Zap! announces yet another announcement about more vaporware
For a company that purports to be in the business of zero emission vehicles, Zap sure generates a lot of vapor. The Santa Rosa CA based purveyor of electric vehicle press releases and Chinese-built battery-powered three wheelers has announced that they are going to make an announcement. At the company's annual meeting on July 29th, CEO Steve Schneider will be unveiling plans for another electric car in addition to the Zap-X. The new car has a target price of $30,000 a projected top speed of 100 mph and a range of 100 miles. Scheduled to appear before the Zap-X the car is intended to use some of the same technology as the frequently announced crossover. Whether this new car ever turns out to be anything more than a series of press releases and some renderings remains to be seen. Call us when there is an actual running prototype.
[Source: Zap]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Kardax 2:11PM (6/23/2007)
Based on their "design that will serve a niche no other manufacturer in the auto industry is seeking to fill", it sounds like they're planning to build a sedan to compete with the Miles Automotive Javlon, if one considers the vaporware market to be competitive :)
In all seriousness, the ZAP-X can't be built at the original specifications (350 miles range + 10 minute recharge + less than $250,000 each). ZAP! is financially fragile, and wouldn't survive cancellation of their most ambitious project. It's likely the sedan's primary purpose is to draw attention away from the ZAP-X so they can quietly pretend it never happened.
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Peter 4:54PM (6/23/2007)
Indeed. The vaporware market seems to be as competitive as ever - ZAP's website is excellent evidence of that. If you try to "pre-order" a ZAP-X, you're brought to a page that let's you select a variety of options that don't even make sense. You can choose to pay either $50k, $60k, or $100k. What??
And speaking as a professional rendering artist, the renderings they crank out look to be done by a bad freelancer. I mean seriously, why is their a lens flare in this shot?
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Altairian1 8:32AM (6/25/2007)
The Zap's EV next year might be the most affordable if they can pull it off. The "Talks" with AltairNano for the Zap-X use of Nanosafe(on the cheap) just like Tesla tried), may be why they are taking a different approach. Now that Big companies like Lockeed validating the technology via ElectoEnergy(Alti partner), Nanosafe is becoming the de facto best of breed Altairnative energy available today.Alcoa JV and AES announcement should be next.
ZapEV.com is an Altairnative .com affiliate.
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