Unsold New 2010 Wheego Whip EVs Found Moldering Away On Dealer’s Lot – Maybe Make A Lowball Offer?

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– Posted on September 24, 2024

One of the most infamously irredeemable cars sold in the United States in the 21st century came from the electric startup Wheego. In a back corner of a dealership that once was the main Wheego distributor for Georgia, a few forlorn cars still sit unsold, complete with window stickers.

This pack of moldering Wheegos are all Whips, the 40-mile range version of their debut vehicle. A (supposedly) 100-mile range version was sold as the LiFe, named for its more potent lithium-ion phosphate battery chemistry. The miniscule range wasn’t the Whip’s biggest problem as it had a top speed of a mere 35 mph (25 mph in some states); the LiFe could supposedly muster a blistering 65 mph.

To understand how Wheego managed to create one of the least appealing vehicles of the century, we need to rewind. This is Georgia Wheego in mid 2013, as seen by Google Streetview. That’s the same year the last new Wheego was delivered to dealers. Wheego itself was founded in 2009 and began selling Whips sometime around 2011. In those two years, approximately 300 Whips were sold. The Wheego LiFe, essentially the same car with better batteries, was significantly more expensive and around 100 made it out of the the factory.

Even in their metaphorical backyard, these cars were very rare sights. My only experience with a Wheego that wasn’t these hopelessly moldy heaps came years ago; I saw a LiFe on the downtown connector in Atlanta, of all places, and was deeply puzzled as to what I was looking at. It took years to discover what I saw. This official Wheego video of a LiFe zipping around those same streets gives better context for that encounter than the unsellable shame at the back of a dealership we opened with.

The very first thing anyone will notice about these unusual vehicles is their resemblance to the Smart Fortwo. It wasn’t Wheego that cribbed the car’s derivative lines, but Chinese automaker Shuanghuan with their copycat Noble city car. The Whip and LiFe were EV versions of the Noble, sold in China as the E-Noble and imported to the US.

These brand-new Whip interiors have been mercilessly attacked by mold. The white one was the only example that wasn’t a serious hazard to my health. Nevertheless, it sports some un-new car-like mold growth.

The interior is all Shuanghuan Noble, complete with goofy air vent pods on the top of the dashboard. The materials are cheap and flimsy, but the design isn’t as amateur as you might expect from a Chinese car that debuted in 2004. It was a bit dated in here by the time Wheego peddled these in 2011, but even 14 years ago standards for small cars were much lower. Surprisingly, the original Chinese-built gasoline version was built until 2016.

This spiral bound owner’s manual does not inspire confidence. The design of the spreads was reasonable, but the lack of proper binding is a poor look for such an expensive purchase.

The original window sticker on the white Whip, equipped with the $1,995 optional air conditioning, was a shocking $21,990. That’s $31,946.37 today; since these are brand new unsold cars, it’s presumed the original MSRP still holds true, to the extent these are even still saleable. Undoubtedly the lead acid batteries have all died from sitting so long without a charge.

Wheego Technologies is rumored to still be around as an automotive software research company working on self-driving cars, the latest hot new thing after EVs. However, with a website that appears to have been last updated in 2015, it’s unclear whether they’re still solvent. Either way, it’s highly unlikely these brand new vehicles still have a warranty.

For as bad as the LiFe was, our featured Curbside Classics are Whips, which were so much worse. Their aforementioned $21,990 MSRP wasn’t their worst feature. For one, it took a best-case 10 hours to charge up its nominal 40-mile range when new. Since the batteries were lead acid, they almost certainly hemorrhaged range rapidly if any more than 50% or so of that range was actually used. Drivers of lead acid battery cars that didn’t know how to baby the cells could kill them in months, even weeks.

The LiFes didn’t have the same tendency for battery degradation under normal use as with its 30 kWh lithium ion phosphate battery pack. However, with the Life’s sticker price starting at $32,995 ($47,164.44 today), it was simply too expensive for a Chinese copycat city car from a fly by night startup. That price almost made the Whip look like a good deal.

The high price of the LiFe and its accompanying dubious quality combined with the serious usability compromises of the still pricey Whip weren’t enough to make this ambitious vehicle one of the worst vehicles of all time. What really makes this car drown in its own hubris is the arrival of the Nissan Leaf in the American market in 2011, the same year Wheego launched their electrified Shuanghuan Noble.

In its launch month of January of 2011, Nissan had already sold more than twice as many Leafs than Wheego sold cars in the entire year. Sure, the Leaf cost a heady $32,780, but it was a proper car from an established OEM and not a then 7 year old Chinese knockoff electrified by a third party. Once you added air conditioning to your LiFe, the Leaf gave you four doors, was bigger, more luxurious, and had equivalent real-world range for a mere $200 more. Wheegos looked like the punchline to a bad joke in comparison.

If Wheego will be remembered at all, it will be for its myriad flaws and limitations. The story of Wheego is not unlike that of ZAP, which preceded it by a few years by also selling Chinese EVs, in this case much cruder three wheelers and also with fragile lead acid batteries. ZAP actually claimed it would be selling an electrified (genuine) Smart, but it collapsed before that ever happened.

Unlike many proposed EV startups, Wheego did actually bring its car to market, but it only reached customers after it became completely irrelevant. This interesting footnote in American automotive history is essentially extinct on the road and is unlikely to ever show up in private collections; this grouping of four brand new, unsold Whips is the closest we’ll get to the shiny Wheego press photos now.

Maybe you’d like to buy one of these rare collectibles? They’re undoubtedly still there (seen here from a Google street view in August 2024, in the upper right hand corner) at Grand Motorcars, 1794 Roswell Road, Marietta, GA 30062; (678) 263-7373. Maybe it’s better if you don’t tell them I sent you. 

 

Related CC reading:

Curbside Classic/Review: Zap Xebra – The Justified Assassination