Commuter Cars Tango

The idea goes back to the early 1980s, when Rick Woodbury learned that 106 million Americans drove to work alone. By his son Bryan’s account, an interest in hydrogen fuel cells then led him to a narrow electric car with a very low centre of gravity and a motor for each driven wheel.source 1 In 1998 father and son founded Commuter Cars in Spokane, Washington, and Rick sold his yacht to pay for it. The plan was to use existing production parts wherever possible, down to a safety cage built to NASCAR’s specification.source 1

In January 2005 a prototype went to Prodrive in England to be refined for production; the maker says the roll cage Prodrive designed passed FIA certification.source 1source 2 On 9 August that year George Clooney took delivery of the first Tango kit, as Time reported, and about 100 a year were planned from late 2005.source 1 They did not come. Trouble with the British manufacturer forced Commuter Cars to build the cars itself, and the second car was not shipped until 11 February 2008, fully assembled in Spokane.source 1 With some funding, the firm had eight employees in 2007 and built about one car a month, and it showed at SEMA that year.source 1source 2

In 2008 a Tango turned up in the second-floor office of Eric Schmidt, chief executive of Google, as an April Fool’s joke. That year CNN Money counted 10 built, at an average of US$121,000 each.source 1

Two motors, no differential

The layout is simple and heavy. Two series-wound DC motors drive one rear wheel each through their own 3:1 gear sets, with no differential and no gearbox, and the controller can deliver up to 600 kW, which the maker gives as 805 hp.source 1source 2 The first cars ran on lead-acid batteries, good for 40 to 60 miles (64 to 97 km); the maker now fits 1,000 lithium iron phosphate cells and claims 100 miles (160 km) at 70 mph (113 km/h).source 1source 2 The car weighs 1,509 kg (3,326 lb), about as much as a Toyota Corolla, and 589 kg (1,299 lb) of that is the battery box and lead ballast. The weight sits low enough, the maker says, to put the centre of mass about 280 mm (11 in) off the ground, for a static rollover threshold it rates as equal to five stars.source 1source 2

Inside, the passenger sits behind the driver, straddling the driver’s seat structure, and both wear four-point harnesses.source 1source 2 The maker lists practical virtues as well: it parks sideways in a quarter of a normal space, the rear seat lifts out through the hatch to make room for two large suitcases, and there is a tow hitch for a range-extending generator trailer and another at the front “for moving airplanes”.source 2 Its speed rests on the maker’s word alone: 0–60 mph in 3.2 seconds, and a timed quarter-mile of 12.255 seconds at 106.86 mph (172 km/h) at Spokane County Raceway on 28 July 2012.source 2 No independent timing has been found, and the torque is given three different ways that cannot all be right.

The X Prize and after

In 2010 Commuter Cars entered the Progressive Insurance Automotive X Prize, in the Alternative class, with a T600 borrowed back from its owner, Google’s co-founder Sergey Brin. It passed many of the tests easily but failed to finish the 100-mile durability run and was eliminated.source 1 The maker adds that it went through Consumer Reports’ emergency lane-change test there faster than any other car or motorcycle tested.source 2 No production partner ever came. By 2014 fewer than 20 had been built, and in 2018 Car and Driver gave the company a 1.1-in-10 chance of survival.source 1

The company’s website was still live in 2026. It offered only the T600 kit, from US$240,000 for a single set of parts down to US$100,000 each for an order of 100, and claimed a waiting list of more than 2,000 for a cheaper production Tango of about 150 kW.source 2

The maker counts 12 Tangos, registered for the road in California, Washington, the United Kingdom and New Zealand, and occasionally resells one.source 2 No sale at auction is known. Among the pictures here, a yellow Tango stands in the California Automobile Museum in Sacramento in 2022, and a blue one waits at a Vancouver kerb while a passer-by gives the scale.