London – Aminorjourney

Ev’ie. Another broken dream?

If you’re a regular visitor to www.aminorjourney.com you’ll know that I’ve ran stories on the Electric Car Corporation and their line of converted Citroen C1s, which they call the C1 “Ev’ie”. It all started back in April, when the Citroen Ev’ie jumped onto the market. The team behind the advertising campaign had used a sign-written petrol-powered car for photo shoots and had omitted to change the number plate. It lead to me speculating if the vehicle even existed.

Later on, a test-drive from What Car? appeared, in which the team reviewing it had some issues with acceleration and a battery overheating on the drive. You can watch the video at their website.

I’m not the sort of person to give a company a hard time unnecessarily, and felt that perhaps my initial story was a bit hard on ECCPlc, the makers of the Citroen C1 Ev’ie. So, I arranged a trip down to London to test the Ev’ie for myself. I really wanted the car to blow me away. I so badly wanted the Ev’ie to make me feel all kinds of guilt for being nasty about it in the past without even having driven it. I wanted it to make me love it. But as I quickly found, my relationship with the Ev’ie that wasn’t going to be a plain-sailing one.

Read on after the jump for a run-down of the vehicle and our eventful test-drive.

Charging discrimination instead of charging for all.

London is often viewed as the EV charging capital of the world. Thanks to the Congestion Charging zone and it’s exemptions for electric and other green vehicles, not to mention the success of the small G-Wiz and similar small electric vehicles London appears, at least on the face of it, to be a brilliant place to be if you want to own an EV.

Not only that, but there’s now over 100 public electric vehicle charging points spread throughout the greater London area. In order to use one, you have to satisfy a series of criteria to ensure that you’re a) an electric vehicle owner and b) that you agree to abide by the fair usage policies the charging points have.

But wait. What’s this? London Boroughs (think of them as small council district within the greater London area) may appear to provide charging points to electric and PHEV vehicle drivers but they’re rather picky about who can use their points.

You can charge in London - but only if youre a local. — You can charge in London - but only if you're a local.

_{photo by Shiner Clay}

More after the jump

There’s a new EV on the block. Should the G-Wiz be worried, or is that a photoshopped exhaust?

It wasn’t until I spent some time reading my .rss feeds today that I even heard of a new EV company which launched today. It almost seemed too good to be true. A London-based company, full of really creditable names from the Auto Industry, who are offering brand new, fully converted Citroen C1s. And at a price tag of £16,850 it’s actually not that much more expensive than the lithium ion powered G-Wiz. But a whole lot more impressive, if the specs can be believed.

There’s only one thing which concerns me. Is it actually available today, or do we have another car company scrapping for attention with a promise and a prayer?
And what’s this suspicious looking ‘photoshop’ artifact on one of the photographs on the company’s website, just about where an exhaust would be?

The Electric Car Corporations C1 which launched today. But is it vaporware? — The Electric Car Corporation's C1 which launched today. But is it vaporware?

Tag: London