Now we need a small electric car that costs less then $20,000 goes 60 MPH or faster, with a range of 100 miles or farther. Lets put Fechter, Deafscooter, and Ypedal for motivation, together in a shop for about a year. Let them build the Electric Car I dream of.
We do need that, and it can be built, and I would like to build one. This is the concept that I'm contemplating:
How about an ultra lightweight, AWD, single seat BEV, made of light weight composites, like Kevlar, Spectra, or Carbon fiber. A 15-1/2 ft Kevlar canoe weighs 40 lbs, and has a MSRP of $2100 in low volume, and takes some serious punishment.
Use 4 wheel motors on 20†wheels, 4†wide tires. Even powerful bicycle Hub motors like the Crystalyte brushless DC 5304’s or 5305’s would work well in this application.
Use separate regen (ideally) controllers for each wheel and a 2 kwh utilized LiFePO4 battery pack. Width would be about 30â€Â, with the small battery pack between the seat & belly plate. Room for a half-dozen grocery bags behind the back seat.
Because there is no axles, it would be great to use a small air compressor driving air shocks would allow the driver to adjust wheel height to accommodate different terrain. Set low for paved roads. In an accident, you could even blow the air out, dropping the belly plate to the road, resulting in a safe skid to a stop, rollovers being unlikely, due to the extremely low center of gravity of the vehicle. With composite construction, extreme lightweight and no engine the vehicle could be designed to absorb the much reduced energy of a collision by deforming the vehicle structure. Certainly much safer to ride in than a bicycle, e-bike or motorcycle, even at 60 mph. For heat, an onboard fuel powered heater (methanol is best), would keep the interior toasty warm @ even 30 below, using about 1 quart of fuel in 6 hrs. It is typically six times more efficient to use a fuel fired heater than to idle an engine to produce heat.
The specs I get are:
Acceleration, 0-40 mph: 2.5 sec
Weight: 320 lbs
Top Speed: 60 mph
Energy Economy: 25 miles/kwh city driving profile
Range: 50 miles
Charger: 1.5 kw @ 120 vac (standard 120vac plugin)
Charge Time: 37 miles range for 1 hr plugin
Turning radius: zero
The ultralight, AWD, small footprint BEV would be fun to drive, much more so than the Aptera concept. Zero turning radius, park in the tightest spot, faster acceleration than anything on the road, drive over the grass leaving no damage to it, over the curb, on the sidewalk, up the stairs and if so inclined, through the doorway, up the elevator and into the office. Drive over a frozen lake, where any 4x4 would get stuck because of their low torque and huge weight. Drive on hiking trails, no smoke, no smell, no noise. Drive in buildings and through the bush. Drive along the road shoulder, like a bicycle does, and pass everybody.
It would be simple to put 120 vac plugins at all parking spots like restaurants, office buildings, apartment buildings, shopping malls etc, as is already done in Northern Countries to supply heat for ICE engines in the cold.
Where I am, this buggy would be road legal, thus the motivation to build it. I bet automakers could make something like this in high volume for < $5,000, and it would last a lifetime with fairly simple maintenance.
With the ultralight, small footprint BEV concept, you could have three times the traffic density of present day. Eliminate most bottlenecks and traffic jams. Would make roads entirely compatible with energy squandering, environmentally friendly bicycles, e-bikes, and motorcycles. Road construction would be easier and cheaper with lightweight vehicles, elevated roadways built above existing roads, in high density traffic areas, would be quite feasible. Highway vehicles used to carry passengers or cargo could be moved to designated truck routes, where travel time would be still less than current overcrowded city roads.
Note that traffic congestion cost the consumer in the U.S, $64 billion, and traffic accidents $164 billion in 2005. Have a collision between those steel Tanks and there will be mayhem & destruction, which caused 40,443 deaths and 2.7 million injuries in the U.S. in 2005. And the mess created in these accidents can block already crowded roads for an hour or more. With the ultralight BEV, if broke down or damaged, grab it with one hand and drag it off the road.
The typical city commute vehicle, carries usually one person, weighs more than 3000 lbs, top speed of over a 100 mph. This makes sense? The average City driving speed is 20 mph. Traffic Jams, overcrowded roads are the norm nowadays, and its getting worse as governments can’t afford the high cost of road construction, they can’t even afford basic road infrastructure maintenance. What is the point of a vehicle going 100 mph? All it accomplishes is bottlenecks, disrupting the most efficient constant speed traffic flow. The simple truth is that for most city travel, an e-bike with a top speed of 35 mph, will beat any car on the road in travel time, because of its low footprint and maneuverability
The cost savings to governments would be immense: greatly reduced road construction & maintenance costs, reduced or eliminated public transit, reduced accidents & injuries, greatly reduced smog induced illness & death, greatly reduced oil imports & consequent oil wars, cheaper agriculture & air travel due to much less petroleum demand, major reductions in emissions and greenhouse gases. As a matter of fact, the cost savings would be so great as to make it profitable for the government to give these vehicles to the public.
