Kurt Schaefer
For months I can been going past the local Hertz rental place, and I kept seeing these funny little cars. They were small, came in a number of colors, and had a weird mat finish. Now my on going Isetta restoration project had me thinking about little cars, and I wanted to find out more, but never quite enough to actually go in and find out what was going on with these cute little cars. The one morning as I was motorcycling by on my way to work I noticed that they had a sign out explaining that they were electric cars, and what the rental prices were. I saw that it was $279 to rent the car for a month.
I thought about it all day, and so on the way home in a fit of craziness I went in and rented one. I left my motorcycle there, and just drove it home. The car is a Th!nk, and it's an all electric 2 seater hatchback. The body is made from thermo plastic, and since the one I rented was dark blue it rather felt like I was driving a RubberMaid Car. The Th!nk is powered by 19 NiCad batteries that are located under the seats. It has a top speed of 55, and they claim a range of 50 miles. You can find out the details at their website. I thought I'd mostly focus on my impressions driving one for two month.
First Impressions
I
climbed in, and the rental guy showed me how to start it up. The
break pedal seemed huge, and the accelerator (note I didn't say "gas pedal")
seems really small by comparison. The seat was firm and comfortable. The
switch that you use to select Park, Drive, Neutral, and Reverse seemed
flimsy, and it took me a while to figure out which setting I was in, but
after a little bit of fiddling I threw it into drive, and I was off!
It was very quiet, and seemed to have a fair amount of zip once I got used
to the small accelerator. I headed home to surprise my house mates.
The amount of interior space was surprising, it was rather like Dr. Who's
Tardis (larger on the inside then on the outside.) I think the main
reason for this is that in a regular car the first 1/3 of the car is taken
up by engine, so peoples minds are used to factoring out a third of the
car when determining how much interior a car has. The Th!nk's motor
and drive train is pretty small, so it doesn't take up a whole lot of space.
The Th!nk is quite tall for it's length, so you have lots of head room.
There's no glove compartment, and the area under the seats is all batteries,
so you're left with few options of keeping things like CD's out of site.
Backing up is a dream. The glass rear hatch give you direct line
of site behind you. You can see exactly where you're going.
People's Reactions
The
Th!nk is a lot of fun, and one of the fun things about it is people reactions
to it. People on the sidewalk give you a thumbs up. People
in other cars slow down to take a second look, or pull along side to shout
questions. "Is that thing electric?", "Who makes that?",
"How much does it cost?", "How far does it go?" Coworkers request rides.
Neighbors come over to ask you about it. Friends want to take it for a
spin. All in all it's a very festive car. People consistently
wanted to "have a look under the hood" but there is no hood. They
look around forlornly and eventually have to satisfy themselves with opening
the tiny compartment in the back of the car that houses a few warning triangles,
and a can of Fix-a-flat. Kind of the very pour mans version of a
spare tire. I've had people try to pick up the car. I guess because
it's small, and they don't have a good sense of how much it weighs.
People always ooh and aah when you pull away because it basically
sounds the same as when you were parked. There was a rumor around work
that I had built the car. I was flattered, thinking that my other
electric vehicle projects (electric bike, electric scooter) had set the
stage for that kind of thinking. Then one day some random person asked
me if I had made it, and I realized that there is something about how different
it is that makes some people think it's home made. She said it looked like
a "Lego Car" (Here in Silicon Valley I've seen a number of amazing
home made vehicles around, but still...)
Charging Around Town
So
I have the car. How does charging work? Well unlike the cobin
sparrow a Th!nk can't just be plugged in to a standard 110v outlet.
The charging unit requires a 50amp 240v circuit. So how could I possibly
be charging this thing? Well Hertz had an arrangement where they
have two of these charging stations at the rental place. I could charge
the car there for free. The rental office was only 1.5 miles from
work. My plan was to keeping a junker bicycle locked up at Hertz so I would
drive to Hertz, stick the car on the charger, and ride the bike the rest
of the way to work. Then in the evening I'd ride the bike back over
and pick up the car. First I had to figure out how to get the bike
over to Hertz. I discovered you can fit a bike into a Th!nk by cranking
the passenger seat all the way flat, and pushing the bike in from the back.
You do have to drive with the handle bars pretty much sticking in your
face, but it works.
So that was the system I used for the first month. The good thing was that I didn't have to charge it every day. I ended up charging it about 3 times a week. That gave me enough juice to commute, go to the movies, run a few errands on the weekend, etc. but there were some serious problems with this system.
Ow It Hertz!
One of the biggest problems was that the Hertz parking lot was always a-buzz with normal cars, so parking close enough to be able to charge was frequently a problem. It be fare I was never unable to get charging, but several times I had to get people to move other cars out of the way. I could tell the Hertz employees hated the imposition, and in general it was a real pain to deal with. When you're unable to charge at home you have to budget enough range so you can not only limp home, but then also get the 7.5 miles over to the charging station. Over a weekend you have to plan your trips so that you won't run out of juice before Monday. The system of charging at Hertz worked, but it wasn't really giving me a sense of the full potential of the electric car.Charging Into The Future
So for the second month I decided to get a charger and really see what it was like. Usually it costs $20 a month to rent the charger, but the Hertz guys agreed to throw one in for free. (Anything to keep me away from their chargers.) So they sent me home with the charger piled in the back of the Th!nk. I was excited because they seemed to have a 20amp 240volt 3 prong plug on the end of the cord, so I assumed that with a simple converter I could plug it into a 30amp dryer outlet, and be good to go. How wrong I was...
I
made a converter cord, but when I plugged in the charger, and hooked up
the car the red "requires service" light came on on the charger.
On closer inspection I noticed that the charger had 4 strand 8 gage wire
going to that 20amp plug. Super over kill, and one wire to many for
the 20amp plug they had on there. Then I noticed that the charger
tag claimed something like 34amp continues load with 40 something
amp peak load. Obviously who ever stuck that pathetic 20amp plug
had just been creating a fire hazard. So I put a big old 50 amp 4
prong plug on. The difference between the two plugs is remarkable.
Sadly
this left me high and dry in terms of charging. My drier outlet was
simply not beefy enough. So I started the long process of getting the ok
from my landlords to have a 50amp 240v service put in. This involved
3 weeks of phone tag with our lame properly "management" people.
All the while I'm still having to charger up over at Hretz. Luckily
right near the end they finally gave the project the OK, and I had the
receptacle installed. (A friend of mine is a retired contractor,
and he agreed to install the thing for free, but I still had to buy all
the parts.) So for the last week and a half of that month I got to
experience the full electric lifestyle.
New Outlook
With
the charger things really open up. Every time you hop in the
car you have a full charge. The power used to go to and from
work (about 15 miles of flat driving) would recharge in about 45 mins.
I started going places that were further away, and I stopped having to
budget multiple trips before the next charge. It was really sweet.
We discovered early on that you can fit 4 people in the car by putting
two in the hatch back. It's surprisingly spacious back there, and
you get to have funny "clown car" moments. A lone SUV driver watching
4 people hop out of this tiny car.
A Scary Evenings Drive
I
decided to go to a co-workers house after work. He said he lived
about 10 miles from work, so I thought "no problem I can get over there
and back home with juice to spare" so he gave me directions which I wrote
down. After work I headed off. The route was hilly which increases
energy consumption. Part way there I some how go off the directed
route, and drove around a bit looking for the next road. I was somewhat
in a tangle of roads that make a number of name changes. I stopped
at a store to phone the guy and ask him how to get to his house, but he
wasn't home yet. (We were meeting at his place at a specific time)
So I drove to a nearby bookstore and got a map. I picked out the
route again, and headed off. Now it was dark, and I was getting further
and further from home. All the extra driving around had me lower
on energy then was good, and at some point I just made the executive decision
to turn around rather then going on and risk running out of energy.
It was a heart wrenching decision because I knew I was only a few miles
from the guys house, but each mile further from home I got the greater
the risk. So I turned around but now it was dark, and I made a number of
wrong turns going back though the maze of streets. It was horrible
to know you didn't have a ton of range left, and then make some wrong turn
that takes you miles out of your way.
I made it back home with some energy to spare, but it was a rather harrowing experience. Cars with limited range are NOT good for exploring unknown territory far from home. *Phew*
Final Impressions
I
really love that car. For my somewhat bizarre lifestyle (ie no car, only
a bike and a motorcycle) it fit very well. For me it could have been my
only car, but for most folks out there it should be considered as a second
car. I loved parking the car. I was so short I could park in
at an angle where others would have to parallel park. The thermo
plastic body is nice, because it doesn't ding, but it scratches easily.
Luckily the mat finish make the scratches not much of a big deal.
The first day you drive a car like that you think "Oooooh quiet", the second
month you drive it you think "boy my speedometer makes some tiny noises,
how annoying" :-) I guess it's all a mater of degree. I was
always amazed at how much stuff I could stick in that car. Big sections
of 4" ABS pipe, my bike, 4 people, all kinds of things you wouldn't think
would fit. I spent two months feeling like I was living in the future.
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