Raul Atkinson is the name of the clever guy we are talking about and he is hoping to revolutionize the American automobile industry at the Marin County Fair.
It took Atkinson two years and 2,000 hours of labor to build this great-looking all-electric sports car he named ‘The Raptor’, which will be exhibited at the fair. The engineer worked on the vehicle on evenings and weekend at a rented space S-Car-Go Racing in San Anselmo, trying to make a better electric car.
"I don't want to compete with Tesla," said Atkinson for the NBC Bay Area. "I just want to create something that is affordable and will make a difference."
According to the aformentioned sourse, Atkinson used the body of a 1965 Shelby Cobra Daytona Coupe (though some say it was a Factory Five Racing Coupe) that he built from a kit. All he did was to remove the exhaust pipe and eliminate the radiator scoop. The vehicle runs on a 3-phase AC induction motor and is powered by a 290 nickel metal hydride batteries.
According to Atkinson, the Raptor can reach a top speed of 100 mph and goes from zero to 60 mph in about eight seconds.
The engineer says the next version of the car will use a lithium ion battery. It currently takes the car about three hours to charge, a full recharge allowing it to go for some 80 miles.
The inventive engineer thinks the production price for the Raptor would be around $85,000, but he emphasized that it could also be mass-produced cheaply, so that it becomes an alternative to the Toyota Prius.
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