ELLICA

[andrew richard rose]

Just a short entry for those amongst us who have never seen or heard of this car.

The Ellica is a genuine 100% battery electric vehicle powered by eight in-wheel motors,
and yes the car has indeed 8 wheels , strange,but then they claim that it adds to the
stability when the car is traveling at speeds up to 380 kp/h ! Power is derived from a
large lithium-ion power pack which is housed under the floor within the chassis .
What is truly amazing about this car is that it was built over four years ago , and has
received very little press coverage , much less than say the Bugatti Veyron which has
a similar top speed but with a unit price of around 1000000 euros actually costs twice
as much as the complete development cost of the Ellica at half a million dollars !
The few entries that I have seen in the press have called the car "ugly" and "hideous ",
however I believe this is subjective , I remember back in the seventies in England
people where of the opinion that the Citroen DS was ugly , yet this car has been
recently voted as the most beautiful car of all time by a panel of designers ! When
you look at the Ellica it doe's kind of look like some of the design cues came from
the Citroen .
For me the most remarkable thing is how its creator has managed to bring the car
from a drawing to a fully working prototype , which has A/C , airbags ,etc with such
a small budget , The major car companies have been known to spend more on the
design of a door handle ! it sort of makes a bit of a joke out of the car industry , and
proves that one and for all there is absolutely no reason why an electric car should
cost any more to design and produce than its ICE powered cousin !

It is a shame that the Ellica will probably never make it into production ,or that its
creator's genius will probably never be used by any of the major car companies
to build a less extreme car for the mass market , at a time when car manufacturers
are losing such massive amounts of cash , in GM's case 8.6 billion dollars a month !
and are plowing massive amounts into designing cars like the Chevy Volt a car that
many people believe will be out of date by the time it becomes available to the
public !

I have included a link to a film made about the creation of this car it is in 5 parts
and it is really worth watching , unfortunatly the only copy that seems to be available
has portugues subs over the japanese bits, however the english narration explains
most of the important points.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J95Lh3NnL4A&feature=channel_page

[Ben]

Hey Andrew. I think all the info you need is on this site; http://www.eliica.com/ All you have to do is being able to read Japanese. :) I think you can reach him on [e-mail].

[Andrew Novak]

How can I buy one??

[Andrew Novak]

I believe in my heart that his vehicle could change the way we think of cars. I used to work for one of the big three and the scary thing it’s all about batteries and mass production. Dr Fukao just needs a little help and a push plus some seed money!!! This car goes fast; all it needs is durability to pass USA crash tests from the NSTB and a nice modern day, old day, assembly process!! I have the bucks, let’s run with it

[Trudy]

i can see what you mean about the citroen influence, andrew. it's got a real F1 look to it, too. can't begin to imagine speeding along at 380 kp/h but it'd be a good thing if they did away with the 8 tyres....costs a fortune as it is to replace 4! ...though, i suppose if you could afford to buy one of these cars (assuming they went into mainstream production) the tyre cost would be chickenfeed!

very interesting article. :)