On August 24, the President of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, presented a model of a small electric car for cargo and passengers developed by Venezuelan businessman Augusto Pradelli.
The vehicle was named “Catatumbo” in honor of the meteorological phenomenon “Catatumbo lightning,” which occurs in a particular area of northwestern Venezuela and is characterized by the appearance, almost without interruption, of lightning, cloud-to-ground, ground-to-cloud, and cloud-to-cloud electrical discharges, whose thunder can be heard continuously.
With a charging time of 6 hours on a 110-volt outlet, which is common in the South American country, the car has a range of 100 kilometers, capable of developing a maximum speed of 40 kilometers per hour.
With a capacity for four people and a load platform that supports 100 kilograms, it was defined by the Venezuelan president as a “safe” automobile and as an example of technological design for the future.
“The future of the automobile is electric vehicles,” said the president while driving the “Catatumbo”, noting that the Venezuelan innovator has also developed a model of a vehicle whose charge is achieved through solar panels and whose autonomy is more than 200 kilometers.
Pradelli, the creator of the “Catatumbo” prototype, pointed out that these vehicles have very low production costs and specified that “they can provide urban mobility”.
With information from Xinhua