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The Return of the Sparrow Electric Vehicle?
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."
..first it was a sparrow, then it was a dodo, now it's a phoenix?
"BSD: Free as in speech. Linux: Free as in beer. Windows 10: Free as in herpes." --Man On Pink Corner in #52607549.
Too many "alternative" ideas don't understand that "different" and "popular" are very rarely correlated.
There was an old lady who drove in a shoe...
If I didn't already have a solid-performing, small Civic, I'd seriously think about one of these.
Except that I drive too much.
Commuter market is hard to handle. One has to worry about safety in city driving, and how close to work one has to be for it to be practical. If you work in any sort of fabrication facility, chances are you live a good distance from work. Wouldn't want to run out of juice on the side of the road in a vehicle that's difficult to refuel w/o a large time investment.
"A group of words expressing something other than their literal intention. Now that... is... irony!" - Bender
Strike 1: it's electric. After listening to the Big 3 say for years and years no one wants electric cars, the public doesn't want electric cars. Baaaa.
Strike 2: single seater. After listening to the Big 3 say for years and years that SUV's and trucks can do more for you, the public won't care about a car with a single seat. Baaaa.
Strike 3: limited range. After listening to the Big 3 say for years and years that a car should be able to drive across the US or Canada on a moment's notice... eh, you get the idea.
Sparrow concept = neat
Sparrow sales will = bleh
Personally, I like the Tango more than the Sparrow.
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.
when I can run my beauty on the one substance that stands for peace, freedom and the fight against terrorism - Liberated Iraqi Oil.
The Merlin Roadster is also a three wheel drive, but not as ugly and has an ICE. A mini review is here.
R(k)
We saw the sparrow in CycleWorld in 1998, ordered one immediately, reservation number 38. Got it in March '00, after much design/redesign/rework by Corbin. It is absolutely the coolest vehicle we've ever owned (and we've owned more than a few vehicles.) The fit and finish was excellent, and it really looks better in person than it does in photographs. We do all our own maintenance, and have upgraded quite a few things on our bird. It'll do 100 MPH, has about a 40 mile range (which is rough on the batteries, 20 gives lots more charge cycles), carries 6 Kilowatt-Hours in its 13 batteries (i.e. it'll run your laptop _and_ your cellphone both for about 2 weeks - motive power takes orders of magnitude more juice than bit-flipping, a good freeway ramp acceleration can easily draw 300 amps at 160 volts - that's 48 KW, enough power to run ten average houses).
We've talked to (literally) over 2000 interested people in the last four years of driving, and have had hundreds of people say they'd buy one "tomorrow" if Corbin were in business, or if it was made by GM, or if it got a little better range. The big problem is battery technology. Lead acid batteries are big and heavy - even the expensive hi-tech spiral-cell units are tempramental and basically hate being discharged. Better batteries exist, like NiMH or Li-Ion, but right now they would add $4000 to the price of the vehicle - once those prices come down, the.Sparrow with a Li-ion pack could have a 200 mile range. As it sits, having a plug at work is probably a good idea.
Corbin's big problem was they had a design concept, but didn't want to listen to the expertise of the engineers they had. (They employed Jeff James, Peter Senkowski, and Claire Bell at various times - all electric vehicle experts, all ignored and blamed to greater or lesser degrees) Eventually the company collapsed in a mire of pointy-haired-boss syndrome and financial impropriety.)
I'm pleased to see that Myers is looking to improve on the design, and fix some of the things which Corbin addressed with hand-waving. (Although I must say that early on, Corbin was great about supplying parts, fixing problems, and listening to our comments. Then the money got tight.) I'd also love to see the DOT decide that there was a place on our highways for a smaller vehicle - the reason the Sparrow is a three-wheeler is that it gets around thousands of expensive, heavy, or (for an electric vehicle) downright contradictory "automobile" design requirements by being classed as a "motorcycle". However, this put weight and size restrictions on the vehicle which forced compromises on range and stability. Other countries have the concept of a mini-car, which can go at speeds above 25 MPH but may not be allowed on the highest speed freeways.
I'm also glad that there's somebody to buy a replacement windshield from - I've been worried that we'll take a stone one day, and I'll have a $14,000 paperweight!
The ultimate answer, as a motorcyclist, an electrical engineer, and a dedicated geek: With knowing in advance what we'd go through finding insurance, fixing problems, breaking drive belts, changing batteries... I'd do it again in a heartbeat. The Sparrow has been an absolute blast, a total head-turner, the ultimate conversation piece, and it's won a trophy in every car show we've entered it in - even got "People's Choice" in our home-town once!
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-- No No No NO, Don't tug on that! You never know what it might be attached to. - Buckaroo Banzai
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.
m essage/3680)
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/