Cree SAM, designed and developed by the Swiss company Cree, is a prototype zero emission battery electric vehicle

Battery electric vehicle

A battery electric vehicle, or BEV, is a type of electric vehicle that uses chemical energy stored in rechargeable battery packs. BEVs use electric motors and motor controllers instead of, or in addition to, internal combustion engines for propulsion.A battery-only electric vehicle or...

. It is a tadpole three-wheel car, with two seats in a tandem arrangement.

About 80 vehicles were produced for public testing in the Zurich

Zürich

Zurich is the largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is located in central Switzerland at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich...

 and Basel

Basel

Basel or Basle In the national languages of Switzerland the city is also known as Bâle , Basilea and Basilea is Switzerland's third most populous city with about 166,000 inhabitants. Located where the Swiss, French and German borders meet, Basel also has suburbs in France and Germany...

area, in 2001. In 2003 the company laid off all employees and applied for bankruptcy, but the shareholders including the original designer Daniel Ryhiner bought the company and kept it running, as an investment offer.

In mid 2009 a Polish company, Impact Automative Technologies (IAT, Preskow), was said to be developing a newer and faster version of the Cree SAM with a larger range. It was tested and received road certification in Italy, and was planned to produce 500 cars by the beginning of 2009.

External links

• Cree the original website
• Riding in a SAM on YouTube
• Friends of Sam, official SAM website
• SAM group
• 2008 developments
• The new re-volt SAM (Polish, the English site is not responsive)
• Impact Automotive Technologies The company that took over SAM development.