If they can import this little bugger to the United States (doubtful, given our idiotic importation laws), and if it is in any way "affordable" (even more doubtful, given the class it is competing in), and if it actually manages to live up to its advertised specifications ("divine intervention" levels of doubtful), I will happily swallow (most of) my complaints about electric cars and plop my butt down in the one-and-only front seat of a Dok-ing XD:
The 240 HP Doking XD will allegedly transport three human beings to 62 MPH in 4.2 seconds, all while sitting McLaren F1-style.
[...]
Four in-wheel motors kick out a total of 531 lb-ft of torque. You climb in through scissor doors. The brake lights are Xs and the turn signals are arrows.
[...]
It sandwiches its 33 kWh/705-lb LiPo battery pack inside the floor Commuter Cars Tango-style. That’s enough capacity to give it a 136-mile range at 55 MPH.
So, not being familiar with the name, I went and did a little homework; do you know what Dok-ing’s stock and trade was before they decided to get into the "electric sports car" market? Robotic mine-clearing robots. Yeah, you read that right. Oh, and robotic fire-fighting systems. And apparently they are really, really good at blowing up mines:
DOK-ING has so far gained more than eighteen years of experience in different types of landmine clearance, on all types of terrain in the Republic of Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and Serbia. More than 50.000.000 square meters has been cleared and more than 130.000 mines have been destroyed by mechanical mine clearance systems. We are proud to state that there has never been a single mine accident /incident involving any of our personnel and/or anyone else in the areas cleared by our machines.
Crazy Croatians. Brilliant, humanitarian, and obviously skilled, but crazy.
And now they want to make a tiny electric city car. Far be it for me to argue with folks who can call upon the support of flail-wielding, mine-smashing robots.
I do have some concerns about the placement of the on/off switch (on the 6 o’clock steering wheel spoke), and I wonder at the three-person seating arrangement (where do their legs go?), and based on other all-electric cars’ performance I really doubt the quoted effective ranges, but this little toy seems to find the happy spot between "functional" (in that it is able to hold two people and groceries/luggage/etc.) and "fun" (531 lb-ft of torque on an all-wheel-drive device that weighs all of 2,900lbs? Yes, please.). Still not much good for anything more than around-town driving, but that range could probably get me to the Dragon and back…
And, still, mine-flailing robots!
(Image courtesy of Dok-ing automotiv d.o.o.)
I would be most concerned about the control software. Given the ever increasing software complexity in cars (new cars are have over a million lines of code) and that human rated systems need a much lower software defect rate than unmanned systems, I would hate to be in rush hour traffic on the interstate and “find” a software bug. NHTSB is great with crashing cars and verifying mechanical safety, but I feel DOT is well behind the curve in keeping up with automotive software safety.
BTW, the flails don’t get that much use because they kick up so much dust the operators cannot see through the on board cameras.
I would buy one. I don’t have anything at all against electric cars, I just don’t like the ones that suck and cost more than regular cars.
I likewise don’t have any issue with electric cars in theory. It is the general practice I object to. When electric cars can be “refueled” as quickly, get similar range and performance, and are not packaged in a form factor that can be punted over a guardrail by a mid-size then I will consider them to be a viable replacement for modern cars. Until then I will let other people have all the “fun.”
Edit: i confuse bb tags with html all the time. . .
Yes, but has anyone thought to ask where the gun rack is to be mounted?
I would gladly do my 35 mile RT commute with this. We’re a 2 car family. One of these would make a fine city car. Depends on the price of course. I ain’t paying Tesla prices for a small commuter car.
[...] The Doking, a coal powered err electric car that gets to 60 in 4.2. And it proves my wife’s point that all eco-friendly cars are kind of ugly. [...]
Gaston: Yeah, but that is arguably true of pretty much any vehicle rolling off of any factory floor these days… Hell, it was only a little while ago that people horrifiedly discovered that hacking car computers through ODB ports was possible. Yeah, because that is so surprising…
Who cares? FLAILS!
@ Alan: That is pretty much my personal grudge against them – they are treated as the end-all, be-all of the future of transportation, when they generally fall short on almost every measurement people care to honestly point at them. It seems more EV manufacturers are admitting that these things will not be replacing your primary car for quite some time now (unless you never take road trips or go to Home Depot), and I see that as a move in the right direction.
@ lucusloc: Those are pretty much my requirements as well, and I fully grasp that they are not likely to be met by the EV scene for at least another decade, if ever, at the rate we are going. That said, if this thing were to hit the market somewhere around $15k, or $20k + whatever the government rebates are now (if they are still in effect), then I would seriously consider using it as a commuting / around-town vehicle. Unfortunately, I get the feeling (at least from the internal design and interface) that they are looking at at least two times that price tag, which is simply ludicrous for what amounts to be a glorified golf cart.
@ alcade: Looks like there is a good bit of space between the two back seats
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@ Ken Rhanek: Exactly… and that is the problem. Even the Arcimoto is quoting a base price of $17,500 (which is bound to go up by production time) for a 40-mile-range, unenclosed, two-person, 65mph-capped, trike. According to their site’s calculator, that would take me 31 years to pay off in the savings I would get from not having to use gas. Yes, I could sell a vehicle to defray those costs, but the truth is, it could not replace either of the cars I have, especially not with those limitations (which can be upgraded… at a sizeable cost).
As I have always said, I really want to like them, but it is just not rational to do so at the moment, and certainly not at the levels their pimpers would like you to.