Wednesday, April 30, 2008

The Electric 7

The ThoRR is a nice idea. You take the chassis of a Caterham 7 (or clone) and replace the internal combustion components with electric equivalents. Since the car weighs next to nothing to start with and is designed to run well on a comparatively small engines, you get an electric car with relatively high performance. As a bonus, sevens are so minimalist that they don't have many power draining features like air conditioning or even radios.

The design also cures some problems with the original design. Stock Sevens are very loud, but the Thorr is nearly silent. The driver and passenger foot boxes of sevens are notoriously hot because of residual engine heat. The electric shouldn't have that problem either. Interesting. I wonder if they implemented some form of regenerative braking? More importantly, what's the ThoRR's final sales price?

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