% Spark has a wimpy half-powered 3kW on-board charger % http://www.caranddriver.com/news/2014-chevrolet-spark-ev-photos-and-info-news [images] 2014 Chevrolet Spark EV Real car, real acceleration, real price. Real chance? BY JUSTIN BERKOWITZ November 2012 [images / MULTIPLE PHOTOGRAPHERS http://www.caranddriver.com/photo-gallery/2014-chevrolet-spark-ev-photos-and-info-news View Photo Gallery - 37 photos ]
There are still hot-rodders at Chevy, and they work in the electric-car division. “Build a small EV,” the management said. “We’ll stuff a high-output motor in a tiny car,” the engineers said. And they did. When the Spark EV begins arriving at dealers in the summer of 2013, it’ll be powered by a 130-hp electric motor; the gasoline Spark has just 84 hp. Even better, the electric motor makes five times the torque of the gasoline engine, delivering 400 lb-ft instead of 83. GM estimates a 0-to-60 time in the high-seven-second range. Realistic? Based on short drives in several pre-production vehicles, absolutely. Here’s what else you can expect from the Spark EV, which is still undergoing final calibration and tweaking: Range The battery pack should store 20 kWh of juice, giving the Spark EV a range of roughly 60 to 70 real-world miles. Its sibling, the Volt—a car from which the Spark EV’s engineers borrowed liberally—is good for 40 or so miles, while the Nissan Leaf averaged 58 miles in our testing. Recharge Time Plugged in to a 240-volt charger, the Spark would need about seven hours to go from drained to a full charge. That’s adequate, but the real pot of gold is the optional DC fast charging; it’ll enable an 80-percent recharge (from a completely dead car) in just 20 minutes. Since most people don’t coast their EVs up to charging stations on empty, that time is cut significantly if the battery still has 20 or 30 percent of charge left. That might still be too annoying to drive from New York to Washington, D.C., but it’s more than enough to use a Spark EV as a regional runabout. An engineer for the car says there’s no technological limit on the number or frequency of recharges. Pricing and Availability GM says the Spark EV will cost less than $25,000 after “tax incentives,” which includes federal and occasionally state credits for purchasing an electric vehicle. The federal tax credit is good for $7500, while a state like California may give as much as $2500 for the purchase of a Spark EV. The availability is the bigger concern. General Motors is insistent that the Spark EV isn’t being built just to satisfy the government, as are some other vehicles—those would be the Fiat 500E and Scion iQ EV, among others—but so far, sales are planned for California, Oregon, Canada, Europe, and South Korea, where the Spark is assembled. We do expect to see 50-state sales for the Spark EV eventually, though, and GM will be offering an eight-year, 100,000-mile warranty on the battery pack. [©2012 Hearst Communications All Rights Reserved] For all EVLN posts use: http://electric-vehicle-discussion-list.413529.n4.nabble.com/template/NamlServlet.jtp?macro=search_page&node=413529&query=evln&sort=date Here are today's archive-only posts: EVLN: GE Durathon battery to power e-buses EVLN: Enough with the ostrich act, my next car is an EV ... EVLN: Rimac has Arab (petrol-profit) $B'aire offers r:100km ts:300kph EVLN: Fisker sues XL group insurance $33M for Sandy damaged Karma pih + EVLN: VW Rocky ultra compact Electric SUV has 4 wheel motors {brucedp.150m.com / brucedp.0catch.com} -- View this message in context: http://electric-vehicle-discussion-list.413529.n4.nabble.com/EVLN-The-hot-rodders-at-Chevy-work-in-the-EV-division-tp4660287.html Sent from the Electric Vehicle Discussion List mailing list archive at Nabble.com. _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org For EV drag racing discussion, please use NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA)
