Saturday, January 12, 2008

27 electric cars companies ready to take over the road

As a follow-up to the Wall Street Journal story on electric vehicles, here's a post from VentureBeat on what's out there:

frontpic1.jpgIt’s official: Green car madness has taken over. After seeing more electric and hybrid vehicle startups than we could keep track of, we finally decided to start keeping count.

We’ve compiled a list, below, of 27 startups, listed according to their release date, with additional information on fuel type, range, top speed and price. Most haven’t yet taken venture funding, but where applicable, we’ve listed financial backing.

While we’ve got some overall favorites (Miles, Tesla, Think) and a few favorite oddballs (Aptera, Commuter Cars, Eliica), we’ve for the most part withheld judgement. Still, if you have any of your own predictions about which companies will succeed or — far more likely — fail, we’d encourage you to make them known in the comments.

A note on our method: While most manufacturers are planning more than one model, we chose the one that seemed either most commercially viable or closest to release, depending on our own (discretionary) formula. We didn’t included well-known consumer models like the Toyota Prius or Chevy Volt, or startups like AC Propulsion that only do battery conversions for consumer vehicles. We also rounded the price to the nearest thousand.

All details are taken from the companies, so we haven’t independently confirmed things like range and top speed details. In case we missed any, mention them below and we’ll add them to the list.

americanelectricvehicle.JPGAmerican Electric Vehicle — Kurrent
AEV advises its potential drivers to “Slow down,” which seems like wise advice, given the golf cart-inspired design. Still, it’s ridiculously cheap.
Fuel type: All-electric
Price: $10K
Range / top speed: 40 miles / 25mph
Release date: Available now

Continued here.
HT: PeakEnergy