Ton-up electric Reliant Robin offered for '09

Danger!

Whilst a tricycle may be a simple way to bring such a vehicle to market, I'm with The Reg. on this one: the last thing that the fledgling electric vehicle market needs is another "car that is not quite a car", whether it be for having fewer wheels or no need for a safety rating like a car would have.

@Spegru: They do compare ecologically well to the internal combustion engine - when you look at the total energy, impact and efficiency of the mining of coal through to the electric power to the road, it's over twice as effective than the extraction of oil through to the petrol engine power to the road. If you can use "green" sources, all the better.

I'm a strong supporter of electric vehicles, but I still believe that people need a "proper" car that can run a couple of hundred miles and get up to motorway speeds under reasonable acceleration, carry a few people and their luggage. Not only that, but be supported by a dealership, service and repair network and good guarantees for battery life and resale value comparable to a regular car. It would only need to be as good as a second car in a household - a runabout for errands and local trips.

Charging a battery whilst the car is not in use isn't too much of a problem. Most cars spend most of their life stationary. It's just a different habit to get into instead of finding a cheap petrol station.

Not going to happen

It will not happen. ZAP have a history of talking loud, but not delivering.

Don't bother with electrics

Just transplant a standard motorbike transaxle and a small efficient diesel engine into the back.

What's a car for?

The people I know who drive cars are folks with kids to get to school and back, people who live out in the country, those whose work is in the countryside (farmer, builder, etc.) and salespeople.

What part of a slick three-wheeler works for them? Where is the boot for huge bags of shopping? Where are the seats for kids, relatives, sick lambs, building gear?

Fun little leccy cars are all very well for urban gadgeteers, but if you want the big gas guzzlers/people movers/lorries to stop polluting, you have to give them a powerful electric equivalent, and I don't see such a thing even on the horizon.

Other three-wheelers

Re Richard, there are other modern three-wheelers too. The kit-car fraternity have long been removing the front forks of bikes and the front subframes of cars, thereby assembling a three-wheeled bastard offsprint of the two with good stability and phenomenal performance. The Grinnel Scorpion was infamous for a while for the speed at which you could get yourself into a lot of trouble.

In a less useful manner, the hairy-biker chopper-building fraternity have tended to go the other way, taking the back subframe and engine of a VW Beetle and the front forks of a regular bike to make a three-wheeler. But like the Harleys it's modelled on, they tend to look and sound great but have all the performance of an arthritic slug, so a bit too much style-over-substance there.

Four candles.........

The dynamics of the reverse 3-wheel configuration have the potential to surprise you; this wouldn't be some tippy little plastic pig but a very agile, nimble machine which would make you want one. In red. As ever though, mention three wheels and the press immediately drag the Trotter phrases from their graves. Can't we just once have something that explores ideas like this without indulging in wannabe Murdoch International journalism?

The alternative of a small diesel bolted onto a motorcycle transaxle in this format is an interesting one. Shame the stylist drew a body devoid of balance and looking like something from a second-rate sci-fi flick, but these folk do tend to be a bit socially-challenged. Like programmers in fact, but with a slightly smaller porn collection.

Crash testing "delays"

... (or a way around them) are, of course, the reason that the Tesla is "just" an electric Elise.

In other words, ZAP have a lot MORE work to do than Tesla - they've got the whole rolling chassis to develop from scratch, whilst Tesla just have to fine-tune a very well understood existing one to fit the electrickery. Which, it seems, is the difficult bit.

Definition of a Bike

UK vehicle definitions are unfortunately way out of sych with Europe and are not at all conducive to developing light, safe, efficient vehicles. They are, in short, a complete and utter shambles. I think the problem started when they abandoned the use of the words "motor bicycle" and "motor tricycle" in favour of "motorcycle" and "tricycle", with no definition for a quadricycle. "Motorcycle" now appears to imply two wheels, because I never succeeded in getting my French 350kg (yes really) Ligier quadricycle registered as anything other than "private/light goods", so I pay the same tax as somebody with a Chelsea Tractor.

@ buggane (& article)

Bikes are safe.

However, bikers (with an engine or without) are more at risk from other road users coccooned from the real world in their four-wheeled tin boxes.

There aren't many bikers who haven't heard the magic words "sorry mate, I didn't see you".

Google Ad revenue?

Is that MY money? I've got some Google Ads on some of my blogs and they generate a slow tickle of dollars that I've extraploated will take approximately three trillion years to reach the magic $100 point where someone at Google can be bothered to print me a cheque. My buddy is in the same boat. Between the two of us, Google has about $40 'on account'. I figure that many part-time bloggers like myself have some amount of money 'on account' with Google - waiting to reach the trigger point for an actual cheque. Multiply it by the numbers and the figures probably reach Galactic proportions.

HOW MUCH MONEY IS GOOGLE SITTING ON? BILLIONS?

Maybe Google could add an 'Ah-Frig-it!' button where people such as us could donate OUR money to some worthwhile project.

@ oh FFS

The Supervan was not just based on the Regal, it _was_ a Regal - the Reliant Regal Supervan. I should know - I used to own one.

Here's some useful information...

http://www.3wheelers.com

(for the Regal Supervan - http://www.3wheelers.com/ant.html).

"...in the States electric cars are in effect very dirty and inefficient coal-powered ones..."

That depends on where in the States you are -- and indeed where you choose to source your power from.

Not like a Reliant at all

The Reliant was hugely unstable mainly because the engine (==big mass) was in the front where the single wheel was. Cornering at any sort of speed could get wobbly because it is basically a bike that you could not lean over when cornering.

Now the Lotus thing has 2 wheels in front and would appear to have most of the mass above the 2 wheels. Much more stable.

re What's a car for?

2cv is the way forward. seats out, pig in and off to market. gearstick & handbrake off the floor so the pig can't bend them - hot to trot.

Three wheels on my wagon

Yes; I'm aware that the official title is a Regal Supervan II/III, but a Regal - alone - it is not. And when I were a lad, they were just Supervans - and indeed, when I were a lad, I got carted about Sheffield in one a lot. I'm not quite sad enough to want one of them now, but I have a softspot for what was actually quite a nice looking range of vehicles at the time.

And the Grinnal etc, yes, aware of those too, and Lomax, and Sparrows, and yadda yadda. I also spotted a Carver heading up the M6, though technically they're closer to bikes. There's something called "labouring the point". However, Regal = 2 door, reverse rear window, passenger car. No-one i knew in the 70s/80s referred to it as a "Regal Supervan".

I think there's a double "disservice" to be done in heading the article "electric Reliant Robin" - one, experimental electric cars were produced by Reliant (and the Ant, with electric power, would have made a nice little town delivery vehicle), and two, there is absolutely nothing beyond the three wheels to actually link the two vehicles.

@AC - I nearly bought an Ant for £50 a couple of years back - it was rotten. Ended up going on eBay for a stupidly high figure for what was, IMO, utter scrap, so I guess someone must like them. Same bloke has a Mumford Musketeer in the garage that I keep trying to persuade him to part with.

...waiting for the East Asians

@Colin Millar: unfortunately, the G-Wiz is fairly typical of the sort of cars coming from the East. It was for the Indian market initially.

For instance, there's a Chinese EV that looks like a Smart. It is capable of 25 mph and 60 miles. It's all they need in their home countries. Copying existing designs is the order of the day, so expect lots of inefficient petrol engined hulks adding to the global problem until the West produce an electric car that in demand.

Oh, the naivety!

"No type of vehicle is inherently dangerous, or it wouldn't be road legal."

Yes, because our MPs would all vote to ban something that they all use if it was really dangerous! Ho ho ho.

@alan jenney

G-Wiz is from a Californian company

@ Robert Long

Like drugs, for example?

I'm not niave, just hopelessly optimistic... :-)

Relative danger levels

Oddly enough, I have heard of Morgan 3 wheelers. I knew a chap who drove one. He also rode a powerful motorbike. Ironically, he was killed, as a passenger, in a normal 4-wheel car.

And there you go...

... Jeremy Clarkson merrily accelerates to 156mph and then gradually coast to a standstill - with a flat battery. He did not even make it to the end of the runway.

Do they think we are that gullible?