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The confusing but cute 3 wheel Solo EV is finally in production:
It's taken years, but it's finally happening: the Solo, the adorable three-wheeled electric vehicle from Electra Meccanica, is entering production.
As Electrive points out, news of the Solo first surfaced about four years ago, and deliveries were supposed to commence two years ago, but nothing happened — until now.
According to an announcement from Electra Meccanica, the company that designs and makes the Solo, the car is today entering production. It will be produced under contract by manufacturing partner and investor, Zongshen Industrial Group, in Chongqing, China.
[...] As you might expect given its name, the Solo is a one-person electric vehicle that's targeting itself hard at individual city commuters.
It has 100 miles (161 km) of range and a top speed of 80 mph (129 km/h), which is more than you'll ever need in the confines of a crowded city. It's all powered by a 17.3 kWh battery that feeds electricity to a 82 bhp motor that drives the single rear wheel.
[...] It's quirky, different, and it's way smaller than a car, which makes it great for use in cities where space is at a premium and conventional cars aren't getting any smaller. I'm not sure it really makes sense, but we'll get to that.
Electra Meccanica has said it wants to produce 75,000 of these, which seems ambitious, especially given that it didn't meet its previous delivery date.
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Wednesday September 02 2020, @03:00PM (3 children)
It's cute, but I have difficulty seeing how it will be competitive in today's electric car market. Back when the only production electric cars were golf carts then it would have had a shot, but they are a decade too late for that.
(Score: 2) by istartedi on Wednesday September 02 2020, @06:27PM (2 children)
This. A thousand times this. When Musk put batteries in a Lotus body, the era of the dumpy, dorky EV was over.
Musk wasn't the first to do it though, he just made people wake up because he had the $$$. I remember reading on USENET, yes, that long ago... back in the 90s on the EV forums. There was dude who put batteries in a Corvette. He got Tesla-like acceleration. Tooling around town, throwing his passengers in to their seats with mighty acceleration. Freaking out pedestrians with the 'vette that moved like a 'vette but made no sound... for 20 miles. That was all he could get with his setup, which might have actually been deep cycle lead-acid. The world had to wait for better batteries. I don't know what became of the Ovonics patent, but I hope Telsa didn't give them a red cent. We could have had decent electric vehicles 10 years earlier, easily.
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(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Wednesday September 02 2020, @07:15PM (1 child)
Clarifying point: I still think there is room for a dumpy dorky EV if it's cheap enough. As an example, the Elio got a bunch of buzz and was a (ICE) car I wanted to buy at 7k. If they wanted to charge $20k for it then no way.
(Score: 1) by istartedi on Thursday September 03 2020, @03:14AM
Good point. Dumpy, dorky and overpriced is over.
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