Use a Neighborhood Electric Vehicle for Short Trips

Short trips around the neighborhood? I'd rather walk the distances involved. For somewhat longer distances, I go for the bike. I could easily ride a bike a distance that would require the car to be recharged twice, three, maybe even four times. My longest bike ride was about 80 miles, from Sunnyvale to San Francisco and back.

I don't see any savings in reality here on the electric
vehicles. The actual electric rates in Massachusetts are double.
Yes Double! So your cost of 100 miles at .16 is actually $116.00
not $58.00. My Toyota tacoma gets 300 miles at a cost of $35.00 per
week. Where are these .08 cent rates in the mideast? Do not forget
to add in all the taxes that are based on consumption. These are
the real rates. This is the reason you do not see any of these
vehicles in this state. There is no efficency in owning an
electrical vehicle here. I cannot imagine what the insurance
company would charge to put this on the road and the excise tax
also puts these out of reach if you have to maintain multiple
vehicles.

Please be aware that quiet vehicles like these and some of the
new hybrids pose an extra hazard to pedestrians. (My teenage son
recently pointed this out to me after having narrowly avoided being
run down by one!) Most of us have acquired a lifetime habit of
listening for vehicles as well as watching for them, but the newer,
quieter vehicles like this simply cannot be heard as they approach.
Please, whether you are driving one or walking, remember to
exercise extra caution!

I have a 2006 Prius, and I just discovered that I can set the
gearshift on B for battery and travel short distances on that. It
works also if you are out of gas to go on battery until you find a
gas station. One would not want to travel on it too much, as
draining the entire battery would be a real mistake, but a few
miles works fine. That infomation is not in the car's manual at
all.

Great article! I think neighborhood electric vehicles would be a
great idea, also, for people in small towns. Municipal utilities
could even become dealers or support private dealers in their town.
It might help keep shoppers in the local commnunity. Local economic
development officials might see the value in this as
well.

We moved down here to the WildWest back in 2000; since I hate
driving anyway,I tried to restrict my driving severely, but we live
miles from anywhere.... In our tiny town, I hated to start up my
nice little Mitsu Expo just to go the 4 long blocks to work, or to
the P.O. or the bank, etc. After we test drove a new Gemcar in
Tucson, we wanted one, but we thought the price was outrageous. So
I started watching eBay, and finally found a used one in Phoenix.
Only six years old, only 20 miles on it, and we thought it would be
perfect for just running around this tiny golf course community of
ours. All we needed to do was buy new batteries,and recycle the old
ones, and away we went. It has been a wonderful experience, and I
sure have cut those gas bills down. Plus it is So much fun to
drive!! Go ahead and try it; if you live in a small town it makes
so much sense!

Not quite as cheap or attractive as all that - first cost is
unreasonably high because of small-scale production, also the
traction batteries have a limited life and are expensive to
replace. And how is the electricity produced that's used to charge
them up? In the UK it will be from natural gas, oil, coal or atomic
energy, same old diminishing polluting stuff! And 25 miles before
they have to be recharged isn't much. Most of us will still have to
buy and keep a gasoline or diesel-powered vehicle taxed, insured
and fueled for longer trips.