo for it it's ruggized labtops.
For about 5 years, I commuted via bicycle in this town and it's not for the faint of heart. Once I could tell a guy did not look my way when he pulled his old pickup in from of me. I had the right of way and was going 20 MPH at the time. I slammed on my breaks ASAP. He saw me just in time but we still hit front wheel to front wheel. That would have caused $5,000.00 to this eletric car minimum
Battery Dangers:
Actually, the batteries that they use I believe are AGM PbA. That's absorbent glass-mat Lead Acid. So there really is no liquid to spill. I have even heard of these types of batteries having holes shot clean through them, even then they would still start a truck.
http://www.optimabatteries.com/
Polution Shifting:
The Grid has an "abundance" of power at night. Even with 20,000 EV's charging in the evening
here would still be no need to "fire up" any additional power facilities.
An Electric Vehicle lends itself to the "Option" of clean recharging. I could, and would, invest in wind or solar power at my house to suplament the charging of my EV! But I can never refine my own Gassoline. Well, Maybe Bio-Desal.
The "Shifting of the Polution" to a power plant is a flat out lie, do some research. We already have the best Fusion Reactor available, The Sun, Let's start using it!
Limited Range:
Honestly, how far do you drive in one day? I drive a lot, 500 miles a week. So 80 Miles a day is just enough range for me. The average commuter drives less than 25 miles each way. Even if your commute were 80 miles you could charge at work. The best way to reduce oil dependancy and the related political and environmental issues is to not use any at all.
Battery Life:
There is the nagging problem of battery life. Two to Three years is average in an EV. More if you keep the DOD(Depth of Discharge) low. Less if you follow through with the nagging desire to smoke Vipers. (Which it will do!) The funny thing is, that the "Clean Fuel Cell" cars we are being prommissed are the same as a BEV, but with Hydrogen and Fuel Cells as opposed to Batteries.
Safety:
Every car is dangerous, Large vehicles are more dangerous to those arround them. I'de feel much safer in the Tango's roll cage than I do on my Motorcycle. Unfortunently crash testing is rather expensive, not to mention crumpeling up a perfectly good car. I'de take my chances in a Tango.
Effeciency and Reliablilty:
The Effeciency of an EV can simply not be beat. 90% to charge the Batts. 90% from Batts to the pavement. Were I to invest a few $??K into PV or Wind to recharge, I'de be looking at a lifetime refueling cost of $0, with 0 Pollution, and 0 non-renewable fuel used.
Motors and Engions. How many parts are there in an ICE? Hundreads if not Thousands! How about in an Electric Motor? Just one, the armature! Which do you think will break first? And how about all those oil changes and coolent? The Auto Industry doesn't like the EV Idea because there is nothing to service. Ever seen an add for the GM EV1? No. I wonder why?
Power:
The simple truth of the matter is that an electric motor can produce far more power per weight than any ICE could ever hope to. An electric motor produces full torque throught it's RPM range, unlike an ICE which only produced it's rated HP output only durring it's power band.
Electrics move Trains, Large Boats, and Huge Construction equiptment, Why Not My Car?
Effeciency:
My Honda Insight, the Most effecient of gas burners can not even achieve 30% effeciency. Think of all the heat going out the tail pipe. That is not to mention the drilling, refineing, and transportation costs and effeciency losses.
On a side note: The current administrations "plan" for our new "Hydrogen Economy" would extract the majority of it's H2 from petrolium. Rather than Investing in truely clean new sources of power like PV, Wind, Tidal, and Hydro to crack water.
Extracting H2 & Oxygen from water is simple, though not very efficient it could (SHOULD) be done at home, negating the need for a new Hydrogen Infrastructure. Which BTW is already nearly in place in the form of natural gas lines. Some people simply have a difficult time relenquishing control, Humm Hum.
Well, Enough of the TRUTH from me.
Those of you shooting off nonsense need to do some research and then come to your own conclusions.
Those that already have, thanX
> We don't all have diesel generators in our back sheds to
_ ________ _________
> power our homes, because it is cheaper and cleaner to
> have a high-efficiency power plant supplying millions of
> homes.
Sorry but your analysis of "economies of scale" in the power industry is seriously flawed. It was turned topsy-turvy by government mandated monopolies and fixed rates of return on utility company investments. That created the bloated monsters that ate money and shit electricity that we are stuck with today.
The fundamental fuckup was having the PUC fix the rate of return the utility companies could earn. So it was easy to make more profit. All they had to was just spend more money. And those guys knew how to spend money. I discovered this when I developed software for the SCADA systems used to control power generation and distribution. It was a great business cuz the utility companies spent ten times the amount of money as was actually needed.
Nuclear power was so attractive to the power utilities because it was the best way to run up a big check. There was never a good engineering reason to build huge multi-gigawatt nuclear powered generating stations. The most efficient nuclear power plants are on submarines. The fuel section on some were as small 55 gallon drums and they can produce enough power for a small city. After a huge hurricane destroyed local power generating facilities, electricity for the island of Kauai was supplied by a Navy submarine. And small nuclear power plants are much safer, too. You don't need the massive containment structure that was the major construction cost for nuclear power plants.
And although building those radioactive puppies cost billions, decommissioning them costs even more. For example, the San Onofre nuclear facility can't produce electricity at competitive rates any more. So the California PUC is gonna stick the consumers with a $30 billon charge to take it out of service. Most of the cost is because the giant concrete tit containment structures are badly contaminated.
Bottom line is that if the normal market mechanisms had been allowed to operate in the production and consumption of power, then we would of had alot more smaller, more efficient power generating facilities. At one time there were hundreds of small hydroelectric plants that produced 30% of California's power. Hike up the small rivers in the northern and central California and you'll find the abandoned remains of them. Another obvious reason is the technology for long distance power transmission wastes 30% of our generating capacity.
best regards,
buck
_________________________________________
"One is constantly aware that we live in a world where dreams and reality interchange"- Charles Lindbergh
'What do you say we hop in the backseat of my car and get to know each other a little better?'
"I get the idea those batteries and their narrow wheelbase would go right under the SUV, leaving me with the SUV trailer hitch right in my mouth."
No. Unless the SUV trailer hitch goes right through the window, it probably wouldn't happen that way. P = mv, so the force of the red battery car striking an SUV would likely be very high (the same as a Toyota Camry) in the event of an accident with an SUV. Before either crumples or damages, you have to know what forces will be involved. Then you can calculate the specific damage for the material.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Well there is the REVA in Bangalore, India that sells for about 5250 USD. It is a two-seater electric car. There are quite a few on the roads but seems the company is unable to ramp up production due to lack of funding. Even its web-site www.revaindia.com seems to be held hostage. Sad to see something so advanced not fly :-(
Or as I like to call them:
Mobil, self contained, emergency food supply.
http://www.evercel.com/features.html makes a better,lighter battery - was there a reason besides initial cost why it was not used?
There is nothing wrong with yr Internet. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling the transmission - NSA
http://www.evercel.com/features.html
makes a better, lighter battery - was there a reason besides initial cost why it was not used?
There is nothing wrong with yr Internet. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling the transmission - NSA