Electric Speedster

I visited the NKCC show yesterday - 9/12/09
Concord, CA - some early rain kept the number of exhibitors down a bit, I believe - but there was a 'commercial'Speedster exhibited with
www.makemineelectric.com on it -
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I looked a the pricing and specs and IMO it looked like a lot of $ for not too many miles between recharges....with options for more $$ to get more miles. something like $50-70K for a Speedster with 30-80 miles btw recharge (I didn't make notes - so this is based on my leaky memory!)
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Speedster and Spyders both offered in Electric versions.
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I believe another SF Bay Area firm promises to offer Electric Speedster/Spyders - and also gas versions - www.greenrides.com -
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RickJ

Did you see the electric speedster from the guy on SOC in St-Louis? The one with the movie about it. Real well done. The only thing I would add are big speakers that go VVVvrrrrOOOooooMMM!!

This one was from Sebastapol, CA.
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Speedster $50K - $64K
from 35 mile range to 130 mile range
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Spyder $51K - $65K
35 mile range to 130 mile range.
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Speedster and Spyder offered three range options
in two power options....http://www.makemineelectric.com/vehicles.html
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RickJ

Green Rides is a dealer of mine. They specialize in NEVs and EVs Make Mine Electric bought a few rollers from Green Rides and did the EV conversions... don't know much more about them, except the car in the photo doesn't look like mine.

My pet rant: I'm still trying to figure out how these are green and actually reduce one's carbon footprint! Unless plutonium is under hood generating the electricity (or huge bank of solar panels on roof), they get plugged into the grid and coal fired power plants charge the vehicles batteries. Walking and a bicycle are green -- a Yota Prius and Segway are NOT. Guess its just political spin. Then there the non-green eventual disposal of the costly hazardous batteries. I can't wait til Medicare provides me with one of those "green" mobility Scooters advertised as free on TV!

The way that electric is good is that there are off peak hours when you are sleeping that the power companies actually lose power because no one needs it. So the power house is sill churning out power but no one is using. Otherwise yes, it's not the solution. Estimates are that there is enough OFF peak power being flushed down the drain to power 2/3 of all cars in the US if they were electric. That's lot's.

There was also a dark green JPS coupe at Knott's last spring. It was powered by batteries. That's all I know. It's hard to get interested in a sports car of any stripe that lacks the requisite exhaust note!

First, there is a LOT of electricity the power companies actually PAY to DUMP at night.

Second, using our dirtiest form of electricity, coal, produces about 2.1 lbs of CO2 per kWh. A speedster gets about 5 miles per kW so it takes about 5 kWh to be the equivalent of a gallon of gasoline. That's 10.5 lbs of CO2.

Gasoline produces 19.5 lbs of CO2 when burned in a car. And what the oil company propaganda FAILS to mention in this debate, is it produces about the same amount of CO2 to ship the oil here, refine it, and truck it to the gas station. That's 40 lbs total compared to 10.5.

So the assertion that using electricity is not "greener" than using gasoline is just absurd.

More to the point, coal is about 58% of U.S. electricity production. The overall mix, including natural gas, nuclear, hydro, wind and solar, is about 1.35 lbs per kWh. That's 6.85 lbs of CO2 for 25 miles of sPeedster driving. Put a minimal photovoltaic array on your roof with a second set of batteries, and you're not producing any.

There is some music in an exhaust note. But I found myself enthralled by the sounds of silence in an electric speedster. I take off in 3rd gear and accelerate smoothly and powerfully to about 80kmh, shift into 4th and zoom on up to 85. I don't even use the clutch. It's a kick in the pants.

I love speedsters of all forms. But I have really gone berserk on the electric. Drove it 101.85 miles the other day up US 61 to Perryville and back, winding blacktop that they've just resurfaced. Beautiful day. Unbelievable....

Jack Rickard
http://evtv.me