Norway has famously adopted electric cars at a staggering rate – some 60 percent of all cars sold there this March were battery-powered. According to Forbes, a number of factors are behind this success, from sales tax breaks, free parking and bus lane access to the fact that almost all the country's power comes from hydro-electric plants, tipping the scales even further toward EVs as a pollution-busting solution.
Whatever the case, Norway has become somewhat of a poster child for the EV transition movement, and the showroom success of electrics from Tesla, Nissan and Volkswagen has clearly got some folk asking why there isn't a local brand they can support.
Well, soon there will be. A startup calling itself Fresco Motors has announced plans for its first electric car, a hard-charging, high-performance, premium sedan that looks designed to take on the might of Tesla's Model S.
The Fresco Reverie is targeting a monster acceleration figure of just two seconds from 0-100 km/h (0-62 mph), as well as a sky-high top speed of 300 km/h (186 mph), which should tell you plenty about the nature of the machine. In order to achieve both monstrous acceleration and such an autobahn-busting top speed, the company says it'll be taking the unusual step of adding a four-speed automatic transmission, complete with an overdrive gear for freeway use.
There are no specifics on range yet, although the website states that the company plans to "remove your range anxiety once and for all." Jolly good, then. Fresco is also planning to build its battery packs in such a way as to make them modular, for easy slide-in, slide-out replacements of faulty cell modules and the potential capability to allow drivers to physically exchange spent cells for charged ones in a jerrycan-like emergency process. Charging will be "quick," and the Reverie will have the capability to charge wirelessly, which is nice.
There's no word yet on when Fresco will get the Reverie to market – or indeed get an actual prototype on the road for folks to see (the only existing images are renders), but the company's CEO told Inside EVs that it's already taken at least 70 reservations from Norwegians looking to buy local. As for pricing? Well, with performance figures like the company is touting, it's not going to be easy on the hip pocket if and when it does get over the line. One to watch.
Source: Fresco Motors via Inside EVs