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Tzero Electric Car: 0-60 in 3.7 Seconds 467

Posted by michael from the burning-rubber dept.
If you have a spare 6,800 lithium-ion laptop batteries lying around, you can build your own electric sports car.
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Tzero Electric Car: 0-60 in 3.7 Seconds More

Tzero Electric Car: 0-60 in 3.7 Seconds

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  • What they don't tell you is... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Nuclear Elephant ( 700938 ) on Friday September 19, 2003 @07:44PM (#7009420) Homepage
    They could only measure 0-60 because at 4 seconds, the li-ion batteries are all dead.

    • RTFA (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      At the end of a hard drive, including five scorching zero-to-60 runs, the car had traveled 57 miles and used only 9,900 of the 50,000 watt-hours in its batteries, costing less than the price of two gallons of gasoline.

      • Re:RTFA (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Nuclear Elephant ( 700938 )
        So that gives you just over 300 miles a "tank" before you have to stop and recharge...which AFAIK takes significantly longer than pumping gas...unless you were able to do what the first post suggested and harness the power of lightning (or plutonium) to get your 1.21 gigawatts.

        • Re:RTFA (Score:3, Insightful)

          by jgordon7 ( 49263 )
          Right but do you have a Gas pump in your garage, so that you have a full tank every morning?

          Now for long trips yes stopping to refuel is more of a hassle, but for daily commutes and going shopping it works very well.

        • Re:RTFA (Score:2, Funny)

          by Anonymous Coward
          It has a towable gasoline generator. The thing could go forever. Don't even have to check the oil. Except on the generator, of course.

        • Re:RTFA (Score:3, Interesting)

          by blibbleblobble ( 526872 )
          "So that gives you just over 300 miles a "tank" before you have to stop and recharge."

          At 27 miles per gallon equivalent

          We have petrol cars which are more efficient than this, but I don't believe that anything capable of accelerating that fast does 27mpg.

    • Answered: So that's why the price of laptop batteries spiked!

      Created: Is it pronounced "tee zero" or "t'serro"?

    • So like swap power packs - dude! (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      So like with my RC cars when the juice runs out I swap to my alternate pack which is just finished being topped up...

      Am I real stupid or something, how come they don't do the same thing with electric cars? What would it take to setup a consortium of power pack companies with enough stations to make it happen? Heck you could even just rent the packs hence lowering the initial price of the cars. Since the power packs are not "part of the car" then they can also innovate faster. I suppose one could even have
    • So if you don't run the car for at least the full 4 seconds every time, does it eventually only get up to about 30 mph because of that "battery memory" problem?

  • good news for environment (Score:4, Informative)

    by civilengineer ( 669209 ) on Friday September 19, 2003 @07:45PM (#7009425) Homepage Journal
    One of the main reasons electric car sales are not picking up is that they are percieved to be slow pickup vehicles. Looks like this wont be an issue any longer.

    The car, priced at $220,000, is available only directly from AC Propulsion and has not yet met federal safety regulations.

    and that's one more problem

    • Re:good news for environment (Score:5, Informative)

      by MourningStar ( 709160 ) on Friday September 19, 2003 @07:50PM (#7009461)
      You can also get the Tango from http://www.commutercars.com It's only 80K and it runs off DC motors with a range of 100+ miles and 0-60 in under 4 seconds. For those that don't have NYT, the home page for the Tzero is http://www.acpropulsion.com/tzero_pages/tzero_home .htm
      • okay, for starters, How hard is it to make a hyperlink [commutercars.com] to the site you're talking about?

        you want to know why this thing will never sell? it looks stupid, and, imagine getting broadsided by H2 in this. no, don't imagine- here [williamwuertz.com]
        • you want to know why this thing will never sell? it looks stupid, and, imagine getting broadsided by H2 in this. no, don't imagine-


          Personally, I think it looks pretty cool, but that's a matter of opinion. As for getting broadsided, so what? Getting broadsided by an H2 while on a motorcycle would be even worse, and yet plenty of people buy and drive motorcycles.

        • you want to know why this thing will never sell? it looks stupid, and, imagine getting broadsided by H2 in this. no, don't imagine- here

          Just about anything other than another HUGE SUV is not going to do to well after being broadsided by a speeding H2. In any case it is probably safer in a crash than either a motorcycle or bicycle.

          I tell ya' we need $10/gallon gas just so we can get these SUV monstrosities off the road.
    • This must be a joke.

      The batteries will cause many times the waste and energy when manufactured than they will be able to "safe" in their whole lifetime.

      The hard, cold and terrible truth is that the only real way to reduce emmissions is to use fewer and smaller cars.

      • Let's see...

        No need to change oil.
        No gasoline fumes leaking into the air when refueling
        The batteries can be recycled
        No toxic coolent to flush

        Actually, I would still give the edge to the elctric car

      • Re:good news for environment (Score:4, Interesting)

        by afidel ( 530433 ) on Friday September 19, 2003 @10:36PM (#7010142)
        Or, just give people what they want but make it more friendly for the environment. For instance the Union of Concerned Scientists crafted the UCS Guardian [suvsolutions.org] which is a Ford Explorer made green. It gets up to 35mpg, is safer than normal SUV's, and the increased cost is minimal (about $2,300 more than the normal Explorer which will be made back two times over the life of the vehicle in gasoline savings).

    • Re:good news for environment (Score:5, Insightful)

      by earthforce_1 ( 454968 ) <earthforce_1 AT yahoo DOT com> on Friday September 19, 2003 @08:37PM (#7009656) Journal

      Actually, the main reasons electric cars are not more popular are:

      1) Lengthy refuelling time
      2) Limited cruising range
      3) Cost is not competitive - either the vehicle is prohibitively expensive (as in this case) or the batteries need to be replaced after a relatively small number of charge cycles, and the cost of electricity to charge the vehicle is not competitive with gasoline or diesel.

      Solve all of these problems at the same time, and you will be wealthier than Billy G. (And less resented for your wealth) I won't hold my breath though, barring some revolution in battery technology, I put my best hopes for an alternative energy vehicle in fuel cells.

      It has long been possible to get good acceleration out of an electric car, I remember a 1970's popular science article describing an electric vehicle with regular lead acid batteries that used an energy storage flywheel that recovered braking energy and fed it back into the transmission when you hit the accelerator for quick takeoffs. While you were idling at a stoplight, the battery would gradually be topping up the flywheel velocity, ready for a jackrabbit getaway on the green light.

      • Re:good news for environment (Score:5, Insightful)

        by sunspot42 ( 455706 ) on Saturday September 20, 2003 @12:18AM (#7010426)
        >1) Lengthy refuelling time

        There's a fairly simple solution to that problem, and it's the same one we use for portable electronics - when the batteries are dead, swap them out for a new set. It would require standardized battery designs and altering the general layout of cars slightly. Essentially a hatch to the battery compartment would be placed somewhere on the car - probably at the rear of the trunk in most sedan-style vehicles - that would pop open to reveal several perhaps circular bays, each containing cylindrical battery (think giant AA battery). You'd slide in some kind of counterweighted gadget - like a giant socket wrench - twist it to unlock the battery from its bay and lock it into the changer, then pull it out and swap it for a fresh battery. The bigger the car, the more cells it would take. There might even be a couple different sizes of cells (but not too many). You wouldn't "own" the batteries, and they wouldn't be a permanent part of your car. The batteries would belong to whoever runs the service stations - you'd just be buying the energy, and perhaps paying a large deposit on the batteries which would be refunded (or transferred) when you swapped 'em for a new set.

        Storage of all those batteries would take up a lot of space, but it could be placed beneath the "battery stations" in the same way gas tanks are placed beneath gas stations, with dumbwaiter-like devices used to ferry batteries back and forth. And the fixed stations could afford to employ far more efficient, faster, heavier (and hence more costly) chargers than you could ever shoehorn into a car.

        Battery technology isn't there yet, but thanks to advances in the computer and portable electronics industries, it's not outrageous to imagine a time when batteries will become efficient enough to make such a system possible.
        • You're forgetting something: there are so many batteries, and they are so heavy, that they make up a significant portion of the weight of the entire car. Ever lifted a regular car battery? They are *really* heavy, and they're not even enough to power a car a half a mile. Us push-button Americans aren't going to be getting out of our cars to lug packs and packs of heavy batteries around. You would definitely need full-service stations for this. So it would cost more, plus it would probably take longer.
      • Thats not why electric cars can have such quick starts. Its one of the benifets of the electric motor. An electric motor has 100% of its available torque from a dead stop. But the same amount of torque at any speed. Thats why their top speeds generally arent tooo high, unless you do fancy transmission stuff (doesnt really need to be fancy just needs to be there haha.) But its that torque thing that allows such amazing 0-60 times from low horsepower.

      • 1) Lengthy refuelling time
        2) Limited cruising range
        3) Cost is not competitive

        4) Isolated repair resources
        5) Environment still damaged

        It's going to be a couple years before Midas can do a $99 break job on a machine with regenerative breaking. Physics dictates that the materials will wear and stuff will fail. Bubba the wrecker driver is NOT going to know what to do with a bugged electric drivetrain or a composite chassis. If you wish to go here, you had better be resourceful enough to cope with this.
    • I actually met the CEO of AC Propulsion for a class I took in college, called Cars and Culture. The point isn't that they are trying to sell the car to individuals - AC Propulsion makes the technology that big companies such as Volkswagen use to power their new electric vehicles.

      Personally, I believe building an electric speed-demon is a great idea because electrics are cost-prohibitive but do perform so well. The idea is, sell an expensive car to a rich person and maybe they'll buy it since it's unique,
    • One of the main reasons electric car sales are not picking up is that they are percieved to be slow pickup vehicles. Looks like this wont be an issue any longer.

      Right, now they know that a single-seat electric car made entirely of exotic ultra-lightweight materials can have good pickup. Still some work to do before the same can be said of an electric "normal" car.

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday September 19, 2003 @07:46PM (#7009433)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • 100% of torque at 0 rpm. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 19, 2003 @07:48PM (#7009447)
    Good engine good.

  • Here's another article with picture . very nice. (Score:5, Informative)

    by zymano ( 581466 ) on Friday September 19, 2003 @07:49PM (#7009449)
    Electric Tzero [evworld.com]

    January 29, 2000 -- AC Propulsion' s tzero out-accelerated a Ferrari F355, a new Corvette, and a Porsche Carrera 4 in a series of impromptu 1/8 mile drag races held last weekend at Moffett Field in Mountain View, California, and at Calstart' s northern facility at the former Alameda Naval Air Station. The tzero was driven to the Bay Area from southern California last week. That journey spanned more than the geographic distance between those two areas, it spanned two cultures as well. Hot rodding, coming from the garages of Los Angeles, and high tech, growing from a garage in Palo Alto, are combined in the tzero.

    The tzero is a silicon hot rod. It starts with the hot rodder's holy grail, horsepower - 200 of them. But the tzero harnesses the power with 120 IGBTs, equal to 7200 square millimeters of silicon-based control. The result is acceleration to 60 mph in 4.1 seconds, efficiency equivalent to 70 mpg, and emissions equal to zero. The tzero is an electric car.

    The trip to Silicon Valley was planned to demonstrate the tzero to entrepreneurs and investors interested in the concept of a high-performance, environmentally-sensible, silicon-intensive automobile. As word of the tzero visit spread, the planned demonstrations took on an edge when a Ferrari-owner challenged the tzero to a race.

    The race became reality when both Moffett Field and Calstart made their facilities available for the politically correct contest of speed. Saturday, January 22 dawned bright and sunny and an eager group of exotic car owners, high-tech gurus, venture capital investors and electric car enthusiasts gathered along the 4000-foot north taxiway at Moffett Field. Cones were set to mark the start and finish lines, and the tzero, with AC Propulsion vice-president Alec Brooks at the wheel, pulled up to the start line and sat silently. The Ferrari made glorious sounds as Rick Schick, a race car driver assigned to drive the Ferrari for the event paced the high-strung Italian thoroughbred up and down the track, warming its complex internals with nervous blips of the throttle and heating the tires with sudden burnouts. Finally the race was on. Immediately the crowd saw what it had not expected to see. The tzero leapt ahead at the start. The Ferrari' s 32-valve, 4-cam V8 engine screamed its delicious song in vain effort against the mute power of the tzero' s 120-IGBT-fed 3-phase induction motor. The spectators gasped at the sight of the tzero driving away from the automotive icon from Modena. At the end it was tzero by eight car lengths.

    A Corvette C5, the newest example of American V8 muscle from Chevrolet stepped up to defend the honor of combustion power. Considered opinion had the Corvette, with its large displacement, high torque V8, putting up a good fight in the short 1/8 mile sprint. But against the tzero, the result was the same, proving in equally convincing fashion that American brawn fares no better than European sophistication against the tzero' s combination of light weight, high-current lead-acid batteries, and electric propulsion.

    More races were run.

    Different drivers wheeled the tzero. The result stayed the same. A Miata driver, unfamiliar with high power levels, got into the tzero and immediately blew away the Ferrari. She wants a tzero now. The Ferrari owner took a turn and was astounded by the continuous surge of smooth power. A newspaper reporter who arrived in an Escort allowed himself to be talked into driving the tzero and he beat the Ferrari. An investor from Sweden, after one victorious run in the tzero decided make a second run when challenged by his friend and investing partner who was proudly driving a brand new Porsche Carrera Cabriolet. By now everyone was surprised when the tzero lagged behind. Was the tzero battery dead? Was it collusion between two friends? Neither actually. The tzero inadvertently ran the whole race with its hand brake on, and the Porsche won by seven car lengths.

  • Laptop batteries aren't that reliable.... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by puppetman ( 131489 ) on Friday September 19, 2003 @07:50PM (#7009463) Homepage
    We have 12 laptops in the office, and in 3 years, all the batteries but one have died (they're Dells, and the Dell warranty doesn't cover the battery); and they aren't cheap to replace.

    To replace all 6800 batteries every 2-4 years would be an expensive proposition (unless they can come up with a more reliable battery).
    • We have 12 laptops in the office, and in 3 years, all the batteries but one have died...

      You are aware that rechargable batteries have a limited lifetime, right? I concur that it is annoying but you should only expect your laptop batteries to last a year or two. After that they lose their ability to recharge and need to be replaced. It's an expense to plan for. It's no different than the batteries for your car which need to be replaced regularly. (every 3-4 years for those) They wear out and need to
    • It says it costs about $3000 to replace the batteries, and it should be done every 20,000 miles.

      http://www.acpropulsion.com/tzero_pages/tzero_FA Qs .htm

      not bad for a $220,000 sports car that gets 70mpg equivalent.

      • Re:Don't be silly (Score:5, Informative)

        by kcbrown ( 7426 ) <slashdot@sysexperts.com> on Friday September 19, 2003 @10:01PM (#7010009)
        It says it costs about $3000 to replace the batteries, and it should be done every 20,000 miles.

        Of course, that $3000 buys 1500 gallons of gasoline at $2/gallon, and if you're averaging 20 mpg you can go 30,000 miles.

        So the gas car still wins, and we haven't even factored in the cost of the electricity to recharge the Tzero.

        The Tzero might do significantly better in Europe, but that depends a great deal on how much electricity costs there.

      • Er... $3K per 20K miles works out to $0.15/mile. Assuming gas prices of $2.00/gal, this works out to 13.3mpg, just looking at the cost. Of course, emissions are zero, which is a plus. But 13mpg is not that great a deal, especially since it doesn't include the cost of the electricity required to charge the batteries.

  • Would that be roughly about 1.2 Jigawatts?

  • 1/8 mile? (Score:2, Informative)

    by omeomi ( 675045 )
    Anybody else notice that the races were 1/8 mile, instead of the normal 1/4 mile? Fast to accelerate, but low top speeds? And aren't most Ferrarri's V10s, not V8s?

    • Re:1/8 mile? (Score:2, Informative)

      by gmhowell ( 26755 )
      The car is a fucking joke. Thanks for pointing out that we are talking about 1/8 drags, which are going to strongly favor the car that can't top 100 mph, and that makes peak torque at 0 rpm. Guess what care those two points describe?

  • New Limited Edition Scotty Model (Score:5, Funny)

    by tds67 ( 670584 ) on Friday September 19, 2003 @08:08PM (#7009552)
    However, with the single-gear Tzero's engine limited to just over 100 m.p.h. at 13,300 r.p.m.'s, it will never win an oval-track race against those supercars.

    Unless of course you purchase the Scotty model, which comes with a guy in a red shirt (who surprisingly doesn't die) who rides shotgun, takes requests/orders from the driver to improve performance, whines about how the (di)lithium crystal batteries won't take the stress, then after a few tense seconds gets the car going 30 m.p.h. faster than it's rated to go.

  • so? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by gmhowell ( 26755 ) <gmhowell@gmail.com> on Friday September 19, 2003 @08:10PM (#7009560) Homepage Journal
    Okay, so it can hang with Lambo's and Ferrari's. Can it handle something really quick [hayabusa.org]? And before you nabobs twitter about safety, I notice that the Tzero doesn't meat crash specs either. And if you crash the bike, it won't leave you drenched in acid (yeah, yeah, Lithium Ion gel, whatever). Did I mention that you can buy about 20 of them for the price of the Tzero? The bike will also go 80 mph faster than the electric car. And you can fill it in less than 9 hours (3 at a 220 station:)

    Nifty toy.

  • I've always found that line voltage works better (Score:5, Funny)

    by kfg ( 145172 ) on Friday September 19, 2003 @08:12PM (#7009565)
    It's cheap, reliable, readily available, doesn't require batteries, thus saving money, weight and complexity.

    I haven't been able to thoroughly test my prototype though. It keeps losing power suddenly every time I get 100 feet from my house.

    If I can just work out that one little bug. . .

    KFG
  • ...how succint the article was.

  • accident? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by mOoZik ( 698544 )
    what happens when you get in an accident with a car that has batteries pretty much surrounding the driver/passenger. do you end up swimming in lead and acid?
  • I want to see it race the E55 AMG, and if it beats that, then I'd be amazed. I'd still get the E55 though. Sure the tzero get's excellent mpg and emissions are zilch, but the E55 isn't exactly lacking in the rest of the package either.
    • uh, all the other cars that it already beat are faster than the E55 AMG.

      Mercedes doesn't make performance vehicles. AMG modified mercedes make them acceptable.

      For every car that mercedes makes - even the AMG specials, BMW makes one that is faster, cheaper, and handles better.

  • Someone has to do it... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ThisIsFred ( 705426 ) on Friday September 19, 2003 @08:43PM (#7009684) Journal
    ...So I might as well bring up the negative points.

    * It may do 0-60 in 4 seconds, but so can lots of vehicles if you do hairy modifications to the engine and drivetrain. The car is tiny and light, obviously, since it needs only 200 horsepower to produce those figures.

    * Note the careful wording: "...Efficiency *to* 70 mpg." That tells me they are taking an average and counting when the motors are off while cruising.

    * Good luck getting a charge when you run out of juice in the middle of nowhere. At least the AAA can bring you a 5 gallon container of petrol with a conventional vehicle.

    * A 100 mile cruising range is less than one half of the range of a typical passenger car with an ICE, and that's taking into account that the motors can be shut off some of the time. What is the actual cruise range on the hilly terrain in my part of the country? 50 miles?

    * The vehicle shown has less interior room than the Corvette (arguably one of the most uncomfortable cars to ride in) and is miniscule. Put the Corvette's engine in that chassis, sans the batteries, and you'll probably get sub-3 second 0-60 time, if the wheels can get a decent grip.

    * Totally electric cars are less efficient in the winter, when power is drawn for heating.

    * The emissions aren't "near zero," it's just that the extra pollution would be emitted from power generation facilities. Those power generators may be more efficient, but an increase in output (to supply these vehicles) is going to introduce tons (literally) more pollutants into small areas of the planet.

    * The battery system is totally impractical, and a chemical nightmare after a collision.

    Can we move the focus off of electric vehicles, and concentrate on better power generation and storage technology?
    • * It may do 0-60 in 4 seconds, but so can lots of vehicles if you do hairy modifications to the engine and drivetrain. The car is tiny and light, obviously, since it needs only 200 horsepower to produce those figures.

      Which makes the fact that they compared it to supercars designed to go 200mph extremely stupid.

      Why didn't they run it against something like the Caterham Superlight [caterham.co.uk]? Because it would get it's ass kicked in the same 0-60 test, for around one quarter the price. Oh, and you can carry twice as

    • ...So I might as well bring up the negative points.

      Perhaps you can start by doing a little RTFA??

      * It may do 0-60 in 4 seconds, but so can lots of vehicles if you do hairy modifications to the engine and drivetrain. The car is tiny and light, obviously, since it needs only 200 horsepower to produce those figures.

      The point, I believe, is that this is an *electric* car. how many cars can churn out those numbers with zero emissions and a MPG rating anywehre near this thing?

      * Note the careful wordin

    • Re:Someone has to do it... (Score:4, Informative)

      by evilviper ( 135110 ) on Friday September 19, 2003 @09:55PM (#7009981) Journal
      Good luck getting a charge when you run out of juice in the middle of nowhere. At least the AAA can bring you a 5 gallon container of petrol with a conventional vehicle.

      Terrible point... One of Electricity's advantages is how very flexible it is these days. If you thing you are going to run out of power, then you just need to bring along some sort of generator. A small gas-powered generator would do the job if you think gas is going to be available.

      With cars that run on gasoline, you NEED to have a gas station nearby. With electric, you could just as well pull out a solar panel, and get a charge in the middle of nowhere.

      Not to mention that you could just plug-in to any homes that might be around. There might not be a gas station for 200 miles, but just about anywhere you are, you can see power-lines along the roadside.

      A 100 mile cruising range is less than one half of the range of a typical passenger car

      Yes, 100 miles isn't as much as normal cars, but that's only important if you need it. Most people drive much less than 100 miles each day. The only thing higher capacity gets you, is the ability to get gas half as often.

      The emissions aren't "near zero," it's just that the extra pollution would be emitted from power generation facilities.

      But power generation can be near-zero pollution, just because much of it isn't, is not a reason to say that electric cars cause a lot of pollution. Even with the most ineffecient power generation, electric cars are far, far more effecient than gasoline-powered cars.

      Can we move the focus off of electric vehicles, and concentrate on better power generation and storage technology?

      Electric cars are the ideal vehicles, it's just that no car companies are spending much money on R&D. Technologies like flywheels promise to hold an incredible deal of electrical energy, while being very light, just as fuel-cells do. Electric cars really are the only logical next step, although more effeciency with gas-powered cars in a good step in the interim.

    • You should have read more closely (Score:4, Informative)

      by Tau Zero ( 75868 ) on Friday September 19, 2003 @10:24PM (#7010093) Journal
      Unfortunately for your critique, it's addressed to the old version of the tzero (the one with lead-acid batteries, not lithium batteries). You made a number of other mis-statements which you could have corrected with a visit to the manufacturer's web site [acpropulsion.com]. (Disclaimer: I am in no way associated with AC Propulsion, and I think their vehicular product is a toy for people with too much money. If they can get some of that money, more power to them [150 kilowatts at a time].)

      * It may do 0-60 in 4 seconds, but so can lots of vehicles if you do hairy modifications to the engine and drivetrain. The car is tiny and light, obviously, since it needs only 200 horsepower to produce those figures.

      2450 pounds is not light in my book, though the lithium-ion version is reported to weigh a bit under 2000 pounds. [acpropulsion.com] The sparkling performance is due in no small part to maximum torque being available from zero speed, a characteristic of many types of electric motors.

      * Note the careful wording: "...Efficiency *to* 70 mpg." That tells me they are taking an average and counting when the motors are off while cruising.

      You count the time your engine isn't working on a downslope when calculating your gas mileage, and your car gets its best mileage when putting along on the cruise control too. Not that the tzero's motor shuts off; the tzero doesn't have gears or even a clutch, so the motor is spinning whenever the car is moving.

      * Good luck getting a charge when you run out of juice in the middle of nowhere. At least the AAA can bring you a 5 gallon container of petrol with a conventional vehicle.

      If these vehicles were common you'd have charging stations everywhere, and you could always accept a partial charge from another vehicle. You know, like siphoning gas only without the risk of fire? (AC Propulsion used to list this as one of the features of their technology, but they've either removed it from their web site or made it very hard to find. It is implicit in the ability to generate AC to back-feed the grid; see the link named "Vehicle-to-Grid Demonstration Project: Grid Regulation Ancillary Service with a Battery Electric Vehicle".)

      * A 100 mile cruising range is less than one half of the range of a typical passenger car with an ICE

      That's for lead-acid batteries. The lithium-ion version has a range of about 300 miles.

      * Totally electric cars are less efficient in the winter, when power is drawn for heating.

      That's what hybrids are for. If you are using the hybrid battery in "depletion mode", you just switch over to engine power after you use the battery's non-surge capacity. If you run short distances between charges, that might be never.

      * The emissions aren't "near zero," it's just that the extra pollution would be emitted from power generation facilities. Those power generators may be more efficient, but an increase in output (to supply these vehicles) is going to introduce tons (literally) more pollutants into small areas of the planet.

      Figures? The typical ICE vehicle runs around 20% efficiency or less on average. If the tzero is powered by combined-cycle powerplants burning natural gas at 50% efficiency and has 40% losses in transmission, batteries and conversion, that's still 30% net efficiency. Plus, the waste heat of the combined-cycle plant can be harnessed to do useful things; you can't do that with the heat coming out of the radiator, exhaust or brakes of the ICE car. And with electric cars and microturbines [capstoneturbine.com] as co-generating heating plants, the net efficiency of the system can go over 80%.

      You can also hook the tzero up to a wind plant or solar panels. 500 watts of solar panels would give you about 12 miles a day. The I

  • Range more impressive (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Teahouse ( 267087 ) on Friday September 19, 2003 @08:43PM (#7009686)
    The fact that they can get 300 miles out of a charge is more impressive than the fact that it accelerates like a ferrari. The real impressive new piece of tech on the car is their regenerative braking, which turns off to avoid skidding. This is a well thought out EV. My only wish is that they made one more in my price range.

  • Great! (Score:2)

    by El ( 94934 )
    If they could just give this car six times the range at one eleventh the cost... then it would be competive with my new Honda Civic Hybrid for commuting to work. Maybe if I was into drag racing it would make more sense to pay more for a car than I payed for my house... but personally, I'd rather have a house.

    • HOW long is your commute? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Ungrounded Lightning ( 62228 ) on Friday September 19, 2003 @09:12PM (#7009794) Journal
      If they could just give this car six times the range at one eleventh the cost... then it would be competive with my new Honda Civic Hybrid for commuting to work.

      The car goes 300 miles on a charge. You have an 1,800 mile round-trip commute???

  • Hybird trailer range extender (Score:5, Interesting)

    by chhamilton ( 264664 ) on Friday September 19, 2003 @09:11PM (#7009789)
    Not only is the tZero a sporty little electric car with amazing acceleration, it can also achieve reasonable mileage and range using their hybrid range extended trailer. There are links in the AC Propulsion [www.acpropulsion] white papers section regarding the range extending trailer [acpropulsion.com]. Also, a link to a PDF [acpropulsion.com]

    With this thing attached the car it gets a combined 40 MPG (highway driving at 100kph/60mph) and a range of around 380 miles. Not bad for a sports car. Another cool feature of the trailer is that it has a linked steering system; it's not a freewheeling trailer, rather the trailer wheels move with the car steering. This makes things like backing up (parallel parking and the like) much easier for those without experience towing a trailer.

    Neat little car.
  • Isn't half of the attraction of these sports cars, the big throaty sounds that they pour forth from their engines. Expressing the neanderthal grunts and maons that we would like to while showing off style and sophistication (okay, money, lots of money).

    I don't think the spread of electric/hybrid cars has been due to the lack of sportiness, but a general lack of push from the media, from the companies (who are making all their money of SUVs), or from the government, I mean, after all which would you rather

  • Great news (Score:4, Interesting)

    by hcetSJ ( 672210 ) on Friday September 19, 2003 @09:41PM (#7009915)
    Despite the clear unfeasibility of this car in particular, I think it's good to see AC Propulsion making some waves and getting its name out. I was on my university's FutureTruck team [cornell.edu] (we called it the Hybrid Electric Vehicle team--the page is way out of date), and the team used an AC Propulsion motor the year before I was there (if I remember correctly...could be wrong here).

    The FutureTruck competition [futuretruck.org] is highly sponsored (read: "Ford"), and produces good research, but also good, experienced electrical and mechanical engineers (I'm neither, which lead to my quitting the team--oh well) who have faced the design challenges of a real vehicle. Anyway, we can sit here and pick apart why the Tzero isn't worthwhile, but the fact is that it's a concept car, pretty much, and it shows that it is possible to get great performance out of batteries.

    • have always amazed me with their blind shortsighted cynicism. Everything started off as a mostly useless concept at some point. The first car henry ford built wasn't exactly 'worthwhile' either, puttered around at 10 mph and spooked horses with its incredible racket. And it had no brakes and was mostly unsteerable.

      A few years later, a million model T's had rolled off the assembly line.

      Keep working hard, and let the dumb nerds complain themselves into lonely unrecognized obscurity.

  • If organized racing of electric, or even hybrid, cars were to take place there would be two great benifits:
    1. Education of the public. People would get to see this cars in action. They would be less alien. People might consider buying that Prius or Insight afterall.
    2. Racing can offer huge technology advancements. Fuel injection, ABS breaks, and traction control are all examples of technology born, or at least prooven in racing.

  • Finally a 200 horsepower electric. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Wolfier ( 94144 ) on Saturday September 20, 2003 @01:25AM (#7010572)
    Now make it US $25000, the price point of most compacts that makes similar power (B20B, H22A, K20A, 1.8T)

    Then we'll talk.

  • Question: What happened to the 1984 Lectra (Score:3, Informative)

    by zakezuke ( 229119 ) on Saturday September 20, 2003 @01:33AM (#7010589)
    For those who don't remember, the 1984 Lectra had a solar-charged battery bank, 4 wheel independent electric motor drive, and claimed that it could be charged in as little as 20-30min with house current, and assuming this book I have is accurate [50 years of cars Troubador press] a crusing range of 350-500 miles (though I assume this is in good weather daytime)

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