When he started Suntera with Vice President, Anthony Locricchio, his focus was on creating a two passenger, 3 wheel electric commuter vehicle, which he called, the “Sunray”. The “Sunray” with it’s aerodynamic body shape and stylish interior, would ultimately be the inspiration for several other electric vehicle company’s. Several variations were built around the Sunray, including the “Picket and the C-Mobile, two variations of a small utility truck.

The Sunray was ahead of it’s time and was the first composite electric vehicle produced in Hawaii (built from the ground up). Able to easily reach speeds up to 65mph, it handled like a sports car. It’s chassis was built by race car builder, Bob Sweat out of Michigan, and it had independent suspension and rear wheel drive. Although classed as a motorcycle, much effort was put into the safety of the vehicle. Composite vehicles are the ideal solution for a strong, lightweight platform to take advantage of the electric motor, but it also transfers energy of crash to the occupants of the vehicle, whereas metal vehicles are designed to crumple or “ride down” and absorb energy in a crash situation. Some of the unique safety features included foam filled channels that ran throughout the interior of the vehicle, plastic honeycomb battery spacers designed to keep the batteries in place and absorb energy in a head-on crash while containing battery acid. The vehicle had a polycarbonate windsheild with a glass coating to prevent scratching. Polycarbonate is extremely durable and strong. It’s used in bullet proof windshields. Special glues from 3M were being experimented with to allow the windshield to “give” and absorb energy if a passenger were to hit it in a crash

Sadly, Jonathan Tennyson passed away in 1997 at the age of 52 from cancer. His profetic statements made before his death still hold true today. Pure electric vehicles will be designed by company’s outside of the motor vehicle industry. The reason for this is because the automobile industry makes most of it’s profits from the aftermarket parts, service and repair. The electric motor has one moving part. An internal combustion engine has over 140. He believed that the automobile industry would try to promote hybrid gas/electric vehicles because they would maintain the internal combustion engine and create a more complex vehicle, needing special servicing and parts. He also firmly believed that General Motors intended their pure electric vehicle, the Impact (which they changed the name to EV1) to fail and prove that a pure electric vehicle wouldn’t be viable. Last year the movie “Who Killed the Electric Car” was released.