How to Tango with Commuter Car, the story of an incredible little EV

Commuter Cars Tango is revolutionary in design and offer performance to tango with the best.

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Of all the electric cars out there today, none more than the electric Tango from Commuter Cars intrigue crowds and spark passionate debates.

The gist is that when Rick Woodbury, owner and founder of Commuter Cars found himself stuck in Los Angeles traffic, he realized something needed to be done.  He set out to have a car that would not pollute and be small enough to take up half a lane.  This way, congestion problems would be addressed and transportation carbon footprint reduced.  Thus the Tango was created.

This is an interview I had with Rick.  Rick, what got you started and where did the inspiration for the Tango's unique design come?

In around 1982, I was stuck in traffic in Los Angeles and noticed only one person in each car.  I contemplated how many millions are stuck in my situation every day and numb to it, frustrated without a solution.  I started thinking about a solution.  It was obvious that the length of a vehicle was less important than width for increasing freeway lane capacity in cars per hour.  Making a car half as wide, or able to fit in a half lane with adequate clearance would allow a doubling of lane capacity.  Shortening a car would make a much smaller difference because most of the real estate used by a car is the space in front for braking reaction time and braking distance.  Since roughly 90% of all cars have one person in them why would people choose a wide car for most of their trips, given the choice.

The Tango Unique Design.  It occurred to me that a narrow car would tip over in cornering.  Being a casual Porsche race driver at the time, I was quite aware of the relation of lateral G forces and center of mass.  I've been an advocate of hydrogen fuel for cars since 1975 when I first read about it in a Brazilian magazine.  I knew that although an internal-combustion-engined car would be hard to ballast enough for stability, a hydrogen car using iron-titanium hydride or a similar carrier for the hydrogen would make great ballast for stabilizing a narrow car.

I stewed on this for nearly 20 years wondering when a car company would figure this out.  I remember speaking with Peter Schutz, and Helmut Bott, Porsche's president and chief engineer at the time about hydrogen.  They said that it was a 20 year project, and that they could only afford to work on 5-year projects at Porsche.

Almost exactly 20 year later I learned of the progress being made at Daimler-Benz, and their planned purchase of Ballard stock, a hydrogen fuel cell company.  Many things came together at that time that catalyzed my son and I building a prototype narrow car that ran on batteries just to prove our theory.  We originally thought that batteries wouldn't have enough range and that our work was to prepare for hydrogen power.  We learned quickly though that batteries were much more than sufficient for the average commute.  In fact, because the Tango was not trying to be everything to everybody, only appealing to 90% of all trips, that inexpensive lead-acid batteries would be sufficient.  As we built and developed our proof-of-concept vehicle we found it to be more and more valid. Little by little we got capital to advance the design to the point where it is today.

To this day, the Tango is one of the very few available electric vehicle, EV on the market today.  On par with the Tesla Motors Roadster in terms of price and performance, the Tango excels at what it does best, a commuter car that can get you in and out of traffic with plenty of performance.  the idea of placing the driver in front of the passenger is not new but Rick took it to a new level.  Imagine special highway lanes in congested cities where only vehicles in this configurations would be allowed?  We would cut congestion in half.

By placing the battery pack well below in the EV, Rick says his Tango has the same static rollover threshold as a Porsche 911.  Here is a Google Tech Talk video.

Final Thoughts.  The Tango certainly has its place in the history of EVs.  It tackles two problems at the same time, that of traffic congestion and lowering transportation carbon footprint.  To add spice to pleasure, the Tango handles like no other EV and riding in it is all smiles.

Next we will look at what the future holds for Commuter Cars.