East German Trabant Revs up for Comeback as an EV

By Jon Vandervelde

Jon Vandervelde

Contributing Writer BIO

Jon Vandervelde is a designer, architect, and robot combat promoter, with a love for all things mechanical. With a B.A. in Microbiology from the... More

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Rendering of the Tranbant NT EV

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The original Trabant was the communist answer to the Volkswagen Beetle.  Built by VEB Sachsenring Automobilwerke Zwickau in East Germany, the basic design went almost unchanged from it's creation in 1958 until the fall of the Berlin wall, when production ceased.  the "Trabi" as it was affectionately (or angrily) known is remembered as one of the slowest, least reliable, highest polluting and just generally shoddy vehicles ever manufactured.  Nevertheless, It's simplicity meant that the owner could often repair it himself, and parts were not hard to find (or fabricate).  with 50,000 Trabants still on the country's roads,  a certain affection for the iconic little auto lingers in the German psyche.

Boutique carmaker IndiKar, in a joint venture with Herpa (a manufacturer of scale Models who owns the Trabant name) began trying to bring back the Trabi in 2007.  At this years International Automobile show in Frankfurt in September, they will unveil their new electrically powered Trabant NT.   According to spokesperson Jürgen Schnell, “It’s going to be simple, practical, and in the old tradition of the original, but it won’t be a retro model. It will have the newest technology and be purely electric.”

The company, which is located in the same county as the original Trabi factory in Zwickau, Saxony, hopes to find investors willing to bring the environmentally friendly city car to the masses.

[SOURCE:The Local:Germany's News In English]