(Today the enjoyably ludicrous Polaris Slingshot fills the niche, but it runs on gas.) His decision to build one himself started a decade-long journey that included eight generations of prototypes. He was looking to buy an electric car with his newfound fortune when he found a gap: Nothing on the market combined the comfort and stability of a car with the small footprint and visceral feeling of a motorcycle. The 17.5-kilowatt-hour battery sits underneath the two tandem seats.įrohnmayer launched Arcimoto after making a bundle selling his videogame company. Regenerative brakes on the front wheels (all three also have hydraulic brakes) help boost the range to 100 miles. Each front wheel gets its own 25-kilowatt motor, and twisting the throttle can unleash up to 67 horsepower, which in this 1,200-pound ride is enough to hit 60 mph in 7.5 seconds and reach a top speed of 80 mph. Phuc PhamĮven in clogged San Francisco, the off-the-line acceleration is a thrill.
This version of the FUV is the result of 11 years of work, including eight redesigns. And that’s just the start of his ambitions for what he has termed an FUV-Fun Utility Vehicle. He founded Arcimoto to build the vehicle in 2007, and now, after more than a decade of work, he is gearing up to build and sell hundreds, if not thousands, of them in 2019. If Frohnmayer gets his way, it'll turn a lot more heads. When the light turns green, I twist the throttle, and the fittingly electric blue Arcimoto shoots forward. It’s basically a fully electric street-legal tricycle. The Arcimoto, after all, doesn’t have windows. “It’s electric,” Truck Guy #1 tells him, before turning back to look at us some more. Now there’s another guy in another pickup truck, on the other side of the first one, who also has questions about the vehicle we’re sitting in.
It’s a sunny Friday afternoon on San Francisco’s Embarcadero, and Frohnmayer and I are the center of attention at this red light. “It’s fully electric!” Mark Frohnmayer yells to the guy in the pickup truck idling next to us.
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