This is definitely the direction we need to be heading in: ultralight, ultra efficient vehicles for day to day use coupled to sufficient renewable capacity to make them near to zero emissions.

Make it a tandem two seater and I will be very interested. Car clubs could provide vehicles with larger carrying capacity when needed.

Even in the not so sunny UK, a domestic scale (2.5kWp) solar PV installation will generate sufficient electricity (2,125kWh/yr) to power a car 8,500 miles (@250Wh/mile which is well above what this thing would consume).

The car manufacturers sometimes talk about taking the car out the environmental equation, usually referring to large fuel cell powered cars but that won't work. This could though, possibly.

Watching with interest!

For many decades, some very smart people convinced the majority that they need 3-tonne steel boxes on four large wheels to drive to work (safely).

Few people known that's very far from the truth and that a 1-tonne or even less e-vehicle could drive one or two people to work very safely while using 75% less energy.

Who is going to de-program the majority? Oil (and large vehicle) addiction goes very deep.

We've turned vehicle weight into a weapon's race. It's almost like they are weapons of "mass" destruction.

I've done talks to audiences of intelligent executives who very much want to be green and do things "right", but they can't get over the idea that "mass equals safety simply by the laws of physics" and I've had that quoted to me a number of times.
When I point out that an approx 500kg Formula 1 car can hit a wall at 170mph with thousands of times it's own mass and still have the driver walk away 90% of the time they always get this thoughtful "gee, I never thought of that" look.
It's about the vehicle design. We could clearly build super safe cars at nearly any weight. But are we willing to pay for it (carbon fiber, etc)? No...we just keep throwing more steel and a slightly higher bumper at the problem so we can make sure it's the other guy who gets killed in a wreck, not "us".

Why do they worry about solar charging at all - why not just charge off the grid - this thing will be so efficient, it won't matter very much where the electricity comes from.

[ By all means have some solar panels if you wish, there is just no need to link them to charging the battery for these ]

On the safety vs greenery argument, one group of people ARE prepared to accept lower levels of safety (cyclists, both pedal and motor). However, what they get for this is the ability to move through and around slow moving or stationary traffic, due to their narrowness. The deal seems to be speed/predictability for safety.

This vehicle, however, is quite wide - wide enough to be stable, and thus not narrow enough to move through or around traffic: thus the cyclist's deal doesn't hold - you will still get caught in traffic. You will be protected from the elements, if not from the SUVs, which is something.

It looks a bit like an electric version of a bubble car from the 1950's, but with better shut lines.

I wish them well, but I am not sure they have it.

I hope people will come to their senses and drive more responsible vehicles. Where I live, 1 in 4 vehicles is a large truck or a large SUV. They block the view of others in traffic, they block the view in parking lots and really don't care, they can see just fine.

It is a metaphor for "I got mine, the heck with you" on wheels. As long as their needs are met it does matter at all about anyone else...the heck with them! This lack of caring about others follows through to almost everything they do in life. Why should they care about anyone else, they are all that matter.

@Paul, it is certainly technically possible to make a racing car survive a horrendous crash.
It is not possible to do so at a reasonable cost (i.e. < 12K Euros).

On the other hand, people in Europe and Japan drive small, lightish cars without many problems.

If you run into a Merc doing 120 mph in a Yaris doing 60, you will be in trouble, but this does not happen very often, and we should not build our cars for these worst case scenarios.

How many people who worry about small cars smoke or don't wear seatbelts ? (Or gorge on Big Macs?)

Lets worry about the things that actually kill us, and not just use excuses to buy huge cars so we can look down on other people (literally).

The Sunstang bears a certain resemblance to the 3-wheel autorickshaws which are ubiquitous across S. and SE. Asia. The major difference is that it's used by the owner for transport, not for hire. And India is getting even closer by trying to replace the ICEV versions with electrics.

I don't see vehicles like the Excursion doing very well if they are subject to carbon fees, pollution fees or congestion fees based on their excessive size. The Sunstang (and Tango) would be favored once those externalities were internalized. TT may disagree, and I can only say let's set up the experiment and run it.

Excellent idea, hope they move forward with it. The current US automakers need competition to wake them up.

With over 100 million overweight He-Men around, the Big-3++ will unfortunately continue to try to satisfy their acquired ego unless a very light weight vehicle could be built to look BIG.

I am not sure what that is suppose to mean, without clarification.

Two batteries is using twice the resources, I agree that charging everywhere you park makes much more sense. I have proposed inductive charging pads where the driver just parks and does not have to plug anything in.

Some on here have said that is not possible, some in the past also said the the Wright Brothers would never fly. If we listened to them we would all be back 100 years in the past. It is easy to say no, but much more constructive to say maybe.

SJC,

If inductive charging isn't feasible (perhaps the efficiency is lacking, there are health concerns about radiation or the magnetic field will erase your credit card, to name just a few potential blockers), then I see no reason why we couldn't have in-pavement charging connectors to which the car automatically connects when parking. It's safe, inobtrusive, vandalism proof. If a car can park itself, why not connect itself?

I think the existing culture of large, powerful, 4 passenger vehicles is wasteful and unnecessary, like large houses, only worse.

If the countryside could be magically transformed from roads and parking lots clogged with huge cars to smaller streets full of always active rental mini-cars, there would be fewer and smaller cars and always many to choose from.

But everyone who fixates on minimizing our vehicle culture comes to this same conclusion over and over –

The Sunstang is just another unmarketable (but very logical) dream car.

India is trying to outlaw rickshaws that get high utilization and take little hp, because they pollute - instead of just cleaning them up.
Why – I don’t know – probably because they want an auto industry like we have – Opps - like we had.

As for thinking that some pseudo-science will work, just because you would like it to, that’s partly what’s wrong with our culture.

The nay-sayers think we cannot just continue to import oil even though it’s cheap and cure it later – and they are right.

The nay-sayers think we cannot continue to drive huge cars even though we can afford the car and the gas – and they are right.

Reality is what’s needed. Ignorance is only bliss for the ignorant.