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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!"
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.
The only major problem I see with that choice is all that lead floating around. But the production of the fancy battery types is not exactly environmentally friendly anyway. Well ok, the other problem is the 80 mile range. That works out to a 10 minute stop every hour to hour-and-a-half or so, if stations are placed optimally. Such frequent breaks could easily help traffic safety.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
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.
And if you look at the videos, you can see that it's *very* stable.
The motor that's in it is a small fraction of the cost.
They've had it at Woodburn, Oregon's annual EV drag races in earlier prototypes. Come to this year's (August 31) and if you're lucky, maybe they'll bring one this year.
Come to the OEVA EV Awareness Day tomorrow (today? July 26) and if you're real lucky, maybe they'll have one here then too (they did last year).
From the manufacturer website:
For that average commute of 20 miles and up to 24 miles per charge, the total cost per mile of the Tango is approximately 30% lower than that of a Honda Insight. This includes battery replacement, maintenance, and the cost of electricity at $.05 per kWh (as in the Northwest). The Honda Insight has an EPA rating of 56 mpg city and 57 highway.
Link To Reference Here
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............
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.
All you're doing really is relocating the pollution elsewhere or changing the form of the pollution.
True, but in the end it works out more efficient: because a large power plant is designed solely to produce power, it is much more efficient and cleaner at doing it than a small combustion engine is, even taking power transport into consideration.
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-effeciency power plant supplying millions of homes.
"A week in the lab saves an hour in the library"