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New electric sports car competes with Tesla

EC Innovations' Liv Inizio is set to be shown at the 2009 New York auto show. It has a recharge time of about 8 hours and is 300 pounds lighter than the Roadster.

Wayne Cunningham Managing Editor / Roadshow
Wayne Cunningham reviews cars and writes about automotive technology for CNET's Roadshow. Prior to the automotive beat, he covered spyware, Web building technologies, and computer hardware. He began covering technology and the Web in 1994 as an editor of The Net magazine.
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Note: This story was corrected to fix a typo in the company name after it initially published.

The Liv Inizio, an all-electric sports car with specs similar to the Tesla Roadster, is making its debut at the 2009 New York auto show. This new electric car is made by EV Innovations, formerly called Hybrid Technologies, which showed off the Liv Wise, a Toyota Yaris converted to an electric power train, at last year's New York auto show.

EV Innovations claims a 200-mile range for the Liv Inizio and a 0 to 60 mph acceleration time of 5 seconds. Top speed: 150 mph. About 15 inches longer than the Tesla Roadster and 6 inches wider, the Liv Inizio still manages to come in 300 pounds lighter. It uses a lithium ion battery pack to power its midmounted motor, and it has a recharge time of about 8 hours. A touch-screen LCD in the cabin displays trip information such as remaining range.

With corporate headquarters in Las Vegas and development done in North Carolina, EV Innovations uses its own battery management technology to offer electric conversions of existing cars, such as the Toyota Yaris, Smart ForTwo, PT Cruiser, and Mini Cooper, and original cars and two-wheelers.