Looks like a Smarte Car ... only smartER.

vsk

My question is, are they going to make these cars affordable so we don't have to go into massive amounts of debt just to save our environment?

Electric cars are an unsustainable attempt by large corporate entities to maintain productive use of plants & talent built for the fossil fuel era. Highest & best use for these assets will be the equipment and parts, operating support hardware, and renewable energy generation for electric RAILWAYS.

A careful examination of "The General Depletion Picture", found at (peakoil.net); website of "The Association For The Study Of Peak Oil & Gas" will reveal need to immediately re-direct manufacturing resources worldwide to rehab & expansion of the electric railway matrix. See ASPO Newsletter #89, May 2008. This is not to say cars will be irrellevant. Just let's say ignoring the railway mode in the Fossils Rollover will pose serious consequences, including loss of ability to maintain distribution ofvictuals & necessities of life as trucking is impacted by diesek fuel allocation.

American planning responsibles & political staffpersons can obtain copies of the American Railway Map Atlases from "spv.co.uk" for the respective 3000 Counties in the USA. This will be useful as we prioritize rehab and expansion of the railway network as seen in the first half of the 20th century: Mains, branchline feeders, Electric Interurbans and associated electric street railways.

Most, even 90% plus of this website is devoted to vainglorious efforts to maintain the status quo, including a private car for everyone at puberty. A call is hereby made to the various large automobile corporates: You have families, offspring who will benefit from re-balancing the mix of transport mode more readily adabtable to the Oil Interregnum. The closing of an auto plant can equate to the redirecting of manufacuring capacity to railway infrastructure & renewable source generation to match the railways expansion and extension of reach.

Let's look at "The General Depletion Picture" and then grab a good book on the subject: "ELECTRIC WATER", by Christopher C. Swan (New Society Press 2007). The human race will need railways, "Parallel Bar Therapy", included in any discussion & implementaion of sustainability.

It looks like a Smart because it is a Smart. Before Daimler Benz sold Chrysler, and through that, Chrysler's partnership with Mitsubishi, they worked together on developing the 4-door Smart. Benz lost the rights, so Mitsubishi's producing it as their own model, in both gas and now electric versions.

Hopefully they'll be smart enough (excuse the pun) to offer it here, especially as it was developed with the North American market in mind.

Electric motors in the wheel well eliminates a transmission, adds space under the hood for a generator and batteries.

Thus no loss of storage space, weight reduction, lower cost.

Motor-in-wheel is also great for traction control, and regenerative breaking.

I also love the fact that Mitsubishi will beat GM to the punch in getting a parallel hybrid on the roads. Competition is good.

As for Tahoe Valley's post, I think he needs to get out more to study North American geography.
Individual transportation is here to stay, and much cheaper to implement, than efficient railways.

Though I agree that all major NA cities, Montreal included, is severely lacking in a railway public transportation system.

Montreal has probably the best score card, but that's because it's an island city with cheap province owned electricity.

IMO, in wheel motors are a highly overrated concept.

The electric motor, gear reduction, and motor controller take up less room than a typical 4 cylinder engine and transmission., so why add more sprung weight to the suspension?

The biggest concern in an electric vehicle is the batteries, and that is what takes up the bulk of the volume and weight.

You can get traction control and regenerative braking in any EV, it just depends on the motor controller.

It doesn't seem as thought the advantages outweigh the disadvantages, other than for marketing purposes.

"The electric motor, gear reduction, and motor controller take up less room than a typical 4 cylinder engine and transmission., so why add more sprung weight to the suspension?"

Which is more expensive (weight and dollars), beefing up the suspension or loosing 10% - 20% of the total stored energy which would be eaten by the connective gear with a central motor?

And Tahoe, I'm very willing to move my freight by rail, even do some long distance travel by rail if we get a fast system.

But I'm not going to move to a rail head and use a bicycle.

Type of batteries?

Never mind, duh, I clicked on the specs. Lion, good.

"Which is more expensive (weight and dollars), beefing up the suspension or loosing 10% - 20% of the total stored energy which would be eaten by the connective gear with a central motor?"

Completely made up efficiency losses don't count.

SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers) claim manual transmission efficiency as high as 97%, with 94% being the more realistic real world number.

http://www.sae.org/technical/papers/1999-01-1259

It's likely that one big motor is cheaper than two (or four) smaller ones, not to mention the motor controller might be simpler.

I agree with Tahoe Valley's post, though I haven't looked at the website yet. @Mark, individual transportation is only here to stay if we let it stay.

Private cars, private transportation in such big contraptions, on wide, paved roads that take up so much arable land (or land that could be returned to native vegetation patterns)... cars desperately need to be phased out. If this is one way of phasing them out, great. If it serves to entrench them further, bad.

To get the steel to make cars, you need the bauxite to be mined in jamacia, it needs to be melted at very high temperatures (which uses a lot of energy...), etc etc, moving all these parts around so they can be molded here, manufactured there, flown or shipped to the eventual consumer...

There is a time and a place for individual transportation. Going to the store, driving little johnny a kilometer to school, going to work on the highway that is parallel to the train line... these are not the time and place for greedy individual transportation.

it's swift,like a [url=http://chancay.en.madeinchina.com/P2109918/Golf-Car.shtml]microbus[/url],it can save enrgy resource very much,i alway recongnize that mutsubishi cars are strengh enough,i like it

Tahoe Valley - Wake up to the real world, dude, things are not going to change on that kind of scale. The most you can do is subtle changes like this car. Positive change takes time, even generations. Please don't be one of those that expects everything to be your way yesterday. It makes you sound more spoiled than the lifestyle you are railing against ("I want it my way and I want it NOW!").

And besides, how the heck would you convince the other 300 million Americans that totally disagree with your idea to just drop the way they, their parents, and their parents' parents all grew up? This car, and others like it, will change the auto industry in they way most of us have wished for years. Slow coming, but its finally happening. How's your dream coming along...?

My next car!!!