AutoblogGreen

"she may have to take a 20-30 minute brake later in the day"

Presumably the Zenn has regenerative braking, and she's recharging the motor .... or, more likely, you actually should have written BREAK instead of brake!

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I was about to send a short note to them about that through the other comments page. >_< http://www.autobloggreen.com/contact/comments/

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Sounds like a contract delivery person.

Heres my question for Carolyn. Do they reimburse for mileage?

If so you could really rake it in with a cost of only 0.40 cents per 20 miles. Puts a whole new wrinkle in mileage reimbursement. Unless maintenance costs make up for the savings.

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This is a mostly rural route, too! There are lots of suburban mail delivery routes that would be perfect for this type of vehicle, and even more for EVs that could achieve freeway speeds.

We really should be encouraging the USPS to go electric on their shorter delivery routes - it would save them a bundle, and help hold down postage rates.

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Until today, I had never heard of the Zenn. After I read this article, I became very excited about this vehicle. After visiting the Zenn website, I became very un-excited about this vehicle. Yeah, yeah, I know it's described as a Neighborhood Electric Vehicle, but I thought at least it would be able to do 35 MPH, and hoped for even more. Unfortunately, it's top speed is only 25 MPH. That's great if you only plan on traveling on residential roads which in most areas confines you to a very small radius.

The problem with this vehicle is that it's drivers will venture out onto arterials where the speed limit is at least 35 MPH, jamming up traffic, and annoying other drivers. Consequently, the usefullness of this vehicle is minimal.

As for the mail person who uses this vehicle to deliver mail on a rural route, that means this vehicle is used on roads with speeds in many cases much higher than this vehicle can travel. Consequently, this vehicle will do more to piss off people, than it will to spread warm fuzzies about saving the earth.

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Some strange comments here. How many of you
work for bigoil? It has taken ICE vehicles
100+ years to "develop", and you expect a
comparable EV overnight. It is happening but
obviously not overnight. Negativity just plays
into the hands of bigoil. Who gives a * whether
its brake or break - its great not grate.

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NEVs are limited by law to 25MPH. Washington state & others are considering laws to let them drive 35MPH. In some cases just a new software program will let them drive the higher speed.

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how about a word from the owner....my zenn has now had the power up-grade and can now do the max allowable speed of 35 (yes 35) passed in to law last aug or sep the reason for a slow speed is that the car is mostly plastic(light weight so it can go somewhere) not medal and no safety features like air bags...the car is intended for city use, but the speeds i deliver at don't exceed 30 with lots of stops so if i am in your way you are driving on the sholder

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I applaud you Carolyn for being open-minded. If the naysayers would get OUT OF THE WAY perhaps we could ALL do something meaningful on this planet.

The SELFISH mentality of the majority is -- they are blind to anything that they don't easily perceive affects them.

I'm looking into these type options myself. I currently have a luxury car (2000) which gets 31mpg which I use for trips, and a cycle trike which gets 52 mpg. Annually, I drive 2,000 miles in the car, and 10,000 miles on the trike.

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Hi Carolyn:

I would like to hear more from you about your experiences with the Zenn. I live in Barbados and I think the Zenn would be perfect for here. The island is 21 miles by 14, so the 50 mile range on the Discovery batteries would be adequate for most people.

I am thinking of bringing in one as a test vehicle for a year to see how it performs here. A couple of questions for you:

1. Does the right hand drive conversion really cost US$5000. That seems really steep. We drive on the left here in Barbados, so I would need that.

2. Typically, do you get the range (35 or 50 miles) as Zenn advertises? How is this range affected by heavy loads.

3. How does increasing the car's max speed to 35mph affect the range. The maximum speed here on most of the roads is 60kph, which is 40mph, but with traffic, average speeds are closer to 30kph.

4. Have there been any reliability issues so far?

Thanks so much.

Jhn

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Zenn offers a right had drive model for about 500 dollars extra. I think there was a typo in the write up. 500 not 5000

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