The Gurgel Itaipu E150 is an

electric car An electric car, battery electric car, or all-electric car is an automobile that is propelled by one or more electric motors, using only energy stored in batteries. Compared to internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles, electric cars are quie ...

, produced by the Brazilian automobile manufacturer

Gurgel Gurgel Motores () was a Brazilian automobile manufacturer, named after its founder João do Amaral Gurgel. The company was founded in 1969 and first specialised in buggies and off-road vehicles. Early models were fiberglass bodies installed on V ...

. The Itaipu was presented at the ''Salão do Automóvel'' in 1974, with an intended production start in December 1975. Only a few of these cars were produced and is today a collector's item. Top speed was of the first prototypes were of approximately and the latest models reached up to . While about twenty pre-series cars were built, it was never commercialized. It was the first electric car built in

Latin America Latin America or * french: Amérique Latine, link=no * ht, Amerik Latin, link=no * pt, América Latina, link=no, name=a, sometimes referred to as LatAm is a large cultural region in the Americas where Romance languages — languages derived f ...

, and, its specifications were comparable to similar models of the time (see

CitiCar The CitiCar is an electric car produced from 1974 to 1977 by Sebring, Florida–based Sebring-Vanguard, Inc. After being bought out by Commuter Vehicles, Inc, Sebring-Vanguard produced the similar Comuta-Car and Comuta-Van from 1979 to 1982. Si ...

). The car was named after the hydro-electric dam and power plant on the border of

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

and

Paraguay Paraguay (; ), officially the Republic of Paraguay ( es, República del Paraguay, links=no; gn, Tavakuairetã Paraguái, links=si), is a landlocked country in South America. It is bordered by Argentina to the south and southwest, Brazil to th ...

. The car's design was unique, a very compact

trapezoid A quadrilateral with at least one pair of parallel sides is called a trapezoid () in American and Canadian English. In British and other forms of English, it is called a trapezium (). A trapezoid is necessarily a Convex polygon, convex quadri ...

al two-seater. The car itself weighed a mere , with the remaining consisting of batteries. The name "Itaipu" was brought back for a larger commercial vehicle in 1980, called the Itaipu E400. This was based on the

Volkswagen Volkswagen (),English: , . abbreviated as VW (), is a German Automotive industry, motor vehicle manufacturer headquartered in Wolfsburg, Lower Saxony, Germany. Founded in 1937 by the German Labour Front under the Nazi Party and revived into a ...

-engined Gurgel G800. Gurgel Itaipu Elétrico

References

Itaipu Electric car models Electric city cars Cars introduced in 1975 {{Modern-auto-stub