Darell! Seen this yet? :)

An interesting set of ideas and engineering, not to mention, uh, styling.

Heck, if someone would hold the door, I could drive this into my apartment ...

Pacific Northwest Electric Car

Left brain; "Cool, the guy has done his research!!" /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/thumbsup.gif Right brain; "Looks like it'll fall over if its hit with a crosswind." /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/icon15.gif

Dan

What amazes me is the car is half or quarter the size of my car, but weighs the same, and still has a 0-60 time < 4 seconds. Not quite the most efficient thing I could imagine...

Heheheheh ... I just noticed the guy standing to the right of the car in the top picture - I don't think that tub would fit ...

He'll obviously require the "Deluxe" model. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif Tomas, as to the title of your thread, I believe that Darell posted a link to the Tango web site a couple of EV threads ago. Sorry to rain on your parade. My bad. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/frown.gif

Dan

Hey, anything that can smoke a Corvette or a Boxster and is all electrical, gets a big thumbs up in my dictionary. And considering it is small enough to travel on a bike lane, it'll be one sweet commuter choice when/if it ever becomes available...

Yup, Dan, looks like Darell did post earlier about this car. My error assuming that it was a "new" item because of the newspaper story.

Oh, well, I still like the one from Vancouver, BC better, anyway. Nicer form factor and larger carry capacity.

It looks unstable but all those batteries provide a rediculously low center of balance.

I'm still personally holding out for a converted, T-Zero based Mini Cooper.

I'm begnning to think that what I want is a 3 wheeler EV so I can park in the motorcycle lots close to my building.

Hey... late to the party.

The Tango is an awesome piece of engineering. It'll corner better than a Corvette. Impressed yet? Ryan nailed the reason of course - low center of gravity - it is why my Electric Rav4 corners better than the gas one as well. Most of the weight in my car is UNDER the floor. The thing is a rocket ship.

Don't fret about efficiency, Highlandsun. The best that gas cars can do is 20% at the rear wheels. The tango comes in at above 90%. Any more questions? Just because you have the power at your fingertips doesn't mean you have to always use it. But even if you do - you still enjoy that same awesome efficiency. You just use the power faster. I don't think it is possible to make an electric motor less efficient than an ICE. Can't imagine how you'd do it. Unless maybe you used square gears or something.

And what ikendu wants is the Sparrow: http://www.geocities.com/sparrow_ev/

Oh, Tomas... I meant to mention that your initial comment has more meaning than you might realize. Forward-thinking architects are actually beginning to consider in-home electric vehicles. Imagine being able to drive directly into your kitchen in the car that you just purchased groceries with. You could unload the trunk directly into the cupboards without all the awkward trips out to the garage. When you finish laughing, think a bit harder about it. I think it would be great! What's not to like? Especailly for somebody who may be confined to a wheelchair, for example.

Just be sure to wipe your wheels before you drive on MY clean floor! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

[ QUOTE ]
Darell said:
... I don't think it is possible to make an electric motor less efficient than an ICE. Can't imagine how you'd do it. Unless maybe you used square gears or something.

[/ QUOTE ]
Darell, the first electric motor I build by hand on a block of wood using hand bent pieces of scrap steel and a bunch of enameled magnet wire when I was about 9 years old was probably less efficient, but it turned!

/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/hahaha.gif

OK, good point about the overall efficiency. But maybe it could still be even better...

Hmmm... 25 Optima yellow top batteries, nominal voltage 300VDC. That means they're running all 25 batteries in series, for 300VDC at 55Ah and 1073lbs of battery. (Just looking at Optima specs, I don't know exactly which model of yellow top they're using.)

An equivalent capacity in LiIon would only weigh 102lbs. With such a tremendous weight reduction, its 0-60 acceleration would be even faster, but it wouldn't have that same low center of gravity. Hmmm.....

[ QUOTE ]
highlandsun said:
OK, good point about the overall efficiency. But maybe it could still be even better...

[/ QUOTE ]
Well heck, everything can be better. But how come so few people complain about the horrendous efficiency of ICE vehicles? /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/icon3.gif These power/efficiency comments rarely fail to amuse me though. Have you noticed that probably half the folks complain that EVs are sluggish performers? And then when you point out that an EV can easly be a rocket ship like this, somebody cries "ouch! That's a waste of energy!" Can't make everybody happy, eh? /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif The beauty of an EV though is that there is NO appreciable penalty for driving a high-performance car in high efficiency mode. Try driving a Ferrari like grandma going to church and see what sort of numbers you get. With an EV you get exactly what you ask for in a linear fashion.

And yes, I think you've got this thing figured out pretty well. This particular vehicle will require some substantial balast to work right. And yes, without all that weight it would even be faster. The T-zero is going from a 4-second 0-60 time to a 3-second 0-60 time with the swap to Li-ion batteries. Since the whole car is about two feet tall, we don't worry too much about CG. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif As an efficiency point, this insanely high-performance vehicle is even MORE efficient than my EV1, which achieves the equivalent of almost 200mpg.

[ QUOTE ]
Tomas said:
Darell, the first electric motor I build by hand on a block of wood using hand bent pieces of scrap steel and a bunch of enameled magnet wire when I was about 9 years old was probably less efficient, but it turned!


[/ QUOTE ]
Too funny! I'd like to see that thing sometime. And in fact, I'll bet it is still WAY, WAY more efficient than the ICE that you could have built at age nine. Always good to put these things into perspective.

Hey, I built a motor like that, wound a coil around a pencil, suspended on two bent paperclips taped to an index card. Run off a 9V battery. Sometimes it needed a push to start rotating.

I was just wondering idly about the efficiency, not to make a huge point. The big point I reached was that reducing the weight by using LiIon would impair the car's stability. That's all.

The T-Zero looks like a better car (in the traditional sense), but those guys seem to be artificially setting their price point in the supercar range. If the two cars were built and priced comparably I'd rather own the T-Zero equivalent. The Tango seems to at least have hopes of becoming economically priced over time...

The idea of a car that can take half a lane is cool, but I'm having a hard time liking the upright proportions of the design. I'm sure part of the reason for the car's height is they need somewhere for all the batteries. If they used high power-density batteries (like LiIon) maybe they could reduce the volume needed there, and so reduce the body height. That'd be cool.

No harm, no foul.

The "artificial price" of the Tzero is surprisingly NOT inflated. The three cars they've sold, have been at cost: About $120k. There are LOTS Of fixed costs that need to be spread over thousands of cars before any vehicle like this can be economically viable. There are only a handful of "off the shelf" parts in the Tzero.

Yeah, the Tango is dorky looking. But you have to admit that it is unique in a time when most other "normal" cars all start to look the same.

Now, if we had a real battery industry, mfg's could design their cars around current, available battery technology. Sadly, that is not the case, and cars are designed around 8-year-old technology out of necessity. For car makers to hope for any kind of battery R&D that would offer high capacity, low cost batteries would be foolish at this point.

As far as I'm concerned, both of these vehicles (Tango and Tzero) could see similar price/margins. It is all about scale. The Tango is hoping for mass production while the Tzero has always been considered a technology car. Did I mention that the Li-ion Tzero is just weeks away from completion? They're buiding it on contract for a buyer. Can't wait to see the real specs. They are fully expecting 0-6 in 3.something seconds. And it will have the capability for quick-charge in just 10 minutes (like they all do).

Engineering: Part science, part the art of compromise.

Dan

(And by the way, the horrendous efficiency of ICE does bug me, which is why I spend a lot of time researching turbochargers... It still doesn't get you to 90% but it's an improvement.)

Will be interesting to see the LiIon Tzero results. And as a technology car goes, I don't see them talking about HID headlights or LED signal lights. Shame on them. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif Mebbe I need to drive down the freeway and give them a piece of my mind.