At last!
A completely electric “super car!” It can go 600km on just one charge.
And it’s fast! It can
go from 0 to 60 in 2.8 seconds.
But wait! There’s
more! It’s available to you all at the
low, low price of $980,000.
You read that right.
Just $980,000!
The nifty sports car comes from Rimac Motors, a small outfit
out of Croatia. It operates on a
principle Rimac calls “torque vectoring,” where four electronic motors power
each wheel independently. This allows
for thousands of corrections each second.
Too bad about the price tag.
Not surprisingly, Rimac reports that the first order for its car comes
from the Saudi royal family. I suppose
there’s a bit of irony there, Saudis buying electric cars, but they've got the money for the sticker price and at least they
won’t be polluting the atmosphere as they tear around town at 300 kph.
Electric cars are closer to home and a bit more affordable
than that nearly one mil price tag.
Toyota and Tesla (the car company, not the band) have partnered to produce
the RAV4 EV. The idea here being to meld
the hybrid efficiency and practicality of a Prius with the speed of the Tesla
Roadster. The reviewer for that New York Times article seemed impressed by the speed of the vehicle and the absence of
power loss that seems to sometimes plague hybrid vehicles. Then the writer went into a whole lot of car
geek details that fail to interest me.
Again, however, the RAV4 EV has a hefty price. Nothing like the Rimac, mind you, but upwards
of $50K is not my idea of an affordable car.
It’s going to take a while, but technology should hopefully progress to
a point where electric cars will no longer be cost prohibitive and become
genuine alternatives to what we have currently.
I know, I know, conspiracy theories abound about Big Oil holding this
tech down, but I’m tired and don’t really want to meander into such fields at
this time.
As I’ve admitted before, I’m really not a car guy. That said I wouldn’t mind cruising around in
that Rimac supercar. I’m imagining hitting
the accelerator and going from 0 to 60 in under three seconds…and the engine
making no sound at all. I could pretend
I’m in the Batmobile in stealth mode or something equally juvenile.
Speaking of comic books, one sentence in that NYT article I
linked to didn’t sit right with me. In it,
the author writes the following: “Elon Musk — Tesla’s chief executive, a
practicing rocket scientist and the inspiration for the billionaire Tony Stark
character in the “Iron Man” films…”
Yeah not to sound spleenful, I’m pretty sure that the inspiration for Tony Stark
came from Stan Lee and Steve Ditko long before Musk ever entered the picture.
My e-novella, Hound of Winter is available for only 99 cents!
Follow me on Twitter: @Jntweets
Here's a follow up article http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/
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