Team Bio

Inspiration for the Tango

In about 1982, I was stuck in traffic in Los Angeles and noticed only one person in each car around me. I contemplated how many millions are stuck in my situation every day and just seem numb to it--a frustration without a solution. I thought about what would be the solution. It was obvious that length of a vehicle was much less important than width for increasing freeway lane capacity in cars per hour. Making a car half as wide, or able to fit in a half lane with adequate clearance would allow a doubling of lane capacity. Shortening a car would make a much smaller difference because most of the real estate used by a car is the space in front for braking reaction time and braking distance. Since roughly 90% of all cars have one person in them, why would people choose a wide car for most of their trips, given the choice?

It occurred to me of course that a narrow car would tip over in cornering. Being a casual Porsche race driver at the time, I was quite aware of the relation of lateral G forces and center of mass. I've been an advocate of hydrogen fuel for cars since 1975 when I first read about them in a Brazilian magazine. I knew that although an internal-combustion-engined car would be hard to ballast enough for stability, a hydrogen car using iron-titanium hydride or a similar carrier for the hydrogen would make great ballast for stabilizing a narrow car.

I stewed on this for nearly 20 years wondering when a car company would figure this out. I remember speaking with Peter Schutz and Helmut Bott, Porsche's president and chief engineer at the time about hydrogen. They said that it was a 20 year project, and that they could only afford to work on 5-year projects at Porsche.

Almost exactly 20 year later I learned of the progress being made at Daimler-Benz, and their planned purchase of Ballard stock, a hydrogen fuel cell company. Many things came together at that time that catalyzed my son and I building a prototype narrow car that ran on batteries just to prove our theory. We originally thought that batteries wouldn't have enough range and that our work was to prepare for hydrogen power. We learned quickly though that batteries were much more than sufficient for the average commute. In fact, because the Tango was not trying to be everything to everybody, only appealing to 90% of all trips, that inexpensive lead-acid batteries would be sufficient. As we built and developed our proof-of-concept vehicle, we found it to be more and more valid. Little by little we raised capital to advance the design to the point where it is today.

For more information on Tango (Commuter Cars), check out the team's coverage on ConsumerReports.org