With Nissan’s Leaf electric car being launched in the UK last week - with the severe limitations currently associated with electric cars being heavily glossed over by the greenies on its debut – I was interested in this article about Volvo’s C30 electric car.
The article doesn’t give any general details, but I was bemused by the fact that it has to use hydrocarbon fuel to keep it running in its country of origin!
But I had a scout around and found this old article roughly outlining its specifications.
Volvo has tested a handful of C30 BEV prototypes over the past six months and claimed that the e-car has a reliable range of over 90 miles. The car can do 0-60mph in 11 seconds, Volvo added, but its top speed is 80mph.
So. It will probably have a real range of under 90 miles, and this will get less as the batteries age. It’s slow. And it isn’t likely to be launched before 2014 at the earliest.
I must admit that I am still in the dark over what happens if you start running a lot of the auxiliary functions, like heaters, wipers, heated rear window, and so on. Or if the kids have their Nintendos plugged into the auxiliary socket. I don’t think the quoted range per charge takes any of that into account, yet it is still a paltry sub-100 mile figure.
Electric cars are not the future.