Freewheeling: Wheego Whip is an electric car for whipping around the neighborhood

Wheego was founded by computer guru Mike McQuary, former president of EarthLink. As we were driving around New York City recently in a bright blue Whip, McQuary told me he was inspired to start his company after seeing the documentary, “Who Killed the Electric Car”, about GM’s original Saturn EV-1 program.

“I’m not a car guy as much as a technology entrepreneur,” he said, and an admitted “tree hugger.” So he decided to mate his software expertise with unibody construction.

The Wheego Whip is classified as an NEV — Neighborhood Electric Vehicle — limited to city streets and country roads rated not above 35 mph, and it has a 55-mile range before recharging. McQuary has raised $2.5 million for crash testing that will boost the car’s legal limits to highway speeds, and for retooling the battery pack to lithium-iron phosphate, which is not quite as powerful (nor as expensive) as lithium-ion batteries that help power hybrids, such as the Toyota Prius, 2010 Mercedes-Benz S400 Hybrid sedan and the all-electric version of the R8 sports car recently announced by Audi.

A highway capable Whip — or FSV for Full Speed Version — will have a 100-mile range between recharging that takes 8-10 hours.

My drive time showed the Whip to have adequate acceleration, stability in turns, spot-on braking thanks to regenerative four-wheel disc brakes and a totally silent ignition start-up and operation. Oh, yes, when you close the doors, it sounds like a “real” car door, not a toy. There’s enough cargo space to fit a couple of medium-size suitcases, plus air conditioning and power windows, too.

McQuary recently announced a “trade-up” program, under which buyers of the low-speed NEV Whip can trade-up to the full-power FSV model, expected in 2010, and receive a trade-up credit of 50 percent of the original price. With a second round of federal and state tax credits, that could bring the price of the trade-up all the way down to $3,000. “We want to take care of our pioneering customers,” he said.

McQuary calls the Whip a “United Nations car”, with batteries from Canada, body and chassis from China, motor made in Wisconsin, dashboard components from Ohio, the software from Boston and company headquarters in Atlanta.

He is realistic about Whip’s marketability. “This is not the car to load up the kids for grandma’s” or a long family vacation, but it’s a second car for daily commuting and errands close to home. It’s also an ideal vehicle for teens and college students — cute, cutting-edge technology, inexpensive to buy, operate and maintain, with MP3 connection and Bluetooth in the upgrade model, plus a safety feature important to any parent: “It can’t go over 80 mph,” he told me.

The Whip is assembled in Ontario, Calif., but McQuary wants to build factories in the Midwest and East, “to save distribution costs.” For distribution and other Whip information visit wheego.net.

McQuary hopes to sell 5,000 Whips in 2010. “If the big guys sell less than 100,000 of a model after four years of research and development, they consider it a flop,” he said, but for a company the size of Wheego, that number would be a mega-volt success.