EV Innovations To Unveil Consumer-Priced Electric Vehicle for Auto X-Prize: 2009 New York Auto Show
Across the country, a handful of car makers continue their quest to bring a market-ready mega-mileage machine to market. The prize: $7.5 million from the X Prize Foundation. Unfortunately for X Prize followers, the New York Auto Show is not shaping up to be much of a battlefield. There is one exception: On Thursday, EV Innovations will unveil the Wave, a curvacious plug-in electric two-seater that the company claims will have a range of up to 200 miles, a top speed of around 80 mph, and start just north of $30,000 when it becomes available to consumers in 2010.
This is far less expensive than the company's previously announced electric supercar, the Inizio, which can reach 170 mph, has a range of 200 miles between charges and will cost consumers around $139,000 when it hits production late this year or early 2010.
In fact, the company has yet to decide which of its two electric vehicles it's going to enter in the X-Prize competition. "We have to decide which one we put out there to get all the attention: The Wave, which is a car you can take to work every day, or the more powerful Inizio," Ron Cerven, EV Innovations' program manager and director of product design, says.
EV Innovations (which used to go by the name Hybrid Technologies), first made a name for themselves by making battery-powered versions of Minis and Mullen GTs. —Seth Porges
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