Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: electric vehicles

[Muriel Kranowski (murielk]

I posed the question about electric trucks to a friend here in town, David 
Roper, a retired physics professor at Virginia Tech. Dave owns a ZAP Xebra 
pickup and has made himself into the most public Electric Vehicle champion 
in Blacksburg.  Here's his reply (not speaking to shared ownership but 
about the vehicles).  He said I could include his email address: 
roperld [at] vt.edu.

He also sent me a 2-page PDF file containing more information, his 
recommendations about dealers, etc., which I'll forward to anyone who asks 
for it.

----------------Dave's message--------------
The ZAP Xebra PK pickup starting selling in the U.S. in Sept 2006. There 
were lots of things that needed to be improved, some of which I found with 
mine. There is a summary of those items at
http://autos.groups.yahoo.com/group/Xebra_EV/files/Xebra%20Breeders%20Digest
/ (click on the Xebra Breeders Digest).

I am told that many of those items have been fixed in the 2008 model.

See:
http://www.roperld.com/science/ZAPXebraPKRoper.htm
http://www.roperld.com/science/zapxebrapkreview.htm
http://www.roperld.com/science/ZapElectricCars.htm


A log of my experience with the ZAP Xebra PK is
http://www.roperld.com/science/RoperPKLog.htm .

For any electric car with lead-acid batteries, the batteries will last much 
longer if they are not discharged all the way down, even though they are 
called "deep cycle" batteries. The most life-time energy can be gotten out 
of them if they are discharged only about half way.

I hope to move to lithium-ion-iron-phosphate batteries in a year or so
(http://www.ewidistribution.com/batteries.html); right now they are about 3 
times or more expensive than lead-acid AGM batteries (the best lead-acid 
batteries), which I now have. Their price should go down rapidly in the 
next few years.

The GEM can go only 25 mph, whereas the Xebra can go 40 mph.