I live near the beach on the Pacific side of the Chiba peninsula in Japan. A new shop just opened - apparently one of a kind - and they are selling plug-in cars that go 50 kms/hour (30 MPH) and have a range of about 35 kms (20 miles) on one charge. I was told 8 hours for a full charge. The shop just opened and the staff did not have detailed answers to my questions - there are several models and body shapes but I do not know if the drive set up/performance is the same on all of them. They are street legal on roads in the area (most are limited to speeds of 40 to 50 kms anyway) and have various accessories to hold surf boards and picnic supplies. The major problem for me is a limit of one person - if there was room for 2, I would consider one of these as a runabout. They are listing at 522,000 yen - about $4,600.00. The shop has a wind generator and there are solar chargers available for the roof of the car and as home units but they did not have prices or details. The shop has only been open for about a week but there are line-ups for test drives and I have already seen at least 3 in the 'wild'... [attachmentid=3617]
Hey, thanks for the thread! Any EV is a good EV at this point! There is another brand, that I thought this thread would be about, that has three models coming - the top of the line is expected to have 200 miles range with Li-ion batteries, and the cost is under $30k. This unit is the only one not yet finalized. Expected in 2007. This is a (relatively) full-sized EV to boot. Oops... the one I'm thinking of is from China. I'm not on my home computer, so don't have the link. Looks promising though. The actually exist! Too bad we can't buy them in the US.
