Several of you have expressed interest in electric cars. The ones I've seen for sale so far have been little more than Golf Carts on a mild dose of steroids. A 25mph top speed is not going to cut it for most of us (I assume) and a 15 mile range is not quite good enough either.

Anyhow this iMiEV looks really interesting and may be worth waiting for. They are throwing around a $17,000 price with features like 100 mile range and 81 miles per hour top speed. That will work great for a lot of people! Very exciting!

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008...ectric_car.php
http://techon.nikkeibp.co.jp/english...080124/146156/
http://dvice.com/archives/2008/03/test_driving_th.php

 

I can't wait for the first mass-produced, reasonably-priced electric vehicle to come out. The iMiEV is really interesting. There's also an electric vehicle called the Triac that's supposed to start selling in July for under $20000.00. The website for the Triac is www.greenvehicles.com. The iMiEV or the Triac would fit my driving needs 99% of the time. If I plan to take a road trip or travel farther than 100 miles in one day, I could just use a prius from PhillyCarShare.

 

Don't forget about the aptera. It will be sweet.

 

The Aptera is pretty darn cool.

http://www.aptera.com/

$27,000 isn't too bad but it seems a little high for a 3-wheeler.

 

How will those type of vehicles fair in regions that get snow? Will they be heavy enough to keep traction or tall enough to clear a few inches of snow? How will the performance of their batteries be effected by below 0 temperatures.

I'm not being a smart a$$ I am truly curious about it.

 

Battery performance does fall off rapidly with lower battery temperatures. That is why GM's approach of keeping the batteries in a well regulated, box makes a lot of sense. With good insulation and active thermal management, they should be able to achieve remarkable battery performance in all weather. Best of all, once plugged into the grid, grid power can be used to maintain optimal battery temperature.

GM's approach really does show a clever solution to potentially a difficult problem. BTW, Alaska is used to having battery heaters, JC Whitney sells them. All it takes is clever engineering of the housing.

Bob Wilson

 

Ok. Do you think the weight and ground clearance are going to be issues in the snowy areas? The Aptera looks pretty low to the ground and I'm sure they are pretty light.

 

Being as how pretty much all electric vehicles are up and coming any opinions are likely to be just guesses. That said, I'm guessing that the Aptera is not going to be good in snow.

A vehicle does not need to be heavy to be good in the snow. My family lived in a snowy climate and found the old school Volkswagen Bug to be good in snow, or at least much better than expected. Narrow tires seem to help on lighter vehicles.





Electrics might be fine in the cold as long as you could drive from one source of electricity to another. Plug em in and keep those batts warm.

In the end we might need to accept that EVs are not the answer for everybody.......

 

The Ford Escape Hybrid has had it's own heating and cooling system for the hybrid battery pack from day 1. However, when the vehicle is not "on", this hybrid battery pack is just inside a steel "container" and can get too cold or hot for optium functioning. A engine block heater on the 2005-2007 models does have a connection to the hybrid battery heater!

 

The Mitsubishi "i" is like a smart fortwo converted into a forfour. As tall as it is wide, with skinny tires and stability control as integral to its design, you should find most owners will be nervous wrecks on the highways and garaging the cars during Winter. Heavy understeer and crosswinds will make driving it fatiguing. So, the electric version should be okay because it'll be a city car any ways.

The Aptera isn't designed for outside of California nor will it be sold outside California until the company expands.