those doors would stand up to a shopping trolley full of groceries in a Tesco car park?

Well, I can predict that this bastard child of a Smart car and a milk float won't be making people popular on the roads.

Jolyon

Rubbish performance, but at least someone has given some attention to the looks.

It is a venerable tradition in the car industry that Daihatsu churns ideas which either become the de-facto standard or bloopers everyone is eager to forget. Amidst these is the Sirion's basking-shark pedestrian-friendly grille (laughed at by Clarkson in 2001 but now adopted by audi, seat, peugeot and many others), 4-motion transmission with the traction control engaging the 4x4 drive (now on the top of the range of VW group cars), Qi's electrically assisted sliding doors (now on the Peugeot 1007) and so on.

So is this vehicle. The exterior design is a total and utter rip off from D-Bone

http://www.daihatsu.com/brand/motorshow/geneva04/d_bone/index.html

In fact it is a very bad copy as well. Most of the D-bone character is lost in translation. Actually, it is Chrysler, we could have guessed that. It cannot be original and if it is designed by them (and not copied) it should be butt-ugly and look like something out of WW2 movie.

...Looks like the bastard child of a Fiat Multipla and a Smart!

Any idea how much an ipod/iphone would drain the main battery? I can see that 30 mile range going down a bit if you're listening to some tunes! :-)

Who the hell would buy a car that can't go further than 15 miles (remember you have to come home to charge it) and then can't be used for 6 hours?

And I wonder how much that 30 miles will be reduced by shopping / passengers.

You Failed Because: You were unable to make it to the end of the 90 minute Test.

(30 mile range hahahaha)

"A 12bhp electric motor gives the Peapod a top speed of 25mph, and it’ll will keep on truckin’ for about 30 miles on a 6-8 hour charge."

So, you can drive for a little over 70 minutes before needing to wait 6-8 hours to continue the rest of your journey.

Methinks they either need to increase the range on a single charge, or considerably decrease the chargetime before this vehicle takes off for most people's commutes.

Or maybe it's just designed for getting lardy-arsed yanks to and from the McDonalds a mile away...

Of course, they could have gone for a BlueTooth connection integrated into the ICE system which would have worked with any phone / media player, rather than being confined to the Jesus Phone and its lesser brethren. For bonus points, it wouldn't clutter the centre of the dash with a largely redundant docking connection. A powered USB port or a good, old-fashioned fag lighter socket would cater to the battery disadvantaged.

Presumably Chrysler reckon that iCandybar owners are the only ones in the market for a restyled invalid carriage available in a variety of eye-wateringly garish colours.

They've not really grasped the concept of green motoring have they.

A great big glass hole to let the snout of the red-light-jumping chavmobile have easy access to chewing on the occupants' legs... nice safety feature. 30 (60 if you're charging while at work) miles a day is probably enough for an urban runabout.

30 miles @ 25mph on an 8 hour charge... And it looks uglier than a Fiat Multipla?

Not to mention, how are you supposed to wind down the windows, there's no recess and the doors are the wrong shape! Or are you going to waste your battery further by using Aircon all the time?

I hope someone at GM gets fired for this blatantly stupid concept.

Its top speed of 25mph means that it doesn't require airbags, which means it can't travel on freeways.

Can't it travel on freeways because of the lack of airbags, or because only doing 25mph on a freeway would be suicide?

....oh wait, you mean it can't drive on freeways? Or further than 30 miles? Or faster than 25mph?

So what you're ACTUALLY saying is that it's a token effort designed to keep the eco-warriors from chucking eggs at the factory, whilst simultaneously allowing Chrysler to say it's committed to electric cars? Interesting

Any one else think it looks like a 'jonny cab'?

Damn, that is one ugly car.

I bet it's not cheap either. Certainly not if it's restricted to people subscribed to the Church of Jobs.

I wonder if a non-believer is allowed to offer a prayer? Please, please don't let me get stuck behind these. Oh, please no.

Can you extend the range if you power it from the iPod?

For these tiny town cars, would a flywheel drive make more sense than heavy batteries? Plug in, spin up the flywheel, unplug, tootle off down to Harvey Nicks.

Driven by the oil industry. Did anyone really expect them to come up with an electric motor that works and get some decent designers in? This is just one of those 'we made it and people didn't want it' get outs.

With so so many good or good-ish electric cars coming out now (MEV R2 electric version at stoneleigh- over 100mph, 0-60 was respectable but similarly limited range- cost was about £17k IIRC, Tesla Roadster, etc) how can Chrysler get it so wrong?

If someone had worked with Ferrari or Lambourghini 5 years ago to build an electric car the market would look a lot "greener" now than it does with the Prius and this crap attempt at treehugger appeasement. PEOPLE WANT FAST, SLEEK CARS! NOT SOMETHING THAT WAS DESIGNED BY SNEEZING ON A PAGE AND SKETCHING AROUND THE RESULTS!

That is unless it's under £4k or so. If it was that cheap new I'd buy one for running about to work and back- and it would suddenly make a whole lot of sense. 10 miles there, 10 miles back and enough left over for a detour to Tesco.

VW had 4x4 traction control way before Daihatsu cars did... perhaps not in the US, but in Africa, the VW Caravelle and the VW 'Volksiebus' Synchro did have selective 4x4 in the late eighties/early nineties.

Won't be able to go on the freeway as they do not have airbags. Sorry but if they can only do a top speed of 25MPH then they should not be used on any major roads at all, as they are only going to impeed traffic and cause more congestion.

The flywheel would have the added bonus that in an accident the newly liberated flywheel would slice its way through the skin of vehicle doing the fire department's job for them.

"Or maybe it's just designed for getting lardy-arsed yanks to and from the McDonalds a mile away..."

No! You need a Cadillac Escalade for that. All-Wheel Drive if you want to use the drive-through.

The only way this thing is going to get you anywhere is if it can shoot out a grappling hook and latch onto a passing car.

Although Mike's idea could work too - I can imagine this car with a big wind-up key sticking out the back - would actually be appropriate for its looks I'm thinking.

I'll be pissed if I get stuck behind one of these on an A road

Every other year yet another high-roofed concept vehicle comes out making promises the jetsons would think unrealistic. Once again some fancy stylist cracks one out about a detail feature which, if they had bothered to mug up their reference books, was featured on some other vehicle 50 + years ago.

Normally I don't really care. Honest, I don't. But on this occasion I was stopped in my tracks and actually felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end in anger. Why? Well, we allegedly have a climate change problem which we could at least slow down a bit. We are draining natural reserve at an alarming rate - and already resorting to violence and intimidation in a bid to get our hands on them. In short, we're doing a grand job of rushing for the end game.

And what does this car feature that's going to help us turn off the path of self-destruction?

A FEKKIN i-POD DOCK!

Jesus Christ and Mohammed in a 4-4-2, we're really getting to grips with issues now eh? Apple, the saviours of the world. Well, bugger me.

Thanks Reg for using MPH instead of m/h

Also, I would have thought that just because it can't get over 25MPH, doesn't mean to say that it can't be hit by another car head on doing 25MPH, giving a combined impact speed of 50MPH. Having airbags in a collision such as this WOULD be the difference between life and death.

Feck all range, speed, comfort, safety... I'll skip thanks!

So basically it's a Canadian Zenn car (with 35-50 mile range and 80% charge in 4 hours. See http://www.zenncars.com/ - caution, slower than slow shite flash based site), with the styling ripped off from Daihatsu, all being touted as "innovative" by an American car company.

Sounds like Chrysler is about where one expects it to be on this.

Why do they have to make these things so damn ugly!? Oh, well, it's Chrysler so what would one expect anyway?

Not to mention it also sucks in all other respects, unless:

- it's very cheap;

- and you live and work in a metropolitan area where you can't go over 25mph anyway, be it due to speed limits or, more commonly, bad traffic.

Even then, 25mph would still be too slow to be safe, methinks.

For a golf cart that will probably be more expensive than a car which is actually useful for every day driving. Color me unimpressed.

Oh and @30 miles. You obviously know nothing about 'Mericans. We need a Hummer to make trips to the McDonalds a mile up the road. Now we gotta make two stops at the gas station (both ways) to fill up, but hey that's the joy of eating at mikkey d's the food is cheap enough that we can afford the gas :-P.

"Or maybe it's just designed for getting lardy-arsed yanks to and from the McDonalds a mile away..."

No, because a true blue lardy-arsed yank would be going through the drive-through... I don't see any functional windows in that thing.

25MPH isn't even fast enough for most residential streets here, much less a multi-lane main road. Forget about the freeway.

Ditto to the Escalade comment above.

And given it's a Chrysler, I'm sure the tranny will go out shortly after the warranty ends.

Can't wait to see it on Top Gear... (with a 2 year delay before it arrives on BBC America)

So, anyone else wanna watch the side impact test videos for this thing?

In all seriousness however, I'm at a loss as to Chrysler's intended market. Recent articles in el Reg detail at least somewhat practical EV's, and suddenly they throw a golf cart cart at us?

There's no indication that this is strictly for EU release, and around here (upstate NY) the only time one could push the speed limit in this thing (not to be confused withe the VW Thing) is an elementary school zone, or tooling around a University campus. And before someone mentions city dwellers, is one expected to run an extension cord out the apt. window all night or use one of the 3 parking garages with power points?

Oh, and apologies for feeding the trolls, but this Yank does distance cycling.

So essentially, they've engineered an enclosed golf cart with slightly better top speed and range. Where could you drive this and not piss off everyone behind you? And hopefully you won't encounter a hill... What is the point?

Happycar :)

You Failed Because: You were unable to keep pace with the flow of traffic.

(25 mph hahahaha)

Sure, except that the iPhone's integrated BlueTooth is brain dead monaural. On a "latest" mp3 phone. Seriously.