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Electric Dream Cars

Zero to sixty miles per hour in three seconds.

The Wrightspeed X1 is not what comes to mind when people think about electric cars. But that will be changing, as a new breed of very fast, $100,000 electric sports cars beat Ferraris and Lamborghinis at stop lights and on the track.

As I rode in the X1 next to Ian Wright, the creator and owner of the company, I watched the G-meter go past 0.9 times the force of gravity, without ever shifting a gear.

In eight seconds we were going over 100 miles per hour.

The X1 is better than a rollercoaster. It's a heart attack on wheels.

X1

Running on $40,000 worth of the same lythium polymer batteries in your laptop computer, this car will go 125 miles on a charge.

Doubling that range to 250 miles, the Tesla Roadster is another hot electric car, able to do zero to 60 in about four seconds.

arnold in a tesla roadster

Built inside a body based on the Lotus Elise, the lightweight aluminum car has the looks to match the price. Like the X1, that comes in at $100k. Yes, that's Arnold Schwarzenegger in the passenger seat.

tango

The Tango is an electric car made for the urban commuter. It is narrower that a Honda Gold Wing motorcycle, and two of them can split a traffic lane. The two-seater (the passenger sits behind the driver) can park nose-in to the curb like a motorcycle. I saw one demonstrated at Google, and they drove it into an elevator, then drove it out of the elevator through the hallways to the lecture hall.

All of the lead acid batteries are carried very low to the ground, so the car doesn't tip a bit going around slaloms that challenge motorcycles. And, like it's fatter brothers, it does zero to sixty in four seconds, and has a top speed of 150 miles per hour. One of my Google co-workers bought one that day. The T600 comes in at $108,000 with $10,000 deposit, but the T200 is under $40,000 (zero to 60 in 5 seconds), and the T100 comes in at $18,700 (0 to 60 in seven seconds). But neither of those less expensive cars has been produced yet.