An electric sports car long before Fisker and Tesla
12/05/2013
The CEOs of Fisker and Tesla like to see themselves as the great innovators who are revolutionizing mobility with new ideas and concepts. But in fact, almost 40 years before modern electric vehicles, there was already an electric sports car that almost made it into series production.
Edmond X. Ramirez founded the Amectran Corporation in the early seventies, the name stood for "American Ecological Transportation" and the central product developed in the seventies and presented towards the end of the decade was called the Amectran EXAR-1, a sports car with a plastic body, specially developed tires from Goodyear and an electric motor from General Electric, given a modern makeover by Pietro Frua. Ramirez was of the opinion that an electric car had to be designed fundamentally differently to a conventional vehicle and that innovative approaches to production, sales and maintenance were also necessary.
Compared to Tesla and the like, however, the Amectran had to make do with significantly less power, 27 hp was mentioned. The chassis components probably came from BMW; Frua had used one of his BMW designs as a basis. With a weight of over two tons, a top speed of around 137 km/h and 12 seconds for acceleration from 0 to 60 miles (96 km/h) were expected in 1979. The target range was 120 to 160 km with around 700 to 800 kg of lead batteries thanks to recuperation capability.
The car was shown around the world at the time and received much praise, but despite a reported 22,000 orders (and a corresponding number of USD 1000), it never went into series production.
So the slogan "Anything Else is Obsolete" was not quite true for the Amectran EXAR-1. Let's see if its later descendants can do better ...
Further details on the EXAR-1 can be found on the Pietro Frua website.
