AltCar 2008: Is the Lola EV the "poor man's Tesla"?
click above for more of the Lola EV
During the Santa Monica Alt Car Expo, someone joked to me that the Lola EV, a flashy electric kit car, was the "poor man's Tesla." Paul Pearson, the man behind the project, said, "That's a compliment," but there's really no comparison between the two other than that they're two-seat sports cars that run on batteries. The Lola EV has a 70-75 mph top speed and Pearson called it a very Southern California type of car. There are no opening doors, for example, and there's no roof (so, it may look like a convertible, but it's not).
Steve Graber of Graber Cars in Phoenix, Arizona designed the Lola EV and Pearson applied his EV knowledge to the project. Two years ago, at the Alt Car Expo, Pearson was displaying his street racer (and you can see the story of getting in touch with Zap that he describes in our talk in this old comments thread). For the new Lola, Pearson can deliver the car to a builder as everything from a body with a set of plans to an almost finished car, starting at $45,000. The big caveat: the Lola-EV's price does not include the batteries. Since Electric Custom Cars is not a licensed automaker, they can't deliver the complete vehicle to buyers. One cool part of the design is that the design calles for the batteries to sit where the doors would be, a placement that Pearson told us improved safety.
See more over at Electric Custom Cars and listen here (7 min):
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
TX CHL Instructor 8:19AM (9/30/2008)
"a very Southern California type of car"
Even in Southern California, it occasionally rains.
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GoodCheer 9:30AM (9/30/2008)
"the batteries to sit where the doors would be, a placement that Pearson told us improved safety"
...improve safety compared to putting them in the front bumper maybe. The approach of the a) Solectria Sunrise b) eBox c) Volt d) Tesla that put the batteries in the middle of the car in the floor, low and centered and far away from any crash intrusion is FAR safer.
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Peter 12:42PM (9/30/2008)
The batteries in the doors improve safety compared to what exactly? Batteries in the driver's lap? In a side impact crash the batteries would be pushed into the passenger compartment. There is no space for extra reinforcement without making the door sills extremely wide.
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Sebastian 1:51PM (9/30/2008)
The door frames are pretty wide, and you can hear Pearson talk about his battery-placement reasoning at about 2:20 in the recording.
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caramelzappa 4:02AM (4/14/2009)
What about t-bone collisions? They're much more dangerous than front end collisions.
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