Auto News 5

Replica cars are nothing new. Hot-rodders have been relying on new 1932 Ford body shells for years, and longtime readers may remember the Autokraft Cobra that was splashed on the cover of our second issue, in May 1986. But those are copies of exceedingly rare, expensive, and significant cars. A 1966 Ford Bronco is none of those things. And yet, starting later this year, the public will be able to assemble brand-new ones.

Although most of the auto industry is using billboards and Twitter feeds to announce the oncoming battery-powered revolution, German automakers have been more circumspect. At various times, they've pooh-poohed the viability of electric vehicles and, at others, tantalized us with green supercars that will, at best, be extremely expensive and extremely limited in production. But make no mistake, the Germans are coming around, if somewhat belatedly, to the idea of electric vehicles for the masses, and to that end, they are developing a veritable alphabet soup of electric small cars that you may or may not have heard of. Here's your cheat sheet on the affordable electric cars we expect from the Fatherland.

Q: What motivated your invention?
A: I can tell you the light-bulb moment down to the GPS coordinate. I was in my BMW 540i, taking turn 1 at Summit Point . It's a very hard, double-apex right-hand turn at the end of the front straight, requiring trail braking going in and a downshift during the turn. I kept losing speed and losing control in the turn because I was holding onto the steering wheel and sliding in my seat. My driving instructor told me, "You've reached that level where you've got to put harnesses in your car." But this was my daily driver, and I didn't want harnesses. So, I started to tinker with a few ideas and then tried them on the track. It took two years to find the solution.