Just how many electric car start-ups are there?
I woke up today ready to write a story on the three-wheeled electric cars coming from Venture Vehicles when a question dawned on me. How many electric car and plug-in start-ups are there in the world today?
Electra glide in silver
(Credit: Zenn Motors )I count 16. They are: Tesla Motors (sports cars), Wrightspeed (sports cars and plug-in drivetrains for trucks), Fisker Automotive (electric sedans), Zap (low-speed and sports cars), Miles Automotive (low speed), Zenn Motors (low speed), AC Propulsion (retrofitting Scions for electric), Phoenix Motorcars (SUVs), Aptera (three-wheelers), Porteon (low speed electrics), Lightning (sports cars in England), Reva (economy cars), Ultramotor (electric trishaws), Myers Motors (freakish three-wheelers featured in Goldmember), Think (electric economy cars) and Venture Vehicles (three-wheeled electric cars.).
You'll see photos and video of Venture's car next week. The test drive was a hoot.
That doesn't even count the major car companies--GM and Nissan--committed to coming out with electric cars and plug-ins, or the people doing diesel hybrid buses. And there are also the three electric scooter and motorcycle guys: Zero Motorcycles, Vectrix and Brammo. And it doesn't count the golf cart guys. Or the battery guys like Altair Nanotechnologies.
Again, if I missed you and your grandmother's car company, forgive me. These are just the ones I've written about and can recall. History shows that most of these companies will be wiped out. Most car start-ups never get far, in part because of the outrageous capital costs involved in tooling up factories. But there are a lot of good ideas out there.
companies out there that finally have started to slap the major
automotive companies out there in the ass!
Personally I hope that Japan and China crush Detroit for their
lack of vision. If you doubt this statement then you need to go
rent the documentary "Who killed the electric car?". It's available
at Blockbuster.
Time to wake up from the fossil fuel dream and start to think
green. It is the next "industrial revolution" and will make early
adopters/investors the next crop of multi-billionaires.
Look out Detroit, a new paradigm in transportation is on the
horizon!
that can produce meaningful reductions in crude
oil depdendencies and emission reductions : GM and Chinese BYD. Both are producing EVs with range extender engines in the next 3 years at prices ($27K and $20K) that will enable mass distribution and thus significant effects. All the others are strictly niche vehicles that will wilt away unless a revolutionary lightweight, quickcharge inexpensive battery comes along, and fast and that they can buy.
XP Vehicles has that battery system and has offered to race every car in this list on a RANGE race and delcares it will beat all of them.
Which have something most others don't have? Does any have something no one else has that we all would want?
Do any offer a key system that:
Allows the user to change keys anytime/anywhere without external assistance/intervention?
Guarantees that every car has it's own unique key setting?
Offers the preceding at no cost per key change, and very little cost to make new keys?
Nah! We consumers wouldn't want that.
RememberEZ.blogspot.com
What does key settings have to do with electric cars? Whether these start ups survive or not will depend on many more fundamental factors regarding battery replacement, cost of replacement, reliablity, miles per charge and just plain practical usefulness.
However, the ones most likely to survive are the ones run by people with a good business sense, and ones that have a great product to sell.
The ones most likely to fail are the ones with poorly designed and poorly built products, the ones with insufficient funds to keep operations going through the difficult startup process, and the ones making bad business decisions.
(but not yet shown) their Energia GT sports car.
Silence PT2 is a battery-powered spinoff from the Canadian,
gasoline-powered, three-wheeled Campagna T-Rex. They
should be going on a promotional tour around California "real
soon now". It might give the Wrightspeed X1 a run for its
money.
Universal Electric Vehicles has something called a UEV Spyder,
which is like somewhat cheaper and slower counterpart to the
Tesla Roadster.
Commuter Cars are working to get their narrow EV, the Tango (It
takes two!) into production.
Hybrid Technologies have given rides in their own Tesla-alike
called the L1X-75. It's actually a Mullen GT kit car converted to
electric power.
I wouldn't even try to count all the low speed NEV makers:
there's dozens of them, but they aren't terribly interesting to
me.
I am surprised you missed Malcolm Bricklin's Visionary Vehicles. www.vvcars.com. They will be building the cars along with the entire infrastructure necessary to bring PHEV's to market (Battery Factories, Dealer Network, etc.)
Ron
Both plan to sell advanced EVs made in China.
The main difference is Zap is already selling NEVs and small electric scooters, and Visionary Vehicles is just getting started and doesn't yet have anything to sell, except for dealerships.
Though neither Zap nor Visionary plan to make cars, they are still needed as EV dealers, and I wish them well.
Out of the 16 million cars sold each year, not one is a plug-in highway car.
Yet we know they're possible, as of 1997, when the Toyota RAV4-EV was released. There remain, 4 years after most EVs were crushed, more EVs than fuel cell cars, infinitely more owned EVs than fuel cell cars. There are no fuel cell cars sold to the public, but there are hundreds of Toyota RAV4-EV owned by the public and running fine.
<a class="jive-link-external" href="http://www.modec.co.uk/" target="_newWindow">http://www.modec.co.uk/</a>
Its a mean-spirited and cynical way of keeping us on oil for another 100 years. They've completely dropped any support for more practical battery-based vehicles.
For myself, I only follow highway-capable EVs with four wheels; I don't feel that trikes will sell well.
Infltable cars that they direct ship to the user. Napster for cars. Bypasses the old distribution chains. Made of layered airbags.
We'd like to introduce our new electric vehicle start-up company, elektrikcar.
Here is the website: <a class="jive-link-external" href="http://www.elektrikcar.com" target="_newWindow">http://www.elektrikcar.com</a>
Please check it out and send us any comments regarding our limited production version.
Thanks
The Team of Elektrikcar
Not with gasoline, but you gas up with air...
That's right...the car is made from the same materials that NASA used for the Mars bouncer, ummm...lander that is...
You know, the one that puffed up with "air" and bounced and bounced and bounced upon the Martian landscape so it was tough enough for that and surely it will be tough enough for mother earth.
Instead of weighing a whopping 2600 pounds, the inflatable Whisper only weighs approximately 480 pounds. In testing, this vehicle was rammed by a Hummer, the frame bounced back into shape and the occupants of the car, two watermelons, survived to be eaten another day.
The car can travel 400 miles at 65 MPH on a single charge. A less sporty version called the Nike will go on sale for $3,000.00 in S.E. Asia. Most likely, the commercial powers that be that support our current high energy consumption policies will see that this car never sees the light of day in the U.S., unless we the people let our leaders know that we the people are the powers that be...but with only 1/3rd of our citizens voting, that seems unlikely.
- by extirpator September 18, 2008 9:47 AM PDT
- I really hope that Commuter Cars gets their Tango T100 into commercial production soon. Their cars are the ones that interest me the most. The T600 videos I've seen are crazy.
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