Lightning's £120,000 all-electric sports car unveiled in London
By Darren Murph 
posted July 22nd 2008 3:59PM
posted July 22nd 2008 3:59PM
posted July 22nd 2008 3:59PM
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Cars are much cheaper than horses if you take into account the VALUE you get out of a car vs a horse. Can a horse run 70mph for 30min to get me to work on time? Do I need to feed my car 3 times a day (food is a lot more expensive than gas, guess the where the term "Eat like a horse" comes from)? How much is a vet bill when a horse gets sick vs taking the car to a mechanic?
So yes, considering what it takes to use a horse as a form of transportation, the car was a more viable cheaper solution.
Some cars are cheaper than some horses. Does that count?
Now that's a nice looking car...
Damn it! am gonna make my own and post it on instructables.
When I first saw the picture I thought someone had finally designed a decent looking Corvette.
Like many beautiful women, sexy but expensive to maintain! I'll wait for the VW edition.
Phaeton?
See the thing about all electric cars is that when you run out of power your stuck. No way to get anywhere or recharge unless you have a long power cord or something. Im in love with the Chevy Volt, runs electric and uses a gas generator to recharge. That way at least if you run out of electricity you can have someone bring you a gallon of gas to turn on the generator and then run the car.
AAA and other similar services could always have generators which you would call in an emergency and they would recharge you enough to get you to the nearest charge station.
They could also have emergency charge stations along the highways (ie. every other light pole)
Here in the UK we have lay-bys with emergency phones in ever mile or so on motorways (I dunno about you crazy Americans) and emergency chargers could be integrated into this networks...
three phase INDUSTRIAL chargers?
@neofolklore:
Doesn't have to be a fast charger, in an emergency you could sit and wait a while just to get enough charge to get you to a fast charge station.
holy cow. beautiful design.
Looks like the bastard child of a Vette and a Jaguar...
I wonder how much juice is being wasted on those stupid lights in the rims?
They're just two tone rims. Chrome outer structure, electric blue inner structure.
At speed the electric blue blur would end up making the wheels look really quite cool as you cruise along in absolute mechanical silence.
It might even be a Lightning brand motif.
Fully charged in just minutes? Sheesh. Now that's the kind of battery technological evolution we like to see.
Now if we can just get charging stations like that all over the place... But of course, that will undoubtedly take billions of dollars to build that type of charging "infrastructure" and make it commonplace. It's a nice thought, though - having attractive (sexy, even) electric cars (with beauty, brawn, and brains) that could fully charge in around the time it would take to fill a tank full of fuel. Then we'd just need the cars to be affordable, too.
Such a long way to go... but we have a good start.
It is a car of the future...because soon, only those who can afford to pay this price will be able to drive cars.
Wow! That is gorgeous... it looks like one of the old Ferraris (I don't remember which, but they have ebooks about it at BooksOnBoard: http://www.booksonboard.com/index.php?BODY=viewbook&BOOK=31446)
Damn that's beautiful.
With the technology and "drive train" layout - with the motors in the wheels and no transmission taking up any cabin space, that leaves a whole lot of room for luxurious amenities or utilities for ESUVs with this technology. Big RV room in a small package.
teh sekc
Is there a happy medium in charging between really expensive "industrial three phase" and conventional domestic single phase 110V (US)? In my house I have a couple of 220V two-phase outlets for high power appliances (clothes dryer, primarily). What sort of charging time would we be looking at then?
If that's feasible, the infrastructure for electrics could be really cheap. You don't need big, expensive "fueling stations" all over the country: Any place there's electric power, you could bring it up to the surface as a charging station about the size of fire hydrant/mailbox*: pull over, swipe your credit card, charge up, drive on. They could be on every street corner. I suspect that a lot of people are struggling to shake off the familiar mental picture of a conventional gas station that's determined by the need for all that infrastructure to safely store, meter and deliver gasoline. Moving from gas to electric is going to be akin to shifting from going to the movies to staying home and watching TV.
Listen.. this car is shnazzy and what not...
But WTF people? We need a serious solution to our energy issues and every time these morons build another 'super luxo' Li-Ion car it makes me even more frustrated...
Take that loot and figure out an ECONO way to not use gas... anyone? I mean honestly... 120? lets talk like $10k or less. Maaan. Our priorities are
wack.
My 2cents.
Initially this kind of technology is going to be expensive. There's primary R&D that needs to be done, economies of scale that have to be ramped up, and investments that have to be recouped. Think of these high-end vehicles as priming the pump for the technology to go mainstream.
Almost everything in a modern vehicle that contributes to safety or economy or comfort -- ABS, variable timing valves, fuel injection, self-tensioning seatbelts... -- started as a high-end option and worked its way down.
I think people are being way too critical here. Regardless how you cut it, this is way better than anything else out there. The only problem I see is the price tag. Mini converted one of their cars into an electric using the same battery and motors as this car, 2 years ago. It can do 0-60 in 4 seconds, gets 200-250 miles per charge and charges in 10 minutes just like this car.If they actually produced them and sold it under 50k I'd camp out for weeks just to be first person in line to get one. To say electric cars are 10 years away is short sighted and pessimistic, there's a huge demand for these cars, they're coming whether GM/Ford/Toyota wants to make them or not. Considering they're closing down most of their plants due to decreased sales it would be a smart move on their part to do so.
The point I wanted to make is, the beauty of this new battery is that the range of the vehicle is less of a factor now. Who cares if it doesn't get 800 miles per charge. If gas stations started providing stations to charge these things, you charge in ten minutes or 2-3 if your in a hurry, more or less the same amount of time you spend filling up your gas tank.