Every vehicle that made it was a win for us all! But officially the TWIKE 4 (aka TW4XP) -- www.wave2011.net took first place https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AhwVTcwP8xkddHk1Qlo1cW1lRTlzSXh3bGZOYlZFTFE&hl=en_GB)

The TWIKE III placed 6th (out of 20 teams).

I own and have commuted to work in a small-to-medium MidWest USA town almost everyday for the past for years in a 1998 TWIKE III. Plugs into any 110V 15A 3-prong socket and charges to full in an hour or so.

If you ask most people that DRIVE electric vehicles everyday, they'll tell you that the range issue is a red herring: half of Americans that drive everyday drive 25 miles or less. Eighty percent drive 50 miles or less. Just do it.

Not surprising -- the Vatican historically hasn't been accepting of new ideas... maybe somebody needs to nail the 95 EV theses to the door of the popemobile?

This article has a high FUD factor (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) due to an invalid assumption -- that a Californian isn't smart enough to change their electrical rate plan to a time-of-day/market rate plan. Per the original article from Purdue, California DOES have time-of-day/market rate pricing, but this was largely ignored in this article as well as the one from Purdue!
So if you're in California you buy your plug-in vehicle, you switch to Real-Time/Market-Rate/Time-Of-Use billing and you charge overnight when it's cheap. No problem. Or is it? Now THAT would be really interesting AND valuable research to compare overnight historic real-time-pricing data numbers to non-plugin vehicle fuel costs!
Or better yet, since you're in the Golden State, you leverage the governmental and state incentives not only for your plug-in vehicle but also throw up some PV solar panels... no fuel taxes AND a fixed cost for electricity: A clever person solves a problem, a wise one avoids it.
M@
Show OPEC where to stick it: Drive Electric!
www.illinois.edu/goto/twike