EVDL Administrator via EV wrote:
And, [the Citicar] was the cheapest car in America!
That may have been true for the very earliest ones, but the Citicar that
Consumer Reports tested in 1975 cost them $2946. That included $90 for a
heater (!) and $36 for a spare tire (!). MSRP for a basic 1975 Toyota
Corolla 2-door was $2711, heater and spare tire standard.
That's one data point. But the price for cars is always "negotiable", so
it's hard to know what the average selling price was.
My CitiCar suggested price list (dated Dec 1, 1975) says $2690 for the
car, $20 dealer prep, and $85 freight for a total of $2795. This was for
the 48v version (the 36v model was cheaper). That was to my dealer in
Rochester NY from Sebring FL. Sales tax, license, and registration would
have made it about what Consumer Reports paid.
I suspect the 1975 Toyota price did not include all the mandatory fees.
So as far as I know, the CitiCar *was* the cheapest car in America at
the time. Later, the ComutaCar was still being advertised as the
cheapest car.
The problem is that it was such a tiny company that they couldn't
afford to put the quality into it. Great idea; poor implementation.
Unfortunately, potential buyers don't care about such details. They see
only the prices they pay, and what they get for their money.
The "EV Bobs" were great guys, and had a fair bit of practical experience,
but they seem to have been out of touch with modern (1970s) vehicle design.
I think it was simply that they didn't have the money, resources, or
time to get it right. They did amazingly well with what little they had
to work with. Bob himself always called it the "ShittyCar".
For all their failings, the EV Bobs had a vision and a real dedication to
it. If they could have sold more EVs, ramped up production, and stayed in
business for a decade or so longer, I think that eventually economy of scale
would have kicked in and made it possible for them to solve at least some of
the problems.
But they didn't get that kind of time. Fuel prices plummeted in the early
1980s, syphoning off what little demand existed for EVs in the mid to late
1970s.
Exactly right!
I see the situation as a lot like the early microcomputer business. The
early ones were terrible! Expensive, low performance, hard to use,
unreliable; because they were built by tiny companies with almost no
experience or resources.
But there were no "big guys" in the market, so the little guys had time
to learn and improve. They had a good 5-10 years before the likes of IBM
etc. jumped in, and basically crowded out everyone but the few that had
grown enough to compete.
Not so with the car business. If a start-up can't make a great car right
from the start, they will be run out of business by the Big Guys before
they have a chance to learn or improve.
--
Teaching children to program goes against the grain of modern education.
Just imagine the chaos if they learned to think logically, plan, create,
implement, test, and execute!
--
Lee Hart, 814 8th Ave N, Sartell MN 56377, www.sunrise-ev.com
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