Canadian Company Marketing Electric Cars

While the Big Three are stalled out in the slow lane, another gear has shifted in the race to provide a fully-electric automobile to a hungry North American market.

Canadian automaker Zenn Motor Company is marketing the cityZenn, which gets 30-50 miles on one battery charge at a price of an estimated $.02 per mile. The EPA estimates its equivalent in gas would be 280MPG which, at today's gas prices for a car that costs under $20,000, isn't that hard a ROI to calculate (especially considering that maintenance for EVs is minimal, since even simple things like oil changes are, like the car's direct emissions, also zero).

http://www.inhabitat.com/wp-content/uploads/zenn_driving_5_4x6.jpg

I used the ROI calculator on the Zenn site to run the numbers from my commute to my last job, and even with my fuel-efficient Saturn (35 MPG highway with no traffic, but when does that ever happen?) and a conservative estimate on my electric bill I found that I'd have saved around $4-5,000/yr at today's prices. If I didn't have direct public transportation to my day job now, I'd strongly consider getting one of these.

(Although, knowing how demand is outstripping supply, there's probably a waiting list.)