To show you how short this little 4 seater is - I tried to stretch my arms around her. It is about 8 feet long and 4 feet wide.
There are a total of 2100 electric cars in London. The G-Wiz is by far the most popular. The Reva Company in India has been making them for 10 years.
As you can see by the picture above - it is only about 8 feet long. It seats 4 people very tightly. I doubt if anyone over an 8 year older can squeeze into the back seats.
It has a small 15 horsepower electric motor driving the back wheels. It can go 50 miles per hour - for about 50 miles - less if you turn on the heater or air conditioning because they run off the batteries too. If you use the more expensive lithium-ion batteries the range jumps up to 75 miles. It takes 9 hours to completely re-charge the 8 - 6 volt batteries by plugging into a regular household outlet. Over here - all outlets are 220 volts.
It ends up costing about 2 cents a mile to run it - much lower than any gasoline powered car. If you use nuke or hydroelectric power to generate your electricity - this is a pollution free car.
In London it sells for 9995 pounds which is about $15,000. In Costa Rica - they sell for $12,000 American. It weighs about 1500 pounds - 600 pounds of that is batteries. It can carry 600 pounds of people.
The batteries are supposed to last 5 years. The brakes turn into generators to re-charge the batteries when you are stopping.
In the picture - I was just measuring the car - not trying to pick it up and take home with me to the USA.
London is a very large crowded congested city. In order to cut down on the street traffic - cars are heavily taxed. Every day you cross into the congested zone - you pay $16. Gasoline is also very expensive - about $8.00 a gallon - most of that is taxes. Parking fees are also very high. If you drive an electric car over here - they waive all those fees. Even with all those incentives including some free charge stations - only 2100 people out of 9 million own an electric car here. If the idea can't make a go of it here - where can it succeed?
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