Chrysler Introducing New All Electric Peapod
Chrysler recently unveiled it’s new all electric Peapod vehicle out of it’s Green EcoMobility (GEM) division. It used to be called Global Electric Motorcars, but was updated with this new generation of cars. This vehicle will be a new generation of vehicles produced from the GEM subsidiary of Chrysler that hopes to hopes to makes a more user friendly car that is eco friendly.
Today’s GEM is the nation’s No. 1 zero-emission electric vehicle, with 38,000 produced and in use. GEM vehicles are used in settings such as city centers, planned communities, military bases, college campuses, corporate and commercial centers, and city, state and national parks.
Past GEM vehicles were fairly inefficient as they were not aerodynamic and usually were partially open. This made them extremely impractical for daily use. This new generation of electric vehicle is not only fully enclosed, but is much more technologically advanced.
Peapod Specs
- Dimensions: 12 ft. long X 5 ft. 10 inches high X 4 ft. 8 inches wide.
- Car Weight: 1,290 lb. total weight ( no people inside )
- Interior Capacity: 910 lbs
- Person Capacity: 2 person max.
- Range: 30 miles
- Max Speed: 25 miles/hour
- Low Speed: 15 miles/hour
- Battery: 72 volt battery system with on-board charger.
- Recharge Time: 6 to 8 hours
As you can tell from the specs and the earlier quote, this is not a vehicles for highway use. Since it can only go a maximum of 25 mph, it is not street legal in all states. This model can only fit up to 2 people back to back, but there are larger 4 or 6 seater vehicles.
It has a modern look with newer battery technology and even has a plug-in for iPhones or iPods. I actually like the look of the inside as it is extremely simple, but still looks very nice.
The big questions I had about this vehicle are: Where can I charge it at and how long will it take? The answer to the first question is it can be charged in any standard 110-volt outlet. The appropriate time to recharge completely six to eight hours. I still wanted to figure out how much it would cost per charging of this vehicle. Since the normal outlet is typically 15 amps. In order to use my energy calculator, we need to convert volts to watts. The wattage for this device is
72 volts * 15 amps = 1080 watts.
Plugging this value in to my calculator you get a cost of about $331.13 per year to operate this car. I also did an article the average gas cost of a car per year that showed a small economy car uses about $1,868 of gas per year. That means that an electric cars could cost you 1/5 of the amount to run.
At an approximate price of $20,000, do you think you would every buy this electric vehicle? What about other options like the Aptera or Tesla?
