Affordable Electric Cars Coming to US in 2009
Welcome Google search visitors: This is just one of many articles produced here on a daily basis at Gas 2.0. If you find this post interesting, sign up for our RSS feed and stay up to date on the future of transportation.
While we love hearing about sweet rides like the $100K Tesla Roadster, a functional and economical electric car made for the rest of us would be even cooler.
This could be it: the Th!nk City electric car, a four-seater with 110 mile range and top speed of 65 mph, priced under $25,000, made from 95% recyclable materials, and available in the U.S. in 2009.
The Th!nk City electric car is the product of Norwegian firm Th!nk Global, an auto manufacturer backed by Silicon Valley funding who has plans to assemble the cars in Southern California. In contrast to Tesla’s limited release of 300 cars per year, the Th!nk City is designed for mass production to the tune of 30-50,000 units within a few years. Th!nk already produces about 10,000 of these cars in Europe annually.
As an interesting aside, Ford Motor Company originally developed the vehicle, but (in a move they may soon regret), sold it to Norwegian investors in 2003. Why is it so cool? Because most of us don’t drive more than 40 miles in a day, and small electric cars are optimally suited for congested city driving. The benefits are pretty obvious, but if you’re worried about getting out for the weekend with the Th!nk City, don’t. Use it for city driving and keep that gas-guzzling SUV for forays into the mountains. You’ll still come out ahead.
Safety-wise, the Th!nk City meets the strict safety requirements of both Europe and the US as a highway-safe road car. ABS brakes, airbags, side-impact bars, and an advanced frame designed to absorb energy and distribute it away from the passenger’s compartment make it another blow to the myth that bigger cars are inherently safer.
If recent sales trends toward smaller vehicles are any indication (sales of Toyota Yaris up 70%), the Th!ink city could be very popular when released in the US.
Check out a few more pictures (below), and learn more from Th!nk’s website.
Addendum: Are plug-in electric vehicles a perfect answer to our transportation problems? I think you’ll see from the comments below that no, they aren’t. As one reader pointed out, dead batteries in the Th!nk City could take up to 10 hours to charge. That’s not only inconvenient, but putting 50,000 of these on the road could cause serious power draw (see Plug-In Hybrids Could Require 160 New Power Plants By 2030 (Or None At All and Plug-In Hybrids Use Over 17 Times More Water Than Regular Cars, Researchers Say). Since such a large portion of US power generation comes from coal, the increasing use of plug-in hybrid and electric cars will require serious consideration of other energy sources (for example, see How Solar Panels Could Power 90% of US Transportation).
Related Posts on Electric Cars:
- An Electric Car You Can Buy Today: The $20K TRIAC EV
- Aptera’s $26,000 Electric Car and 300 MPG Hybrid Coming Soon
- Tesla Motors Sues Fisker Automotive Over Electric Car Design
- Tesla’s First Electric Vehicle, 2008 Roadster, Now Under Production
- Subaru Unleashes R1e Electric Car on New York
- Chevy Volt’s Lithium-Ion Batteries Road- Tested By Month’s End
- Get 120 MPG Out of Your Prius (Plug It In)
- The Sporty Future of Electrics Cars: the Lightning GT
Photo Credits: Th!nk
This would make a lot of sense for us in Los Angeles. If we can use it in the carpool lane and park it on city streets for free, they will sell.
Sounds great. You can go to work for just 3¢ per mile. By the way did you see the €200/month ($313/month) battery contract??? That kind of negates the savings doesn’t it? I can fill my Expedition, eh twice for that.
I wonder if anyone has thought about what would happen if these things actually sold? I can imagine everyone either getting stuck in 5pm traffic and all the batteries dying, clogging up the freeways for miles around. Or everyone getting home around 6pm and plugging in their “zero emmission” electric car and the coal/oil/natural gas powerplant down the street having to crank into overdrive to avoid the massive blackout. The power generation/distribution system in this country can be wiped out by a determined squirrel, do we really want a bunch of these things running around?
I agree with some of the other posters, the car looks stupid. Your average eco-mom might not care, but we sure as hell do. The tesla looks awesome, but it’s 75k more, do we really need to pay 75k more to get something that looks cool?
Only one person commented on the power consumption, and it is the real problem. According to the specifications I found on the Think website, this car takes 10 hours for a full charge at 230 V AC/ 14 A. This means that every time you charge this car, which must owners would probably due nightly to avoid it running out of power on them, it would use 32.2 Kilowatt hours of electricity, per charge, per car. Since the company says it hopes to sell 30-50,000 of these in a few years, this car is not the cure for the environment that you are making it out to be. Sure it has zero emissions and it is made from 95% recycled materials, but roughly 31% of the power in the U.S. comes from coal plants, and they definitely will be producing emissions.
For further illustration, if the company manages to sell even half the number they want (15-25,000) and each of those cars were plugged in for the full 10 hour charge time, that would be 483,000 - 805,000 Kilowatt hours a night (of course this assumes all of the cars were plugged in for ten hours a night). Now assume that every car in the U.S. was an electric…now you’re talking some serious energy consumption. Admittedly there are tons of factors that would have to be included to get the best estimate, but even a little bit of basic math shows that in their current state (no pun intended) Electric cars are simply not the answer.
I am not saying that alternative fueled cars are a dumb idea, far from it, but I think there is a tendency among people to ignore simple common sense when it comes to the environment these days. In fact we would do far better if we just turned off the lights when we weren’t using them, or unplugged some appliances when they are not being used. That being said I hope the engineers working on these cars can find a way to make them better, but we also have to fix the problem of where we get our electricity first. Until we solve that little problem, all this is just debate.
wow these are really really nice, what a breakthrough
frank speaking this car is nice but still expensive compare to the technology used to make this car. 25,000 dollars for a piggy car is beyond common man imagination.
I guess the TATA NANO of india is the best option for the common man. Cost around 2000 dollars!
Hey Abe, you drive an 15 year old car, so who is here a tard.
Ups, sorry man, i couldn’t resist.
Sorry folks i didn’t mean to offend anybody
But how many percent in teh US drives an V8.
I can only say its useless and needless in these times
EOT
@2 Josh and Realistic:
I think you guys make a good point about energy consumption, and I added a short note to the post referencing that.
Unfortunately electric cars will not resolve the problem. America’s Economy is based on the oil industry. Most of our power plants use fossil fuels to generate electricity. In fact we will actually use more fossil fuels due to the limited charge granted by the cars battery. If everyone in the country used electric cars you would find yourself wasting even more fossil fuels trying to keep the cars charged because it requires more energy(and thus more fossil fuels) to charge something rather than directly powering it, as in the case of “gas guzzlers”. So in turn this is merely removing the problem from the eyes of the American public, but is obviously not a solution. Regardless of what cars we use, to eliminate fossil fuel consumption, corporate America needs to turn to an alternate source of power. If we use more nuclear and solar power then perhaps the electric car would be a viable solution.