Bee.One electric car to be tiny, cheap, and cute
By Laura June 
posted April 21st 2009 10:14AM
posted April 21st 2009 10:14AM
British start-up Bee has just dropped some details on its forthcoming uber-affordable electric car, the One. This five-door affair will have a top speed of around 80 miles per hour, with a maximum range of 200 miles before needing a recharge. The car will run on two battery packs stowed under the floor, and will be easily swappable in case charging stations start popping up all over the U.K. The One will also have a constant 3G connection for management and performance system software monitoring and updates. The most exciting detail about the car, however (besides its adorable attitude) is likely to be its pricepoint: £12,000 ($17,700) plus the recent government subsidy of £5000 ($7400) for electric car purchases will bring this puppy down to about £7,000 -- or just over $10,000. Sure -- it's not Tata-cheap... but this one's electric! The One is scheduled to go into production during 2011 with an initial run of about 12,000 vehicles. One more render of the car after the break.
fug. UK, you can keep this one.
I'd buy one for 10 grand, just to have one and say I'm "saving the planet."
Yeah, that's right. I'm a freakin' superhero...
I engadget writers would stop making aesthetic assessments of products. I often disagree with their opinions. Doubly so in this case.
Does it come with a matching pair of panties?
How about a blindfold so you don't have to look at it...?
Maybe five years from now I'll get an electric car, but since there's ZERO charge stations in Minneapolis right now, I'll wait.
Do you drive more than 200 miles in a typical day? If not, you can always charge at home.
The two renders don't agree on the amount of black surface, it seems.
how much does it cost per full charge? and how long does it take? how much for extra battery packs?
I don't see how charging batteries from a more then likely coal power plant is saving the environment...
its all BS.
standing around for 6 hours at a "gas" station does not sound fun.
I assume most people would charge at home. The charging stations, as I read it, sounds like you would exchange your depleted battery packs for freshly charged ones.
As for being more environmentally friendly, a gasoline car generates on the order of a hundred times more pollution than a power plant, on a per unit energy basis. Even though coal plants are "dirty," they are still more efficient than internal combustion engines on vehicles. Many power plants are natural gas fired, making them better than coal plants and much much better than internal combustion engines. Obviously, the Government is working to reduce pollution from power plants as well. California is mandating public utilities to provide 20% of their energy from renewable sources by 2010.
and on top of that in northern europe countries something like 60-90% of energy is renewable from wind, hydro etc.
It literally looks like it was made by bees. Look at the headlights. I think they could let off the honeycomb hexagons.
Too bad it's the UK.
It wont be another 10 years before there is an affordable, actually practical electric car in the states that isn't ugly or only goes 40 miles.
I hate that the auto industries here are not actually doing something like this to save their company instead of making their expensive sporty cars that only a handful of people want to buy.
Here's another thing, Just recently my parents needed a new car, they have bought American for their whole lives, but they couldn't come to do it this time, there is such a bad selection of cars.
They wound up with a Suzuki SX4, kinda nice, great standard features for the price, like 4-Wheel drive and navigation, starting at under $16,000... pretty good deal, that's something that the American auto industries need to dip their toes into.
They won't though, so I think that when there is a really good electric car produced by a foreign company for a great price, Screw America, sorry if you have to lay off more workers and go bankrupt, your fault.
One reason the U.S. car companies are slow to switch to electric is that they don't want to change at all ("aka" the reason they are in this mess in the first place.)
The future does not lie in the slow giants and their empires but the swift rebels.
Did you know that if my country (the U.S.) paid out the big 3 bail out to the average soul we would get about $12,000 each!
GM = bureaucracy = failure = waste of time and money
Volt = too much $ for too little, too late
Tesla IS AMERICAN and it IS an Electric car company Google it!
The model S rocks and costs about $50,000 still allot but just look at it! It can do 300 miles and it is real! David Letterman drove one.