Category Archives: Elektrische voertuigen

Test drive Tazzari Zero

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Tazzari Zero

Friday, October 8th, I will make a test drive in a  Tazzari Zero (). This is an electric car with some remarkable features.

It’s reasonably affordable, the base price is around € 23500, while cars like the Th!nk and the i-MiEV cost just below € 40000. Furthermore, this little car is extremely light; its curb weight is only 542 kg, which is about half of the Th!nks weight (1040 kg). The light weight alone makes this car a lot friendlier for truly sustainable road users like cyclists and pedestrians.

Of course there’ll be an extensive article after the test drive. The car is made available to me by the Good Car Company ().

Ecomobiel 2010 fair

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Ecomobiel

On Tuesday, September 21st and Wednesday, September 22nd, the Ecomobiel 2010 () fair will be held in Rotterdam, in their own words ‘a professional fair for green mobility’. When I surf their website it seems the fair is very focused on the motor car in all its so-called green incarnations, but here and there I see some more sustainable gems.

I’ll go on Tueday, September 21st, and I applied for three workshops:

  1. The New Motion ()
  2. E-busZ / E-traction ()
  3. Qwic ()

I’m curious how it will be, and I will certainly write an article about what I saw on the fair!

Tesla Roadster test drive

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As regular visitors of this website will know I married my girlfriend on June 25th, 2010. During the preparations we were thinking about our transport needs from to the city hall, the party location and a few photo locations. Doing this by bicycle would have been the true sustainable choice but the distances involved and our clothing made this impractical. So, it would have to be a car. Because this was to be the day of our lives this could of course not be just any car.

After thinking about it for a while I set my sights on a Tesla Roadster, a electric high performance sports car. But how to get ones hands on one? I’ve made quite a few test drives in electric vehicles in recent times, and that allowed me to build a nice network. But even in this network I could not find a Roadster to hire for a day. Even the sustainable transport department at work couldn’t get me a Roadster for a reasonable price.

The solution came, as happens often, by accident. A colleague at work e-mailed me a link to a movie () featuring the Roadster, and in that movie the company Remotion was named – which is now called The New Motion (). I gathered my courage and sent them an e-mail in which I told them who I was, what I did (a.o. this website), that I was getting married and that I was looking for a sustainable (or at least as sustainable as possible) wedding car. The e-mail I received back from Alef Arendsen (who can be seen in the movie) exceeded all my expectations. The company extended all cooperation and allowed me to use the Roadster at no cost (!) as our wedding car, and employees even delivered and retrieved the car. I couldn’t believe my luck!

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We’re getting married!

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My girlfriend Annelies and I are getting married on June, 25th, 2010. We’ve been together for more than ten years and we both thought that the time is right. It’s all fine that I sit here behind my computer, writing about longterm stuff (Peak Oil, climate change, etc.) but every once in a while you have to do something long term yourself – and this is it.

We’re working on the preparations (have been for a while now), nearly all the big things have been taken care of, but with things like these there are a million small things that need to be organised. We’re on schedule, and it’s great fun to work together on something this big and this important.

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Solar Impulse made its third test flight

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Today the solar-powered electric airplane Solar Impulse () made its third test flight:

It’s clear that this project depends heavily on good PR, these flight movies are works of art. If I’m not mistaken this was the first flight where the streamlined cockpit canopy was mounted, and this flight was used fly this airplane a bit more aggressive than before to further test its flight characteristics.

According to the commentary the team expects to be able to fly a complete day-night-day cycle (where the plane flies on solar energy during the daytime, simultaneously charging it batteries, and flying on its batteries by night) within one or two months.