The current EV boom means it’s not difficult to buy an electric car these days. Unless you want a convertible, that is. While automakers have focused hard on getting electric sedans, hatchbacks and crossovers to the street, roadsters seem to have been largely left out of the mix, at least for now.
But if you can’t bear to wait until 2023 to get your hands on the much-delayed Tesla Roadster, we have a solution. It’s called the Taylor-Dunn Trident, it’s painted in a fetching green to telegraph its eco credentials, it’s a full EV, just like Elon Musk’s Roadster, and it comes with an even freakier steering thingy than the Tesla yoke. And it’s available this very month through Mecum auctions. But with a top speed of around 26 mph (42 km/h), it’s not quite in the same league as the Tesla when it comes to performance.
Related: Tesla Won’t Launch New Models In 2022, Cybertruck Delayed Until 2023, Entry-Level $25,000 EV On Hold
Yeah, Tesla’s Roadster might have been delayed until 2023, but the Trident is so slow we suspect you’d still get to your destination first even if a Taylor-Dunn set off today and you waited for the Roadster to be delivered next year before attempting to catch it.
Mecum’s auction listing claims the seven new (but old fashioned lead-acid) batteries give the Trident a range of 50 miles (80 km) on a full charge. Which might not be great by modern standards, but it’s potentially more than you’d get out of a used Nissan Leaf. The listing also says it’s one of 51 Tridents known to exist, is a fully road legal California black plate vehicle and underwent a full restoration in 2020.
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You’ll have seen Taylor-Dunn’s modern machines at airports and warehouses, but the business that’s now part of the Polaris group started in the late 1940s when a chicken farmer called R.D. Taylor Sr. built a small electric cart to haul his chicken feed around. After receiving inquiries from other ranchers, he decided to build a few for friends and neighbors, and was then joined in the business by his son-in-law, Fred Dunn. But rather than being aimed at the commercial market, the Trident appeared in 1959 as a battery-powered “shopping car” that was fully street legal.
This particular three-wheel electric snail is getting ready to cross the auction block at Mecum’s East Moline commercial vehicle sale on March 24-26. There’s no pre-sale estimate, but to give you some idea of what you might have to pay to take it home, it appears to be the same vehicle that sold at Barrett-Jackson’s 2021 Scottsdale even for $19,800. Which is roughly one tenth of what you’ll need to pay to bag a Tesla Roadster when it finally gets here.
