Today’s EVs aren’t perfect. They’re still too expensive, their software problems haven’t all been worked out and some models still don’t offer the range and charging experience consumers want. But watching this video on an obscure, early-attempt EV, I’m feeling grateful today. We’ve come a helluva long way in the last decade.
The video is from Aging Wheels, an excellent channel that I highly recommend for all fans of obscure automotive knowledge. Host Robert Dunn has a stunning collection of oddities, and the bizarrely named Th!nk City is the newest addition to the fleet. It’s a tiny, plastic, Norwegian electric micro car, and it only gets weirder from there.
As Dunn explains fully, the Th!nk City is what happens when a Norwegian plastics company decides to make a car, designs a few attempts, goes broke, gets acquired by Ford and then eventually sold off and shuttered. Somewhere along the way, the company managed to put out hundreds of EVs.
The weirdest was a Norway-built version that used a “molten salt” sodium battery, which had to be above 572 degrees Fahrenheit (300 degrees Celsius) to function. Its onboard charger would heat up the battery when plugged in, and you’d only be able to drive until it cooled off. Once below that temperature, the whole car would be bricked, and you’d have to tow it home and give it hours to warm up. It’s no wonder that idea never went anywhere.
The one Dunn bought, however, uses a more conventional lithium battery. It’s a 23-kWh unit that was supposedly good for up to 100 miles when new. But after 80,000 miles of degradation, Dunn now says his car loses 60-70% of its battery just cover the 25-mile round trip drive into town.
It’s hardly a practical car, but it’s an interesting one. It’s full of weird compromises that engineers have ironed out of modern EVs. For instance, its meager 3.3 kW onboard charger—the device that converts your wall electricity into direct current for the battery—generates a whopping 70 decibels of fan noise when running. At least the cooling system for the battery is quiet, as there is no active cooling whatsoever. Hope you keep yours inside!
Plus, the Th!nk was designed before things like electric power steering and electric power-assist brakes became popular. Like most cars until recently, the City used a hydraulic brake booster. But while internal-combustion cars use the vacuum created by the engine to drive the hydraulic system, an EV does not create vacuum anywhere. So the Th!nk got a little 12-volt vacuum pump to power its braking system, and a similar setup for hydraulic power steering.
I highly suggest you watch the whole video for similarly weird details about an EV time has forgotten. It left me feeling lucky and excited. Ten years ago electrification seemed unsolvable because the product just wasn’t there. But today it is. Modern EVs offer more range than most buyers could ever use and a more luxurious experience than you can get in a shaky combustion-engine car, more tech features than you’ll ever discover. More importantly, modern battery chemistries rarely fail, and hardly degrade.
Just think where we’ll be ten years from now.
Contact the author: Mack.Hogan@insideevs.com
