Wheego Electric Cars Inc., based in Atlanta, delivered its first all-electric low-speed vehicle (LSV) to a customer Friday.

 

 

Stephen Currie, 41, of Atlanta, is the environmentally conscious type of person the company expects will form its initial customer base.  "I did a lot of research and found an electric car would be great for driving around the city. Everything in my life is in a 10-mile radius,” Currie said.

A product manager at EarthLink, Currie also has a second car for longer trips and those that require going faster than 25 miles an hour, the current Georgia speed limit for such cars.

LSVs are exempt from most federal motor vehicle safety standards, including crash-worthiness.

Mike McQuary, former president and COO of EarthLink, and his partners were looking for a new idea to invest in and came across a company in Columbia, S.C., seeking funding to develop electric golf carts. Carts didn’t excite him, but he began to research electric cars. He remembered that Charles Brewer, MindSpring founder, once owned an electric car and loved it.

“People were passionate about those cars, and then that movement faded," McQuary said. "It reminded me of the early days of MindSpring when people were passionate about the company. I knew early adopters like Stephen would embrace the technology.”

McQuary said the challenge was delivering an electric car that would work. “People were skeptical that we could start a car company from scratch; but, again, we did that with MindSpring. We were more concerned about getting a great product and making customers happy.”

The team found a Chinese company to provide the chassis and body. Other parts come from throughout the U.S. and Canada, and the cars are assembled in Ontario, Calif.

“An electric car is like a computer. You need great hardware but you need great software as well,"  McQuary said, pointing out some considerations.

"There’s a controller in the front that makes it run efficiently and well,” McQuary said. “We had to make the car affordable with amenities like a stereo and Bluetooth connectivity and make it look nice, not weird. We wanted it so that when you shut the door it didn’t rattle or sound tinny.”

About 16 dealers across the country, including Wheego of Marietta, sell the cars. The company hopes to sell about 500 by June.

The Wheego Whip sells for $19,995 to $22,000. Until the end of the year, a $7,500 federal tax credit will be available for buyers; after that, the credit will become 10 percent of the purchase price.

The car can travel 40 miles without a charge. Recharging takes about eight hours on most outlets, or four to five hours for those purchasing the dual charge option.

Wheego is crash-testing a full-speed electric vehicle that would be suitable for highway driving. Plans are to roll it out by summer with a list price of about $30,000. McQuary said he expects to sell 5,000 to 10,000 of the full-speed cars next year. A four-seater is on the books for 2011, along with extras such as navigation systems.

“There is going to be an explosion in the development of battery technology and there is a community of drivers who have a pioneering spirit that want this cutting-edge technology," McQuary said. "The green movement is not a fad.”

Wheego delivers its first all-electric low-speed car  | ajc.com

Internet messages started with a crash 40 years ago today, and life hasn't been the same since. “We transmitted the ‘L’ … and the ‘O’ — and then the other computer crashed,” says UCLA's Leonard Kleinrock, who helped send that first message on the university's campus on Oct. 29, 1969. He was trying to type the word "login."

"We knew and we didn't know that it was going to be a big deal," he says..

Kleinrock, celebrated at a scholarly symposium at UCLA today, built the Internet's method of breaking messages into "packets" and shipping them across networks. He was awarded the National Medal of Science last year.

The 1969 crash wasn't due to the "LO" message itself, but a memory problem with the receiving computer, Kleinrock says. "I actually took part later in the first denial-of-service attack on the Internet as well. We sent the first spammer in 1984 so many messages, complaining, that we shut him down."

Early Internet (then ARPANET) users operated on an honor system, Kleinrock says, which has led to problems later. "If we had to do it over again, we would have built more controls into the Internet to keep the 'dark side' of things out. But it has been an incredible time."

First Internet message sent 40 years ago today - Technology Live - USATODAY.com

The Obama administration and the CEO of the nation's largest car dealership chain are taking aim at Edmunds.com's finding that the true cost of the "Cash for Clunkers" program involved a $24,000-per-vehicle subsidy by taxpayers. Edmunds is firing back.

The White House called the analysis "faulty" on the blog on its web site, saying it looks like Edmunds examined car sales on Mars and not on Earth.

"This analysis ignores not only the price impacts that a program like Cash for Clunkers has on the rest of the vehicle market, but the reports from across the country that people were drawn into dealerships by the Cash for Clunkers program and ended up buying cars even though their old car was not eligible for the program," the blog says.

It goes on to say that Edmunds is at odds with other independent assessments of the program, which gave up to $4,500 in incentives to buyers of gas-thrifty new cars when they traded in their gas-guzzling clunker. As Drive On reported yesterday, Edmunds' contends that most of the sales went to people who were going to buy new cars over the summer anyway. So the analysis looked at how the $3-billion cost of the program was spread over just those buyers that were lured out simply because of the program.

The Obama administration wasn't alone in taking aim:

Mike Jackson, CEO of AutoNation, the country's largest new-car dealer chain, called Edmunds' study "uncharacteristically shoddy."

Added Jackson: "Simply put, they've misrepresented the facts, and the White House is completely justified in calling them out on it. It would appear  Edmunds  political views have tainted their usual rigorous approach to research.   I know from our sales at AutoNation just how significant the impact of the Cash for Clunkers promotion was in our dealerships, and our own internal figures indicate that the rate of increase was consistent with what other retailers, manufacturers and governmental agencies have been estimating."

Edmunds is firing back. "Apparently, the $24,000 figure caught many by surprise. It shouldn’t have. The truth is that consumer incentive programs are always hugely expensive when calculated by incremental sales – always in the tens of thousands of dollars. Cash for Clunkers was no exception" the car research web site said in a statement.

it also disputed the sales spillover effect of the promotion, saying there is little evidence to support the claim. "It does, after all, seem a bit odd that masses of consumers would elect to buy a vehicle because of a program for which they don’t qualify," Edmunds wrote.

Obama administration fires back at Edmunds.com on 'Cash for Clunkers' analysis - Drive On: A conversation about the cars and trucks we drive - USATODAY.com

Many Americans, like you, me and all our friends, simply want to recognize that the vast majority of America supports our troops. Our idea of showing solidarity and support for our troops with dignity and respect starts this Friday -- and continues each and every Friday until the troops all come home, sending a deafening message that every red-blooded American who supports our men and women afar, will wear something blue. By word of mouth, press, TV -- let's make the United States on every Friday a sea of blue much like a homecoming football game in the bleachers. If every one of us who loves this country will share this with acquaintances, coworkers, friends, and family, it will not be long before the USA is covered in BLUE and it will let our troops know the once 'silent' majority is on their side more than ever, certainly more than the media lets on. The first thing a soldier says when asked 'What can we do to make things better for you?' is .'We need your support and your prayers.' Let's get the word out and lead with class and dignity, by example, and wear something blue every Friday.