Animal rights and electric cars don't usually intersect much, but a long-running New York City battle has produced one of the more unusual electric-car designs shown in public.
At the New York Auto Show last week, a very large electric vehicle--effectively a larger-than-life electric scale model of a Brass Era touring car--was shown to the public by NYClass.
The animal-rights advocacy group has long advocated for the removal of horse-drawn carriages from Central Park on the grounds of animal cruelty.
Creative Workshop 'eCarriage' electric car prototype, New York Auto Show, April 2014Creative Workshop 'eCarriage' electric car prototype, New York Auto Show, April 2014
eCarriage over horses
It proposes that the 68 carriages now operating in and around the park be replaced with the so-called eCarriage, which would operate at 5 mph in the park, to replicate the open-air horse carriage experience for tourists as closely as possible--minus the clip-clop and the odor of horse manure.
The prototype electric car shown last Thursday is the size of a seven-passenger full-size SUV, seats eight, weighs 7,500 pounds, and rides on 26-inch truck tires. It uses a number of existing components from other vehicles, including the Ford F-450 heavy-duty commercial truck.
It qualifies, according to Jason Wenig of the Creative Workshop in Florida, as a Multi-Purpose Vehicle in the NHTSA's 10,000-pound weight class--and will meet all relevant legal standards for that size of commercial vehicle, including seat belts for passengers.
Creative Workshop 'eCarriage' electric car prototype, New York Auto Show, April 2014Creative Workshop 'eCarriage' electric car prototype, New York Auto Show, April 2014
It would also carry a propane heater to keep passengers warm during inclement weather, as well as a convertible top to protect against rain and snow.
Its 63-kilowatt (84-horsepower) electric motor drives the rear wheels and is powered by a lithium-ion battery pack of unspecified size, giving it a claimed 100 miles of range.
Its maximum speed is 30 miles per hour, but a so-called "geo-fence" would restrict it to 5 mph inside Central Park--"thus continuing the tradition of horse-drawn carriages causing traffic congestion in and around midtown," as New York Intelligencer noted acerbically.
Whilst i'm a big fan of the retro design, my biggest concern with this is what will happen to the horses if they ban the horse-drawn carriages? Horses were bred over thousands of years to work for us, pulling carts, ploughs, and providing mechanical energy for pumps, mills and minecarts. And there's nothing "cruel" about making horses work, the cruelty comes from mistreatment, abuse and neglect of some horse owners. I doubt the horses in Central Park suffer that kind of abuse, due to their prominent position.
And what's going to happen to the horses if they do ban the carriages? Most likely, they're be turned into glue or Tesco beefburgers. surely that is worse than getting them to pull carts.
