In a previous post I was rather sceptical about the technical feasibility of the specs proposed by ZAP. More study on the net made clear that this car may be less Sci-Fi than I thought. This excited me because the ZAP-X is the most promising all electric car concept I have encountered so far. However I noticed that the APX body concept from Lotus engineering that this car would be based on is no longer featured on the Lotus website. Allso the webpage of ZAP's Detroit Electric joint venture that was supposed to build the car mentions the production of the silly ZAP Alias by 2009 but doesn't mention the ZAP-X. Paranoia is setting in again...

Well it would appear that my initial hunch that the ZAP-X was to good to be true was correct. The web-site Wired.com features an article that exposes the ZAP company as a bit of a fraud. Once involved in the production of electric scooters it has degraded to a financial racketeering scheme. Apparently it cleverly boosts the value of it's board members stock options with a barrage of press releases about ground breaking green vehicles that never materialise. People buy into it because they idealistically believe such green vehicles are possible. I think the world needs cars like the ZAP-X, but I'm afraid that this particular EV is never gonna happen. The Electric Lightning proposal for an EV features similar technology and performance as the ZAP-X and apparently this car will be a reality soon. What's also a reality is that this car is rumoured to be costing at least twice as much and has probably only half the range...Clearly it's still a long way to go before the mass introduction of EV's is feasible.

Read the whole story with this link:

http://www.wired.com/cars/futuretran...?currentPage=1

I've been following the Eestor saga for about a year now and, the more I read the more I believe they will be able to produce a prototype. The issue, I believe, will be recharge facilities. In order to recharge in a reasonable time frame at 3500 V, you would need an industrial capacity transformer. That might work if we could drive up to an electrical substation that had a sort of "retail" point of sale, but most gas stations wouldn't be able to provide this type of connection. And no insurance company I know would cover a home with a substaion iin the garage.

It makes sense that the military would be up for a 3500v, 52Kwh capacitor...they aren't governed by National Fire codes. If the Eestor unit shipped with a 220v recharge circuit it would work, but my numbers are closer to 1.5 hour recharge at 220v, not 5 min. Nonetheless, this is the most exciting EV technology I've ever seen (well, heard of!).