As usual....
Speed: Inadequate.
Range: Inadequate.
Price: Ridiculous.
Buddy unveils Metro e-car
Norwegian electric vehicle (EV) maker Buddy has whipped the dust sheets off its latest car, the Metro. Buddy_Metro_004 Buddy's Metro: a three-seater coated in durable Telene plastic Buddy officially unveiled its Metro at the recent 24th Electric Vehicle Symposium in Stavanger, Norway in the presence of such luminaries as …
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Tuesday 26th May 2009 10:15 GMT Anonymous Coward
Eeek!
There was a period in the seventies and eighties when serveral British startups decided that what we really needed was to transfer the running gear from our aging rust buckets (usually BL products) to one of their GRP body shells. The big selling point of these conversions was usually that they were so much better styled and more practical than the originals. In reality they were usually pig ugly with straight lines and sharp angles.
This looks like it was styled by one of those guys.
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Tuesday 26th May 2009 11:17 GMT Albert Gonzalez
A brief cost analysis
Price of vehicle 15200€
Number of recharges : 500 max
km per charge : about 100
kWh of a charge : 13,1 kWh
cost of kWh : 0,095€ / kWh
Max km of the power pack: 50000km
Electricity consumed : 6550kWh
Cost of electricity (100% charger efficiency) : 622€
Cost of energy + vehicle : 15822€
Cost per km : 0,31€/km
So the only interesting point is the energy cost.
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Tuesday 26th May 2009 11:40 GMT Steve Todd
This is the sort of thing that gives EVs a bad name
Spectacularly ugly, poor range, poor acceleration, poor top speed and too expensive. To be at all competitive with a petrol town car you need a 30KW motor (40BHP equivalent) and a 160KM (100 mile) range. You'd also want to get a decent design house involved for the bodywork and the price down to the £10K mark (still £4k more than a petrol model).
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Tuesday 26th May 2009 12:42 GMT Dr. Mouse
Too expensive.
As you can get a small petrol city car, which will have much more range and performance, and will not need expensive battery replacement after a couple of years, would probably work out cheaper over the 1-2years life of this thing. You would save about £7000 by going for something like an Aygo. Thats about 7000l petrol at current prices, 1540 gallons, or approx 90,000 miles (60mpg Aygo 'combined' economy), plus you would be able to take it on the motorway without being scared ****less (and a danger to everyone else)
They need the cost to be down in the £6-10k range before it will be even close to worth it.
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Tuesday 26th May 2009 12:42 GMT Anonymous Coward
You're all being too hard on the designer
One of the things the designer mentioned in his brief for this horrible-looking thing was that it had t be big enough to carry two people and
A CASE OF BEER
This guy is clearly thinking clearly, we should encourage more engineers to work this way. So the next space shuttle must carry 7 astronauts into orbit for seven days, return safely in any weather and be capable of stowing a case of beer. The US Army's next robot must survive dangerous combat conditions and not spill a single bottle of beer...
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Tuesday 26th May 2009 15:18 GMT Stu
Whoever the hell...
...it is that invented the fugly smart-car shape design need locking up.
And those who copy said design need shooting.
Just reminds me of a fatal shunt accident I saw involving two lorries and a saloon car on the M1, they must've thought it'd be a great idea to reproduce the look of carnage.
Quite sick.
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Tuesday 26th May 2009 20:52 GMT Anonymous Coward
Good god
As first efforts go...this thing is Shite. Capital S too.
Whatever spec sheet the guy used, it's going in the bin. Here - try this one:
range: 200miles+ please
Acceleration: 0-60 in <13sec please
Top speed: 70mph+ please
Battery life: 5yrs+ please, with < 5% degradation
Price: < £8,000 please
looks: anything better than this. Oh dear yes.
Stop, because they should have. Very early on.
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Tuesday 26th May 2009 20:52 GMT Anonymous Coward
Looks like...
...the love child of a Smart Fortwo and a Bond Bug, but crippled with some sort of horrible birth defect.
As the kids today would say, FAIL. This is just following the fine, unsuccessful tradition of making an electric vehicle that has limited range, limited speed, limited acceleration, takes all night to recharge and tries to look all futuristic (but ends up just being weird and ugly), then selling it at the sort of price that makes your eyes burst when you look at the price tag.
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
