The Canadian electric car you haven’t heard of

by Noah Bloom Posted in Canada

Did you know there’s a Canadian car company? Oh and it’s electric. Spread this great news.

But this is a funny story, a funny sad (and controversial) story, because, despite this gorgeous (well, gorgeous in the environmental sense) car being manufactured entirely in Canada, it’s not actually legal on the road in Canada!

They’re called ZENN, as in Zero Emission No Noise. You will hear sounds of nature when you drive this car. Not the engine. Woah.

It’s a Canadian success story, and I’d like to see these on the road across Canada now.

ZENN

Have you seen the gas tank is an electric plug? Yeah, plug ‘er in. You’ll pay a penny a mile, and the energy used is equivalent to 245 miles per gallon. It takes 8 hours for a full charge and 4 hours for 85% charge, just like your cell phone. As CEO Ian Clifford said, “Your biggest carbon footprint as an individual is probably the car you drive.” Consider that…

Here’s an 8 minute product tour with CEO Ian:

So as Canadians, this makes us even more compelled to spread the word about this car, which retails for $12,000 to $15,000 USD.

Illustrious TV show host and comedian Rick Mercer brought his classic Canadian mix of satire and reverence to his tour of the factory:

I would definitely drive this car. Would you? Well, gonna have to do something about that backing up buzzer, golf car style. Yikes.

The drawback with this car is that it’s maximum speed is 40km/h. But coming soon is the cityZENN with a maximum speed of 125km/h and 400km range on one charge. Or will it…

That would make it a real competitor to the big car companies, and if that project gets hidden under the rug like Who Killed the Electric Car?, many Canadians may never hear of ZENN. That project is dependent on some mysterious battery advancements coming out of a very private Texas Company called EEStor Inc. CEO Ian has (majority) propriety rights to this controversial technology — a unique energy storage system (shall we say, ultra capacitor) that can charge a car in 5 minutes to go 400 kilometres. Wowya! Or can it? Watch GM play dumb: