More details about the Triac highway-capable three-wheel electric car emerge
By Nilay Patel 
posted May 8th 2008 7:51AM
posted May 8th 2008 7:51AM
posted May 8th 2008 7:51AM
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I'm a big supporter of electric vehicles, but obviously it is only part of the solution. Our power grid is in dire need of improvement, with or without electric vehicles. The efficiency of the grid itself needs to be improved, and we need to leverage every power source we have, including nuclear, solar, biomass, etc..
"Until they make a decent sized, 4 door electric car that does 0 - 60mph in 5seconds or less"
@salut: That's dumbest statement ever. The whole point of an electric car is to save energy, so unless you want to walk everywhere after we run out of oil you probably need to rethink your needs.
Besides, how many gas fueled cars do you know that can do 0-60 in 5 seconds or less that are under $60k? That's pretty demanding of a budget electric car, might I suggest you go drop $100k on a tesla?
No, that would be _your_ point in buying an electric car, maybe. If "saving energy" is worth whatever the costs of an EV are to you, go for it.
My point (were I to buy one) would be to save money and/or get more value. (Right now, if I had enough money / valued fast cars enough, I'd be seriously looking at Tesla and/or Wrightspeed; later, I think it's likely that electric vehicles become a money-saving proposition for me.)
The manufacturer's point is, of course, to make money selling cars.
Not everyone (indeed, scarce anyone) takes "saving energy" as a goal worthy of pursuit at harm to themselves.
Now if we wanted to talk about dumb statements (though perhaps not the dumbest _ever_), we could talk about statements implying we'll "run out of oil".
That won't happen.
Why? because when oil is a thousand dollars a barrel, consumption will in fact be cut back remarkably; a lot of people will be walking (or cycling, more likely), but we won't be out of oil.
And production resources are never as limited as they seem; you'd be amazed what ways you can come up with to get oil, if you know you'll get paid enough.
The notion of "running out" of a resource like oil is utterly moronic.
Oh, thank god this is here. I was getting laid way too much.
oh, you'd get laid alright. By all the hairy armpit and legs, non shoe wearing, "i made my own tie dyed skirt", non makeup wearing women of the green movement. Oh and you would be on the bottom.
I can not believe that I am reading a "tech" blog and there is even a debate about the invalidity of Global Warming. Denial is a wonderful thing. Makes up get up every morning thinking nothing is going to change in the world.
The fact that there is still a "debate" about the validity of global warming is pretty much the saddest thing to me in the world. Listening to talk radio does not make anyone an expert on global warming or climate research; going to college and grad school and spending years and years of your life researching the matter makes you an expert. And all the experts say global warming is real. Within the scientific community it's simply not in question at all. The media and the powers behind it can take anything and spin it any which way they want. We hear the end results. What people need to hear more is truth straight from the source (scientists), not "truthiness" that comes straight from politicians' asses. And then once we are more in tune with reality we need to put our ingenuity to work and come up with innovations like this car here. Sure it's ugly and will probably flip over and kill you, but we're getting there. And I'm no fool; I know that money runs everything, but I don't see why we can't make money by selling electric and solar powered cars. The jobs created by R&D and production of environmentally friendly infrastructure and products is nothing to scoff at, and the sooner we get on board with this line of thinking the better, because there are plenty of other countries looking to monopolize on green tech. I could go on and on but just one last thing: Please everyone don't get sucked in to think that this is a political issue. It's not. It's a human issue, and it's a global issue, and America is not sustainable as the world's foremost power if we continue on our current path.
We can't make money off of solar and electric cars because gasoline is too cheap for present EVs to seriously compete. It's going up though, and EV tech is advancing. That's why GM is working on the Volt, for example. The big money is investing in green tech, just slower than you think is optimal. Given that they're betting big money on it, I'm inclined to suppose they've done their homework, and at least some of them are making reasonable steps. Those that have bad judgement will fail. What's wrong with that?
Change of this magnitude can only be brought about by necessity. Despite everyone's moaning and groaning, we're not there yet. As of right now we're into the "inconvenience" stage and the sucky part is that everybody pays the same price for gas, so Richie Rich is still flying his personal jet while the majority of us are struggling to keep gas in the tank and the bills paid.
Maybe a thousand people will benefit from this kind of transportation in teh future, but let's be honest, they're not secure enough for me to strap myself into this thing and ride around when there's a 5000 pound SUV traveling right next to me at 80 mph... no thanks.
I'll keep my cash and use it for gas until my car dies on me or the oil well dry up.
my 2 cents...
this has a very attractive vehicles and hopefully with a price i can afford with good financing. i'll buy it in a heart beat. with the $2,000 - $4,000 savings a year from gas if not more at the price of $4 a gallon. I'll definately be able to afford one even at a $200 monthly payment.
Come on green lets get moving on getting these on the market in everystate. come by my house first in tampa fl.
"it's even better than we hoped..." "..range is just about 100 miles on a full charge, down from 120 miles .." Imagine if they got the range down to 50 miles.