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The Return of the Sparrow Electric Vehicle?

Posted by simoniker on from the fluttering-about dept.

H0NGK0NGPH00EY writes "I have been keeping my eye on the Sparrow electric vehicle, following last year's bankruptcy of its creator, and recently noticed that the brightly-colored three-wheeled electric commuter car has been reborn. Myers Motors will begin selling an upgraded version this summer, after having acquired the rights and tooling from Phoenix Environmental Motors, who mention this on their official homepage."

2 of 347 comments (clear)

  1. It was a flop the first time round... by keefey · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Fire the market researchers! Why didn't they learn, right back from this - The Sinclair C5. It failed then, so why don't they learn that people don't want to ride around in something that makes them look like a fool?

    Now, if they follow the examples set by manufacturers such as Toyota, where they make hybrid, dual fuel cars (gas/electric) that switch fuel type depending on the usage, we'll get to the point where we can effectively use less damaging energy sources. We're getting there, slowly, but this just isn't it.

  2. Re:I think its beautiful by mad.frog · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Yes, it is beautiful, but it is NOT "staggeringly well designed." Trust me on this; I was a former owner of a Sparrow, and found out -- the hard way -- that a three-wheeled, rear-driven layout is fundamentally unstable in the event of fishtail: flip, roll, totaled.

    In addition, the quality of both design and construction was truly dismal. I wondered sometimes if the Corbins didn't bother to design anything ahead of time, but just sort of threw things together, bodged it around until it worked, kinda.

    They had a cool concept, but absolutely no idea how to actually execute that in a reliable and profitable way, and so the Sparrows were MASSIVELY unreliable; mine was out of service for, literally, 2/3 or 3/4 of the time I owned it, and stalled -- twice! -- crossing the Bay Bridge. (Ever been stalled on the Bay Bridge? Now imagine doing so in a very small fiberglass container.)

    No... there's no way this vehicle can be worthwhile without a ground-up redesign by folks who actually know what they are doing. I know nothing of Myers Motors, so maybe they are smart folks, but if they're starting with the existing design, they've already made a big mistake.

    If, say, Honda, or Toyota, or even Piaggio, designed a vehicle like this, I might be interested....

    (For more info on a Sparrow's crashworthiness, see: http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/sparrow_ev/m essage/3680)