Hi All,
Well I was wrong about a few things about the
T-Zero. Here's a more correct account.
For longer range they have built trailers that
have a genorator onboard. Alan has crossed the US and
back with 1 behind his converted EV Honda Civic.
jerry dycus
http://www.latimes.com/communities/news/pomona_valley/20010307/tiv0012407.html
> Wednesday, March 7, 2001 News from San Dimas in the
> Times Community
> Newspapers T-zero gives juice to electric car
> possibilities San Dimas
> company's hybrid prototype is as fast as a Ferrari,
> with much better
> mileage. By GENE MADDAUS [ [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> ]
>
> SAN DIMAS -- Going from zero to 60 in four seconds
> is no easy feat,
> particularly if you're in doing it in an electric
> car. A San Dimas
> company has built two prototypes of the t-zero, an
> electric sports car
> that can out-accelerate a gas-powered Ferrari or a
> Porsche, and plans
> to start selling it for $80,000 as soon as it can
> scrounge enough
> investment capital. "The car is not the problem,
> it's the finances,"
> said Alan Cocconi, co-founder of AC Propulsion.
>
> The car has been in development for four years, and
> was built to show
> off the company's drivetrain system, which its
> developers say is the
> most efficient and powerful on the market. "It's
> got the efficiency
> of a Honda Insight," company vice president Alec
> Brooks said of the
> gas-electric hybrid car that gets 60 miles per
> gallon, "with the
> acceleration of a Ferrari 550 Maranello." Ferrari
> says the 550
> Maranello goes zero to 62 mph in 4.3 seconds. The
> t-zero recently was
> clocked going zero to 60 in 4.1 seconds. AC
> Propulsion did a series
> of races with a private Ferrari owner in January
> 2000, Brooks said.
>
> "We handily beat the Ferrari every time," Brooks
> said, "and by the
> fourth or fifth race there was a very bad smell
> coming out of the
> Ferrari's clutch." The car's engine is lighter than
> other electric
> engines because its drivetrain also charges the
> side-mounted
> batteries. Other electric vehicles have a separate
> charger, making the
> engine heavier. "The drivetrain is the innovation,"
> Cocconi said. "We
> just built the car to show it off."
>
> The t-zero (so named because "T sub zero," in math
> jargon, means the
> start time -- the beginning of something) sits low
> on the road. It has
> 4.5 inches of ground clearance and is less than 3
> 1/2 feet high.
> Getting inside requires flipping up the roof and its
> wing-like doors
> and standing on the seat. You then have to sit down
> and stretch your
> legs out straight ahead, as though you were getting
> into a kayak. The
> ignition is silent. To the uninitiated, it's hard to
> tell whether the
> car is on. You then flip a switch, depending on
> whether you want to go
> forward or backward, and you're ready to go.
>
> The prototype is an engineer's car, so it doesn't
> have frills such as
> padded seats and a padded dash, and most of the
> buttons and switches
> on the dashboard are unlabeled. Instead of a
> tachometer, there's a
> voltmeter and an ammeter. A digital readout reports
> how much power is
> in the batteries, but you have to have a degree from
> CalTech to
> understand it. The commercial model will be more
> customer-friendly,
> Brooks said. If you want to, you can drive the car
> with just one
> pedal. Taking your foot off the gas -- er, the
> accelerator -- brakes
> the car and turns the kinetic energy in the tires
> back into chemical
> energy in the batteries. You can drive without
> touching the brakes.
> After a short spin around San Dimas and Pomona, the
> brake discs were
> still cold. (Of course, if you have to stop
> suddenly, you can slam on
> the brakes, and if you find "regenerative braking"
> annoying, you can
> flip a switch to turn it off.) The t-zero doesn't
> have a transmission,
> so acceleration is completely fluid. You just put
> the pedal to the
> metal, and the car takes off. The gears make a
> slight whirring sound,
> but otherwise the car is quiet.
>
> One of the major drawbacks with this car -- and with
> other electric
> cars as well -- is range. On a full charge, the
> t-zero can go 90
> miles. Then it takes an hour to recharge. The car
> also is limited to
> 90 mph -- fine for legal American driving, but no
> good if you're
> cruising down the Autobahn. The car still has to
> pass government
> crash tests before it can go on the market. The
> prototypes are insured
> for liability, but no right-thinking insurance
> company will touch them
> with a 10-foot pole when it comes to collision
> insurance -- they're
> too expensive. "Owners would have to be
> self-insured," Brooks said.
>
> Nine orders are in already, even though the company
> is not actively
> advertising. The company hopes to sell about 100
> cars every year once
> production begins, said Tom Gage, company vice
> president. AC
> Propulsion employs 20 engineers and technicians and
> has been
> profitable for five of its eight years of operation,
> Gage said. Most
> of the company's income comes from selling
> drivetrains to universities
> and environmental agencies.
>
> California law will require that a little less than
> 1% of cars sold in
> California in 2003 be zero-emissions. That's about
> 4,000 to 5,000
> cars, Brooks said. Right now, there are about 2,000
> zero-emission cars
> on the road. "We recognize that we're not ever
> going to be a major
> car company," Gage said, acknowledging that the
> t-zero is a "niche"
> vehicle -- likely to be of interest mainly to
> Silicon Valley
> zillionaires. But the company hopes that major auto
> manufacturers will
> want to adopt its technology for their electric
> conversion vehicles.
> In the meantime, AC Propulsion is happy to make the
> zippiest electric
> car there is.
>
> "We want to create electric vehicles that people
> want to buy," Gage
> said.
> ...
> http://www.latimes.com
> Copyright 2001 Los Angeles Times
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