00:00The coolest feature to me is that it can get through traffic faster than any car in history.
00:06We get so many reactions from people watching it, it's amazing.
00:12Hi, I'm Rick Woodbury. I'm president and founder of Commuter Cars.
00:18I started this company 21 years ago.
00:24It was based on an idea that I came up with in 1982.
00:30I used to drive a Porsche from Beverly Hills to Hermosa Beach every day,
00:34and the traffic was horrendous.
00:36And I noticed that everybody around me was a single occupant in a car,
00:39taking up a whole lane.
00:41So I thought, everybody wants to get from point A to point B efficiently.
00:44And in cities like Los Angeles, there's really no centre, there's no hub,
00:48it's just everybody goes everywhere.
00:52I don't think there's any other answer except doubling lane capacity.
00:55This is the Tango Car, a super-slim electric vehicle
00:57that has created Rick's answer to congested city driving.
01:00Well, the coolest feature to me is that it can get through traffic faster than any car in history.
01:05Same width as a Harley-Davidson motorcycle.
01:08You just come up to a stoplight,
01:10but instead of waiting in line behind all the other cars,
01:12you just go right up the line in between and you filter.
01:16On the inside, well, it's very comfortable.
01:19You're right in the centre of the car.
01:20You're on the driver's side on both sides, so it's very convenient.
01:26You look out either window, you've got better visibility,
01:30you can see exactly what's happening around you.
01:32You've got better visibility than any car I've ever had.
01:34You can fit two people.
01:36This has a Momo steering wheel.
01:38This is actually used by race cars, the Motec Dash.
01:41Four-point shoulder harness.
01:42The pilots of commercial aircraft use these exact harnesses.
01:46With a comfortable and easy-to-drive interior,
01:48what is it like to drive a car like this?
01:52It handles really well.
01:53We know it has a super low centre of gravity,
01:55being that it has a dry-sump engine that's opposed,
01:59so it's got a lower centre of gravity than just about any other car.
02:02I've had it up to 120 miles an hour,
02:04so the length is 102 inches, the same width of a semi-truck,
02:08so it can park perpendicular to the curb.
02:16This is the chassis, and this is the roll cage
02:20that is certified by FIA for a 200-mile-an-hour race car.
02:24There's about four times more impact protection here
02:26than there is in a standard production car.
02:29To me, this car is safer than any other car on the road
02:32because it can avoid accidents better than any other car.
02:34This has the same rollover threshold as a 911 Porsche.
02:37It turns instantly, unlike a motorcycle,
02:40which has to counter-steer before it can turn to avoid a collision.
02:43The Tango debuted in 2005,
02:45and after actor George Clooney bought one,
02:47the car became a runaway success.
02:51Due to the nature of the build,
02:53the company can only produce a certain amount.
02:55It took ten employees about three years to get nine-and-a-half cars built,
02:59and this is number ten.
03:01It's been quite a few more years, but also it's a lot more complicated.
03:05We've spent a couple of years just developing the new lithium pack for this one,
03:10but there have been constant upgrades over the years
03:13just to get the lithium batteries and the management systems to handle them.
03:17This is the car that we sold to a customer in Perth, Australia,
03:21and it's in the process of assembly,
03:26but mostly it's waiting on completion of the battery pack.
03:28The battery box is here.
03:30The whole bottom of the car is battery.
03:32There's 90 kilowatt-hours of battery in there,
03:35which will give us about 300 miles of range.
03:38With all the work needed to create these slender vehicles,
03:40the production costs can't be that cheap.
03:42These cars have cost an average of $420,000 each to build.
03:46And unsurprisingly, out on the road, this car gets a lot of attention.
03:55Hi, sure, of course.
03:58This is so cool that you got this done.
04:00I'm so impressed with you. That's amazing.
04:02We get so many reactions from people watching it. It's amazing.
04:05Sometimes we have two people, both the driver and a passenger,
04:08both photographing the car as we're going down the highway.
04:11It grabs a lot of attention.
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