If modern cars can boast of anything, it is their levels of safety: there are more and more assistants and aids that aim to help us drive with the least possible risk. There are also brands that stand out in this section, although probably Commuter Cars It’s not the first one that has crossed your mind. According to them, “the safest vehicle in the world” was born on its production lines. And, also, one of the biggest failures in the history of the engine.
The Tango T600 is a tiny electric car that, in the mid-2000s, was designed, developed and manufactured by start-up Commuter Cars: it was made by hand and they only shaped twelve units in the company’s 22-year history. It never got off the ground… despite the fact that the company defined it as “the safest car in the world” and that the first unit was for George Clooney. Nor did he go back when he appeared in one of the first chapters of Silicon Valley, the HBO series.
The reason? It had a price as exorbitant as crazy: at that time it cost 420,000 dollars to produce and its purchase price was 120,000 dollars (112,800 euros, according to current exchange rates). We are talking about a car that is the size of a motorcycle: it is one meter wide and 2.5 meters long. Yes, two Tango T600s could fit together in the same lane. It was powered by two electric motors that could generate up to 810 hp (its 0 to 100 km/h was 3.2 seconds), its top speed was 283 km/h and it could travel 130 kilometers on a single charge.
The security level of the Tango T600
There are those who consider that current electric cars could be among the safest models because they have an even lower center of gravity than some of the conventional models and, in some cases, have extra reinforcements where the components of the heat engine would have been. The Tango T600 was, however, quite a challenge in this regard.
And it is that the small electric includes some unorthodox, but effective features. For example, the entire battery architecture of the Tango T600 weighs 997 kilos and is located on the floor of the vehicle: this makes it virtually impossible to tip over. According to Commuter Cars it has a five-star rollover threshold rating…just like a Porsche 911. Plus, it features a roll cage designed to meet NASCAR standards of the time and Sparco seats with multi-point harnesses.
However, the Tango T600 It has not been evaluated by the two largest security agencies in the United States: It makes sense when you consider the size of Commuter Cars compared to other manufacturers in the automotive industry. Therefore, it does not have the qualifications of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), which evaluates, for example, the resistance to frontal and lateral crashes, nor of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). , for its acronym in English).
