Another teeny little electric car. Kind cute for around town trips. Five Thousand Euro Electric Car Catches VW's Attention : TreeHugger
Where do I send my deposit? the oscar project This is exactly the type of commuter vehicle needed to reverse oil dependency.
In and around congested cities, that's a very practical car. Oh wait, I'm sorry. I said "practical" even though I know darned good and well that most people disregard practicality and would rather drive their ten miles alone in a Nissan Armada.
Why would it have to be in and around congested cities to be a practical car? Why not "anywhere where you can get from point A to point B and back again"?
From the cited article: My Xebra goes 3 miles on one kWh. That's 18 miles on 6 kWh. 100 km is around 62 miles. The car in the article is probably more efficient than my Xebra, but I do not believe it's that much more efficient. Of course, there's so much hype in the world of EV promotion and news reporting that it's rare to find an accurate article about any EV. I could find no mention in the article of the speed or the range of the car, and for now it appears to be a one-of-a-kind prototype. The Xebra is still the much better choice simply because it exists and dealers are selling it today.
YES! Unlike three wheeled 'cars' (read motorcycles in which you only need a class C license), four wheeled cars are held to a higher safety standard. "It has passed German crash-testing." France 2006 One Liter Car OScar - Reinvent Mobility - Home
In the One-Liter Car website Sufferin' cited, they give a top speed of 130 km/hr and a range of 100 to 300 km (pretty wide range, is this with different battery packs, varies according to speed driven, or is it just not nailed down yet?) The website also repeats the 6KWh/100km, which they translate to the equivalent of 1 liter/100km (I'm too lazy to double-check that now), which is about 235 mpg. So if you're getting 18% of that value, you have the equivalent of 42 mpg? (Equivalent being the key word here, obviously you're not really burning any gas in the Xebra). The Oscar is apparently actually slightly less efficient than an Aptera, which is highly designed for efficiency.
When they try to equate the efficiency of an EV to mpg, they are conveying no real information. Worse, they are obfuscating the issue. This is because they never tell you whether they are: 1. Saying how far the car would go on the amount of energy in a gallon of gas, converted to electricity; or 2. Saying what the mpg of a gas car would be if it cost the same amount per mile for fuel. And if it's #2 above, then are they comparing to the average gas car, or to a gas car of the same weight as the EV in question, and what price are they assuming for gas? It is meaningless to say that an EV is equivalent to some number of mpg. But the figure of 100 km on 6 kWh is not credible. My Xebra gets 3 miles per kWh. At 6 cents per kWh I pay 2 cents per mile. A Prius gets 45 mpg overall, according to Consumer Reports, but does better at the low speeds that the Xebra drives. So let's say 50 mpg for the Prius. At $3.50 for gas that's 7 cents per mile. So my Xebra gets just over double the Prius, or 117 mpg equivalent. But when gas gets to $5/gal the Prius will cost 10 cents per mile to drive in the city, which is 5 times what I pay, so my Xebra will be getting 250 mpg equivalent. So you see how the whole mpg equivalence makes no sense at all. Or we could do it this way: A U.S. gallon of gasoline contains 125,000 BTUs, which is equal to 36.6 kWh. So my Xebra gets 110 mpg energy equivalent. But to get 110 mpg and pay 2 cents per mile I'd have to be paying $2.20 per gallon. But since gas is around $3.50 per gallon, it's like I was getting 175 mpg, and when gas hits $5 it will be like I was getting 250 mpg. You have to stop trying to think in terms of mpg when you're talking about an EV. Or if you do, you have to be very precise about what sort of comparison you're actually making. The figures that actually matter to most of us are: Lifetime cost per mile of car ownership; lifetime carbon emissions per mile of car ownership; lives lost, per mile of car ownership, in wars to procure oil and in the terrorism that the purchase of foreign oil finances; Lives lost due to respiratory illness caused by automobile emissions, per mile of car ownership; ... (I do not assert that the above list is complete.) Obviously, most Americans feel that these costs are worth paying for the convenience of personal transportation, generally viewed as a necessity, though 100 years ago personal transportation was a luxury. Soon, however, gasoline will be priced out of the reach of ordinary folks, and they'll have to switch to electric or give up cars altogether.
