Paul Niedermeyer over at TTAC got the chance to drive a ZAP Xebra pickup and his review pretty much reads as you would expect. The car is poorly assembled, slow, short range and dangerous. He goes so far as to refer to it as a motorized wheelbarrow/hair-shirt - which, despite what you think of the car, is pretty funny. Was there anything that he did like about the Xebra? Nope.
We have had the opportunity to drive the Xebra, and we also found the machine to be a bit on the slow side. We also noted the small interior and poor build quality. We still maintain, though, that the vehicle is fine for what it is. If used as a vehicle to get to the grocery store, campus, library etc, it'll do fine. If you actually plan to drive the Xebra every day, or on high-speed or high traffic roads, you should look elsewhere.
[Source: The Truth About Cars]
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1. I'm working on a product research and review site and we have the Xebra listed. One of our users wrote a really thorough review of his Xebra last night and definitely had a lot of the same complaints. But at the end of the day, he did say "this is the most fun car to drive I have ever owned! Because it is 100% electric, it never uses gas, and is dead-quiet when stopped, and it has no exhaust. You drive right past gas stations without ever stopping, and you fuel it by plugging it into an ordinary 110-volt electrical outlet." You can read the rest of his Zap Xebra EV review here: http://greenhome.huddler.com/products/zap-electric-cars-xebra-ev/reviews/81
Posted at 7:21PM on Mar 14th 2008 by Stins