It’s Monday morning, so I thought I’d ease you into the week with some eye candy.
The latest entrant to the stable of would-be rivals to the Tesla Roadster electric sports car comes, once again, from a British company.
The flashy looking K1 Evelio wowed onlookers at England’s Goodwood Festival of Speed earlier this month, where, you may recall another British-designed car, the Lightning, also raised eyebrows.
If the K1 (above) sounds familiar but not British, it’s because the Evelio is a modified version of the gasoline-fuelled K-1 Attack Roadster (below) from Bratislava, Slovakia’s K-1 Engineering, Evelio boss Alex Letteriello tells TheChargingPoint.com.
But here’s the rub: the Evelio has yet to undergo genuine road testing, so performance specifications are hypothetical. Even in that realm, things don’t add up to Tesla standards.
Evilio’s phosphate-based lithium ion batteries have a range of 150 miles under normal driving conditions, compared to 245 for the Tesla Roadster. And in case anyone is interested in defying the highway patrol, the K1 Evelio’s speed tops out at 90 mph, well below Tesla’s 125 mph.
Letteriello tells TheChargingPoint that he could make a much faster car, if only he had more funding that would allow him to replace the Evelio’s single speed gearbox with a two-speed version (as far as I can tell, the faster Tesla also uses a single-speed gearbox).
Other compromises that he’s made at this under-financed stage include using fibreglass for the body and tubular steel for the chassis. With a few more coins in the kitty he could go with a lighter weight carbon fiber body, and with aluminum or even titanium underneath, he says.
And I could build one that goes 200 mph, flies and feeds the grid with nuclear fusion-generated electricity while parked overnight, if only I had the dough.
Okay, I’m being harsh on Evelio. I definitely will never have the capital. (Some of you might be shocked at how poorly the world pays most journalists, who as a group underpin the free speech that is vital to democracy. Indeed, “free” speech is taking on a whole new meaning these days. Sorry for the off-subject rant, but hey, it’s still Monday).
And I have nothing near a prototype, not even of a kiddie scooter. The folks at Evelio are in the game, and have made what at least looks like a good start.
Photos: topspeed.com
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