AltCar 2011: Trexa Enertube is waiting for you

The Trexa has evolved. First unveiled as a skateboard-like concept platform in 2010, the latest version of the Enertube was on display at the 2011 AltCar Expo this past weekend, along with a few ideas for how this battery-powered cylinder with wheels could be used (see gallery for those sketches).

Built by six people over six months in Marina del Rey, CA, the Trexa is a 9-inch aluminum tube packed full of batteries with two wheels at each end. Designed as a "multi-mission platform" to hold a variety of vehicle bodies/passenger compartments, the Trexa design is meant to be as flexible and easy to fix as possible (the A-arms, for example are all interchangeable and vehicle could be two- or four-wheel drive). The battery pack in the tube on display would offer a hypothetical vehicle a 30-mile range if driven at 70 miles per hour. The idea is that end users can build the application they need, whatever that may be.

The skateboard platform was supposed to cost $15,999, but the item on display in Santa Monica is more proof-of-concept than vehicle for sale and Trexa is currently looking for Series A funding. There's some bad news, though: if you try to go to the official Trexa website, you are currently redirected to a site that ends in .ru and pulls up a fierce-looking warning that says, it "has been reported as an attack page and has been blocked." Watch out.