This was not going to be a long trip. Even when his electrified Citroën was in its prime, Bob Hurst could never really predict just how far the car could go on a charge. "It all depends on how many people are in it, and how many hills you have to climb," he explains as he gets comfortable behind the 2CV's skinny, two-spoke steering wheel. Back in the mid-1970s, when the Citroën was his everyday car, the juice came from a dozen deep-cycle, rechargeable batteries; today, there are half that number aboard, and they're just run-of-the-mill, discount-store car batteries. Besides, this is a sweltering New England morning, and neither one of us relishes the idea of pushing the aged Citroën back up the driveway of Hurst's Phillipston, Massachusetts, home.
Hurst turns the key in the ignition--well, actually, the on-off switch--and the needles on the assorted gauges scattered across the dashboard quiver to life. With a prod of the accelerator, the Citroën leaps forward, making an rrr-rrr-rrr sound like reverse gear on a mid-1970s Honda. It lives! Down toward the street we go for the first real drive the car has had since Hurst put it away three decades ago. The motor's prodigious torque means that we can start out in third gear and stay there, forgetting about the other two. The trip is not fast, and not far, but it's enough to show that the 2CV still has what it takes to thumb its nose at Big Oil.
There would be no electric Citroën if it hadn't been for the dark days of the OPEC-induced oil crisis of 1973. Hurst was trying to figure out a way to get to his job as a school maintenance worker in nearby Templeton while leaving enough money in the budget to feed his family. "I said, 'By golly, I've got to do something about this. I'm going to go into the electric car business.'" If you think he was discouraged by limited funds and a lack of expertise, well, you don't know Bob Hurst. "Nobody around [to give advice], and no books or anything. I just winged it." To tell the truth, he wasn't completely green; repairing Ford Skyliner retractable hardtops in his previous job at a garage had given him a working knowledge of motors, relays and switches. "They used to come in with the top halfway up," he said, "and the owner of the garage wouldn't go near them."
http://www.hemmings.com/hsx/stories/2006/10/01/hmn_feature7.html
At 500 kilograms weight, it should be a good candidate for an electric car. Some skinny, high-pressure tires, modern motors and battery packs, and LED headlights to get rid of the bug-eyed ones that are not aerodynamic....
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