Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Tesla? Ha, who needs it! Here comes AMP!



Tesla has long dominated news of electric cars, with it's sexy Ferrari-like styling, famous customers, and tabloid worthy behind the scenes politics. But what if you don't have in excess of $109,000 for the base model? What if you don't want to wait a year? What if you don't want to settle for a close cousin of the golf cart? What if you'd like to travel further than your commute?

Up until now, your options were pretty well non existent. Now comes the AMP, which looks suspiciously like a Saturn Sky. That's because it is, converted to be a plug in electric, with a 150 mile range, 0-60 in under 6 seconds, at a total pre-tax cost including the car of around $50,000. That's $10,000 less then the deposit alone for a Tesla!

AMP, or Advanced Mechanical Products has created a car power system based around Lithium Phosphate batteries, which are apparently safer than the at times troubled Lithium Cobalt batteries, are non toxic, and weigh 1/3 that of typical car batteries, enabling the overall weight of the car to remain the same from before the conversion, retaining the balance and stability that was engineered into the original Saturn.

Via Triple Pundit.

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