WIRED sticks it to Zap!
 

Uh oh, more trouble in electric car ville: http://www.wired.com/cars/futuretran...6-04/ff_zapped

:rolleyes:

Ouch!

Kinda harsh article.

The one paragraph in there about the Zebra sounded close it right.

It goes about 35, but the range is better than 20 miles.

With any company, I wouldn't go by any claim they have for future vehicles.

I just want to know what they have right now, and what works.


If there isn't something out there for you, build it yourself.
Or go back in time to the 70's and get a Citicar, or the early 1900s, had some great electrics back then too!

WOW,Too bad for ZAP. I always wondered why they had so many cool looking vehicles on their site, but the ones they were actually selling were not very appealing. Now it makes sense.

Maybe they can pull through and get those car made that everyone wants.

yikes, now that's a pretty crappy company... crappy, on a fundamental level :/

I've heard this story before. Inventor has an idea and lots of research to back it up. Inventor goes to investors for money. Inventor gets LOTS of money. Inventor thinks why put item into production when people are throwing so much money at it? Getting money from investors is easier than selling actual parts.

In my particular case the inventor was eventually sued by an investor. The investor won and took all the research. The inventor was thrown in jail.

I'm not saying thats whats going on here. But, it has happened before.

Except... The inventor isn't even there anymore... He was kicked out by the asses in there now...

I'm kind of suprized that ZAP is still around at all at points in time, I just sold my 10 year old ZAP electric bike kit, it performs almost exactly as promised, and did so for a number of years, until the battery started to head down hill, but other then that it is a well built, American made product, I think where they went wrong was when they tried to move past the electric bike market, they should have stayed there, and invested more time and energy in better batteries, and hub motors, and leave the vaporware alone.

SVOboy -

Yeah, Zap has done Zip when it comes to electric cars that can compete with normal ICE cars. I suspect that the dude that bought the Zap territory screwed up. I was tracking the "no Smarts for Zap" story for over a year. If I am interpreting the article correctly, he should have been aware of that legal spat before he signed up.

I have some of their press releases. They are very good at vapor-ware!

CarloSW2

that kinda thing just gets me PO'd so bad.
false promises, taking advantage of what few investors will believe in the concept, and basically ruining the reputation of the EV for the general public.

When companies do this they just add to the problem.

If i had $100K to blow on an investment then I'd start my own EV company instead of go with a franchise that has yet to show a proven, available product.

I had money-in-my-hand for Zaps E-Pod in 2005, they shined me on, so I built my own "E-Pod". I don't feel a bit guilty for stealing the name now.

Fast-forward to today (last week in fact); Subaru of Santa Cruz was selling a Xebra, which I thought would be ideal. Doing a little homework I found out Subaru cut off dealing with Zap. Part of the article-

And Wayne Schenk, owner of Subaru Santa Cruz, who had signed up as a ZAP dealer, also complained to the paper that ZAP has issued "a million press releases on stuff that has never happened." By the end of 2005, ZAP's stock price was back down to 26 cents.

Now I think I know why! THANKS WIRED! Xebra is not the trike for me.

countersTrike

ZAP sells a lot of hype both to its customers and investors.
http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2008-zap-xebra-review/

I went by their 'place of business' a few years ago with the intent of buying a Xebra. They were doing a photo shoot with the 'zap girls' and a gasoline Smart Car in the back parking lot. I went around to the main entrance, and it was locked. The three or so employees inside at their desks wouldn't even come to the door.

Made my mind up then that that company wasn't really in business to sell actual products.

Shame, really. The Xebra wasn't good with aerodynamics, weight distribution, batteries; but it seemed useful, then be a great project base. My thought of using it as a hauler then adding a "kit - car" body later seemed to make sense. All the thumbs down reviews and commentaries made me seriously think twice.

countersTrike

I read the article and I thought one of the worst things was that they needed constant repair. So that even if the range wasn't limiting you enough there would be periods where it would be completely out of commision.

Most of the vehicles zap sells are made in China. What do you expect?

Hello -

What do you think of their competition, the Zenn cars? :

http://www.zenncars.com/

They don't seem to be a "hype-machine" like Zip.

CarloSW2

We have a Zenn owner / dealer that is a member of the EV club here - it looks like a well made car. Only problem is that it is classed as a NEV and thus limited (legally and thru computer programming) to 25 MPH. It can probably do 35 or so (if re-programmed), but there are still legal issues in many areas. Would be nice if the Xebra had the same quality as the Zenn, but there is a big difference between Canadian Quality and Chinese -ahem- quality... China might follow the same pattern as Japan - used to be that people considered Japanese products junk. Time will tell.

I am thinking the exact same thing. I have invited both the ZENN and Zap dealers out to our Earth Day Alt Car Show.

Will be nice to have the both together to check out.

I just purchased a ZAP Xebra for the sole purpose of running around the beach/local events. For the price I paid for it, I could not have built it. Too bad the Company has such a crappy history. This one runs well and since I have built several other EVs, I can make it into something useful. It is a later model so the main components are better than the earlier ones, which given the companies past seems opposite to the info put out in article.

[url=http://ecomodder.com/blog/huddlers-interview-zaps-cofounder-gary-starr/]
 

I am new to this forum but I hope understanding more on the views from American customers since here in China this company is showing a different picture.

A Zap dealer in my town sued Zap so it was in the Wired article. Now that dealer does not want to talk about Zap or have anything to do with sales of Zap vehicles. That was like a domino effect- Zap, then Lido, then GEM, then Zenn, then Miles: all failed one after another. I sure hope these return! Only the Th!ink is starting up I think in another state.

An assembly plant near here was planning to assemble Triacs from China. As soon as the business shifted away from small EVs that plan vanished. Zaps sold in about 2003 when that lawsuit happened did not last 7 years. Triacs never even started. Makes me wonder!

Oops. Right after I wrote that I saw this article. We shall see what we shall see.........
Triac, an electric car made in Salinas, getting ready to hit the streets - San Jose Mercury News

Man that's depressing. Just imagine what could be done with a few million dollars of investment. How can you even spend $2,000,000 dollars and not have anything to show for it. You can't even be angry about something like that. It's more amazing than anything else. Are they intentionally setting the money on fire?

One word... Beancounters... You get them involved and you get half as much for your money as you thought... Less than that if you give them a big enough budget...

:confused: I have no idea. Maybe the Aptera builders could give us a hint. ;)