Sunday, October 7, 2007

Tender Scarlette: an all-electric Jeep lookalike from France

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Let me introduce you to the Tender Scarlette. This 4WD that looks like an old Jeep is really all-electric and currently available for sale in France. We've mentioned it before, but let's not forget that France has one of the most advantageous electric tariffs in Europe, thanks to the country's widespread use of nuclear energy. In fact, France supplies its neighbors with electricity.

So, about la Scarlette. You can have it in two flavors, which depends on your driver's license. If you are 16 and have a basic motorcycle license (called A1 in Europe) you can drive one of this cars which is homologated as a quadricycle. Performance is then quite discreet, limited to 45 km/h (slightly more than 30 mph) and it can't be driven on highways. However, if you have a regular car license (B1), the car can run up to 80 km/h and can run on highways. The engines can yield 4 kW, 8 kW or 12.8 kW of power depending on the configuration of the vehicle.

The car is a real 4WD with four motors, one for each wheel. The electricity is stored in the floor in 12 lead-acid batteries that store 48 V and 240 Amperes each. It's enough to drive the car up to 100 km (60 miles). Lead acid batteries were used because they are reliable, have a decent life span (claimed to be from 50,000 to 70,000 km) and low cost of substitution (around 2,200 EUR) when they do die out.. The cost of the car is between 10,000 and 15,000 EUR, depending on options.

Another very interesting feature is that la Scarlette has a chassis made from stainless steel and bodywork made from aluminium, making it a tough vehicle which, although looking like an old Jeep, reminds us of the Citroën Méhari.

[Source: SCVE]

 

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