Our favorite local electric car guru (if there's more than one we apologize) has really made it big now.  First George Clooney, and now Jay Leno.  Rick Woodbury is one pompous dude away from bro overload.  But in all seriousness, Rick Woodbury, president of Commuter Cars and maker of that fun little car you've probably seen around Spokane, was recently featured in a special online episode of something called Jay Leno's Garage.  Enjoy the episode below, and be sure to read past the jump to catch a story we did on the Tango, including an interview with Rick, back in January 2008.

Sunday, January 27, 2008
    
The Jetsons, George Clooney, and Spokane?

Picture this. You are driving to work in unbearable traffic. You are playing the lane game and every time you make a pick you are wrong. It is stop and go traffic, you are cussing at strangers for no reason, and you call people you don't even want to talk to just to pass the time. The songs on the radio suck, you are sweating and you start getting pissed at the Jetsons for getting your hopes up about flying cars (the FAA can't even get commercial planes in and out of the air on time, you think they could regulate thousands of idiot operated flying machines). At this point you admit to hating life and then you think about how much time and money you are wasting driving to work that way. Then you look around, you are not alone. Well, technically you are alone in your five-passenger vehicle, but there are others, thousands of other solo commuters who share your experience. That's America at its finest, a behemoth of excess and waste.

According to the Bureau of Transportation statistics there are 118 million workers in the US and of them, 92 million drives by themselves to work everyday with four empty seats. That is a lot of wasted space. Space that Rick Woodbury of Spokane sees utilized much differently.



Woodbury is the president of Commuter Cars, a Spokane company with the potential of becoming a major player in the eco-car market, and the engineer of the Tango. Pictured below, the Tango is Woodbury's answer to inefficiency.

"I've heard that to innovate, you don't give people what they ask for, but rather watch what they do," said Woodbury. "I've been watching what they do for over 50 years and I find it interesting that people driving cars by themselves with four empty seats around them and jam up all the freeways, streets, and parking spaces in cities throughout the world as an incredible waste of time and resources."

Auto manufactures have tried to solve this problem by going smaller. The problem with this, as Woodbury explained, "A Mini-Cooper takes relatively the same space on the freeway as the largest SUVs because they both use a full lane and both must have similar braking distance from the car in front."

Motorcycles could solve the problem as they could fit two in the same lane (hint – solution) but they are unsafe, allow little or no room to carry things, and are relatively weather limited. That is why only 0.6% of commuters choose this option. Public transportation represents 4.9% but only really works in dense metropolitans.

So Woodbury, through 50 years of seeing inefficiency and waste, came up with a noble idea: Lane splitting or half lanes. Two cars sharing a lane or smaller lanes would effectively trim down the amount of space used in commute, making commutes shorter, more proficient, and less harmful to the environment.

How does it work? It's all in the math. A freeway lane is 12 feet (144 inches) wide by federal standard. In order to double a lane's capacity, a car would have to be a maximum of 40 inches wide in order to have the same clearance in a six foot lane. The Tango is only 39 inches wide so it easily fits in a half lane or driven side by side a car of equal size.

Woodbury explained more. "Because the driver is cab centered, one feels comfortable in the center of the lane knowing how close they are to other cars on either side. (In a truck, mirrors have to be used just to see if one is in within the lane.) All this is to demonstrate that the Tango can drive comfortably in a 6-- lane or double up in a 12-- lane."

The math makes sense and best of all it works. "We've driven two Tangos side-by-side in a single lane for over 40 miles at freeway speeds and it felt quite comfortable," said Woodbury. The University of California Transportation Department and Booze-Allen-Hamilton did a study on a narrow car of nearly the same dimensions as the Tango and found it would increase lane capacity from 2,000 cars per hour to 4,400 cars per hour.

With the conception of commuting conquered, the Tango could take aim at parking. At 8 feet, 5 inches long, the Tango could essentially fit four times in a standard parking spot if parked perpendicular to the curb. According to a diagram in a Booze Allen Hamilton and University of California Berkeley study, a parking lot specifically for cars of the Tango's dimensions could increase parking capacity by 350%. Parking in metropolitans doesn't seem so bad if four times the cars could fit in the same spaces.

As you are sitting there letting all this sink in, go back to the third paragraph, first sentence. This is all happening in Spokane! The Tango is being praised worldwide, not for its intention or ingenuity but for the specs that set this apart from say, the Smart Car. Oh and George Clooney bought one.



It's the cute little car that could easily blow any Prius off the line. The two Tango motors produce more than twice the torque of a Dodge Viper V-10 engine. About 1,000 pounds of lead acid batteries move the Tango from 0-60 in four seconds. And this is no blowing smoke, which reminds us, zero tailpipe emissions.

When discussing safety Woodbury had this to say: "I can't tell you how many times I've heard the comment I wouldn't want to be hit by a semi in that thing." He continues, "Actually you probably wouldn't want to be hit by a semi in any car. But if you are, wouldn't it me nice to have a full race car roll cage protecting you?" With the Tango, you do. In addition, the Tango remains stable thanks to the lead acid batteries that ensure a low center of gravity. "For safety, we know that we must go to the extreme because everyone instinctively thinks that small cars are dangerous," said Woodbury.

So what's next for the Tango, or better yet, when will you see these beauties cruising around Spokane? Woodbury's primary market is California but as you will see, Woodbury's aspirations are what DTE likes to think legends are made of. "With $50-million we could certify the Tango for the US, Canada, and Europe, and have the tooling and infrastructure to produce 10,000 Tangos per year that would retail for under $20,000."

Woodbury continued. "So in philanthropy, one can give the golden egg, or give the goose that lays the golden egg. I believe that funding commuter cars is like the latter. It is Commuter Cars' goal to put 150-million Tangos on the roads of the world within 30 years or hopefully as little as 15. I believe that when the average commuter sees the benefit and enjoys the freedom and excitement of driving a Tango that they will naturally gravitate toward a tipping point just as the Model-T and the PC did, and people will wonder how we ever got along without them."

Now, go back to the third paragraph, first sentence and read it again. This is all happening in Spokane!

To learn more about Rick Woodbury, read this fascinating article that appeared in The Seattle Times Magazine "Pacific Northwest" in 2003.

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