UPDATED: March 20, 2013
We were intrigued with the little ZENN electric car a year ago when we came across this video. The car is out of production because Canada and many US states won’t let light-weight minimal transportation on the roads.
ZENN isn’t dead though – it raised two million dollars for EEStor technology that is all about using a capacitor instead of a battery to power electric autos. You can read about ZENN autos and EEStor on Wikipedia and at ZENN’s website. The video if fun and worth your time…
ZENN Motor Company made about six hundred of these little electric vehicles in Quebec Canada before the production stopped in 2010. With a range of only 40 miles and a top speed that was artificially limited to 25 mph, the vehicle didn’t sell well enough to enter big time production. There were also legal issues that prevented the vehicle from being operated on highways in Canada.
Nonetheless, with a cost of only $12,000 Canadian and the ability to charge overnight from an ordinary household electrical outlet, the vehicle might have worked well in urban areas… or in Barbados. Think about how much you actually drive each day, how narrow our roads are, and that you could plug into an outlet at work or home. Zero emissions, no noise, little maintenance required and it’s not like I’m commuting 100 miles to and from downtown Manhattan every day.
Yup. The ZENN would have worked just fine for me in Barbados.
Thanks to an old friend who sent us the video and says “We could do with 10,000 of THESE coming into the Bridgetown Port right now!”
