ABG First Drive: Think City electric car
Click above for a gallery of the Th!nk City in Detroit
Pulling out of the parking lot in the Th!nk City electric car yesterday, the first thing I noticed was the sound. No, not the wonderful silence that is usually first on my mind when I'm on an EV, but something loud coming from the front of the car. Turns out, this is the sound of the vacuum pump for the brakes recharging. It wasn't there every time I slowed or stopped, and once we were underway I was just glad to be cruising through Ann Arbor without any emissions and didn't notice it again. Still, eliminating or getting people used to the sound is just one of many hurdles that Think North America will need to clear before it begins U.S. sales of the City in 2010 (for fleets) and 2011 (for the rest of us).
Right now, though, there's a lot to love about driving the only Th!nk City that Th!nk North America has brought to the U.S. thus far.
Gallery: Think City in Detroit
The Th!nk City has two drive modes, a standard drive mode and an economy mode. In econ mode, acceleration is decreased and regenerative braking is increased. Since there is no gearing involved, you can shift from one to the other on the fly and you really notice the regen brakes kick in when driving in econ mode. Why use econ mode? To go further, naturally. Our Th!nk representative who came along for the ride told us that the car gets a range improvement of about 10-20 percent when in econ mode, although I'm not sure if that's on top of the stated 112 mile range of the car or if you need to use econ mode to reach 112. The spec sheet simply says that the 112 miles are what you get using summer tires with the heat and air off. Of course, the list of equipment the Th!nk provided us does not list an A/C option and the model we drove did not have A/C buttons, so I'm not sure what's going on here. Let's just say that econ mode gives you a few more miles, doesn't let you sprint off the line and slows the car down quickly when you take your foot off the accelerator pedal.
For the most part, driving the City is a lot like driving any other EV. Easy, quiet and fun. Like other non-NEVs electric vehicles, you get a lot of oomph from a dead stop thanks to the electric motor's instant torque. Keeping up with traffic wasn't a problem at all. In fact, other cars had a hard time keeping up with us.
On the inside, the car feels quite roomy and visibility is good for the most part. The side mirrors look a bit funky from the driver's seat, but are quite functional. At times, the rear window didn't seem high enough and I couldn't get the rearview mirror to angle correctly to see well out the back.
In front of the driver, the information cluster is simple and easy to read. Speed is front and center. On the right of the dashboard cluster is a little analog needle that tells you if you are driving efficiently or not (green = good) and is nearly impossible to get into the red.
An analog charging scale showing the battery state of charge is on the left of the cluster. When you're running low on juice, a little gas pump/plug symbol (right) lights up to remind you to charge up somewhere. Should you start to seriously run out of juice, the City moves into limp-home mode when you can go another 6-7 miles. This will take some willful intent on the driver's part, since the battery state of charge will not drop suddenly, Th!nk representatives told us. There is no "on" button à la the Prius. Instead, putting the key into the steering wheel column and turning it powers up the car; drivers of traditional cars will feel right at home. The open "glovebox" space that sits on top of some fuses in front of the passenger takes some getting used to, but adds to the feeling of openess in the City. All European Th!nk City vehicles come with a standard assist button, an OnStar like roadside service that uses the City's built-in "Mindbox" and GSM to help in case of an emergency. The City also features plastic, dent proof panels.
In our ten minutes with the Th!nk City, we didn't have time to do fun tests like driving it up an mountain and spinning out on icy roads, but you can see what that's like here. You can also watch a video of the City in Ann Arbor, along with two video ads provided by Th!nk, below.
The big question remains: $20,000 plus $90 a month for this? We'll have a better answer once we learn more about Th!nk North America's plans and get to spend some more time behind the wheel of this fun little electric car.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Brn 3:16PM (3/13/2009)
Sebastian: "with the hear and air off."
hear -> heat
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Sebastian 4:03PM (3/13/2009)
thanks.
alexacoon 4:07PM (3/13/2009)
Just wondering whats with the matte finish on all of these cars; it wouldn't stop me from buying one (the price so far would) but yuck.
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Richard 4:27PM (3/13/2009)
To make it more recyclable and cost efficient to service.
If you scratch a car with a "glossy" paint job, it is much more complicated to fix it. With the panels on the Think City your service shop will just pull out a masculine version of a hair dryer and it will be like it never happened =) The panel are colored all the way through
With a glossy type of plastic, it would crack more easily, or it has to use some less environmentally friendly materials.
GoodCheer 4:38PM (3/13/2009)
From my understanding, Richard has it exactly right.
I believe the body is made of polyethylene, which is what plastic kayaks are made from.
On the plus side, it's very inexpensive, reasonably environmentally friendly (very easily recycled), and as Richard said, embarrassingly easy to repair with a little heat (much like a Zamboni smoothing a hockey rink), and (most importantly?) it's very slippery, so many things that would scratch paint will simply slide off.
On the down side, it is very weak, so will be a bit heavier than it could be, and (if it is pure PE), a dark color might not be up to the heat of death valley in August... you could end up with a Dali car.
All in all, I would say it's a great choice for a skin material.
alexacoon 4:43PM (3/13/2009)
Thanks that explains a lot as I couldn't imagine why it couldn't have been glossy considering all the plastic that is. Given that I could live with the finish, I just hope the red doesn't fade to pink after a few years in the sun.
I had a 79 Malibu with an interior in various shades of faded red to pink *shudders*
wave54 2:10PM (4/08/2009)
I was wondering about fading of the exterior panels myself. Looking at various photos on the web, it seems that the bright colors of the new cars don't hold up well after exposure to the elements.
The vivid robin egg blue in the brochures becomes a very faded baby blue and the fire-engine red turns to a dusty rose color.
Not necessarily a deal-breaker, yet still a concern. For the premium price that these small EVs will carry, I'd expect a normal glossy finish. Even the NICE MegaCity has shiny plastic panels that look very decent.
gorr 5:03PM (3/13/2009)
What they don't say is that the battery state of charge indicator don't work because it's almost impossible to monitor a battery in a car. And what people driving these bits of a car don't say is that they cannot trust the limits of their range carefully and they can be stuck on the road before finding a battery recharger. So they cannot enjoy their range to the maximum. These battery cars just don't work and we gonna die soon before someone possessing his or her own brain put on the market the cars that waits for more then 11 years ago and have been proven one of the best solution without any problems and without any pollution, the hydrogen fuelcell cars that have been impeded by big oil that pocess earth in entirety because they think that they must learn how to power corpses before any corpses can breath his own air. That's why these compagny like chevron and exxon have multiple corpses working in labs to find the human genome mystery. They will never find the human genome mystery because it's not a mystery first of all, it's just biology. It's been invented by humans 10 000 years ago that been borrow to algae 2 000 000 millions ago. It's just a compound of flesh and bone that live and reproduce and have a certain ability to evolution just by wishing well. These studies of big oil and goverments are killing peoples at a great speed because any time some innocent invent something like a fuelcell car then big oil show-up and put a stop at that.
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Luke 5:56PM (3/13/2009)
Gorr,
So, you're saying that the voltage of a battery doesn't reduce in a relatively repeatable way as the battery discharges? And you're also saying that a system that monitors several different properties of the battery can't adapt as the rechargeable-battery degrades over time? So, the battery indicator on your laptop can't work?
I've been a computer-service guy a long time, so I'll concede that battery-level indicators become unreliable when the battery is being used well beyond the point where it should have been replaced (usually 3 years for a laptop -- much much longer for a NiMH Prius battery). But the battery indicators are pretty good battery can actually hold its advertised energy capacity.
The real issue is making the battery for the car both light and reliable. Toyota seems to have done it (100500 miles on my girlfriend's Prius' original traction battery and counting). GM makes semi-credible claims that they have done it, though it'll be a while before real people get to test real batteries in the real world to see if it's true.
If you don't want an electric car, though, that's fine -- nobody's forcing you to buy and/or drive an electric car or a hybrid. I'd like to own and drive one, though. Your needs are probably different, so quit complaining and go research a vehicle that actually meets your needs. :-)
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gorr 7:40PM (3/13/2009)
I prefer a fuelcell car then a battery car but compagnies can sell both, no need for 1 solution only. It's an open market and i don't oppose anyone to buy a battery car. It's just that im shopping in advance for my futur car , and im hoping for a good offer put on sale in a showroom near where i live. Fuellcell car are not way different then battery car on a mechanical basis, it's the same body and electrical motors, just the battery architecture is different, a battery or a fuelcell, both give the electrical energy. In a battery, coal burning or nuclear or natural gas turn gigantic generators to charge the battery painfully with lots of weight and long recharge time. In a fuelcell, neutral hydrogen from water make ton of electricity in a box with electrodes and power is given with heat and water droplets at the other ends. car engineers from all around the world have discover that and build good working prototypes in the late 1990's before sitting on it because one guy have said that it don't work and the engineers dodn't wanted to help consumers buy green cars.
Luke 10:16PM (3/13/2009)
Cool! The hydrogen fuel cell concept vehicles that I've read about are neat machines, indeed.
I was once pretty enthusiastic about hydrogen myself, until I tried to find a way to make it in a cost-effective and efficient manner. But you'll need a way to get your hydrogen that doesn't start with natural gas. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_reforming) Remember that by the 1st law of thermodynamics(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_of_thermodynamics), it takes more energy to split 2H2O into 2H2+O2 than you get back when you burn it -- which sounds a lot like a batter to me. There are some possible solutions to this problem, and some smart people working on the problem -- but I haven't heard about a solution that I think will work on a society-wide scale yet. Still, you may find something that I didn't (a hydrogen mine?), which would be pretty cool.
As you state, electric vehicles and hydrogen-fuel-cell vehicles can be very similar. But since you were concerned that regenerative breaking would be laggier than mechanical brakes, you should realize that a fuel-cell car would have the same problem -- though, as someone whose put some miles on a Prius, I think test-driving a Prius would change your opinion on that.
Also, you can burn hydrogen in an internal combustion engine. According to high-school stoichiometry, it'll still produce H2O has the primary exhaust component. But, the same method suggests that a gasoline or diesel engine will only produce CO2 and H2O, so I suspect that the exhaust from a hydrogen-powered ICE will be more complex than anticipated.
But there are hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles on the road. If you have some money and some patience, you might be able to lease a Honda FCX Clarity (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda_FCX_Clarity). It looks like a neat vehicle... But I've heard about the car, but haven't heard how they're getting their hydrogen -- so it's probably not in a carbon-neutral way.
Herm 11:34AM (3/15/2009)
there are many ways of monitoring state of charge.. voltage is probably the least accurate. An easy way to do it is just to keep track of the amps going in/out of the battery and reset it every day after it has been charged overnight.. you will get very good accuracy that way. Again as the battery ages this will change.
vfx 7:14PM (3/13/2009)
Gas pump icon?!!
Seriously?
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Chris M 4:49PM (3/14/2009)
Look closer, that "needs a charge" icon just looks like a gas pump but with a plug instead of a nozzle. Hey, maybe the "park & charge" electrical outlets will look a little like that, then it will make even more sense.
vfx 8:37PM (3/14/2009)
I understand weening gasoline drivers the electricity will be a bit of work but all the current charging stations look more like parking meters than gas pumps.
Stew 11:59PM (3/13/2009)
You've got a customer patiently waiting. I'll take mine in black with the optional rear seats. Please quit farting around and start selling them.
Stew
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TIMMAH! 1:01AM (3/14/2009)
The $90/month is going to be an epic fail. For that cost of ownership, you can easily be driving a new Honda Insight without the range limitations.
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Mike!!ekiM 1:44PM (3/14/2009)
Yes, the battery lease idea, hmm. Just don't know if that's going to fly. Otherwise, a 112 mile Daily Range is sufficient for my needs, even if I only plan to use 60 of those miles I've still got a 1/2 charge. The size of and top speed of the electric motor sounds perfect. The scheduled defroster startup feature is a great idea for the North-East.
It's amazing GM or Ford isn't selling this car, right now, today!
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DJ 2:29PM (3/19/2009)
Gorr . . . "Corpses"? Are you proposing Zombies? And Hydrogen? Anyone who has bothered to run the numbers knows that hydrogen makes no sense what so ever.
Electric cars indeed still have difficulties, but they will be the technology of the future since electricity is cheap, can be made by many different sources, relatively clean, and simple. The battery prices are just now hitting the price for viable cars. We'll start with range-extended EVs like the Volt and small efficient cars like the Th!nk City and Aptera. But don't delude yourself, EVs are the future. When gas hits $4 again, people will be lining up to buy them.
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Vadimir 11:46AM (5/18/2009)
Hello. I apologise, I from Belarus, in English understand badly.
Tell, at Think City electric car - the gear box is? This how many weighs electric car?
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