The Ripsaw EV2 is the Luxury Tank You Never Knew You Wanted

I’m sure anyone that’s ever been in or even seen a tank in real life never had the word luxury even close to crossing their mind. But that didn’t stop the brilliant mad scientists known as the Howe Brothers, from Howe and Howe Technologies, from making the Ripsaw EV2. The Ripsaw itself has been around since early 2000 when it was introduced at a Dallas vehicle show and it caught the eye of the United States Military, so they had one built and sent to Iraq. Things went very well and the Army ended up ordering many more in different types of configurations.

Due to the government contracts, the Howe Brothers were not able to make a civilian version of the Ripsaw. And even though they’re far from cheap, they received countless requests from would-be customers who wanted to buy one. Now that the contracts have come to an end Howe and Howe Technologies can legally make these extremely badass vehicles available to the public.

The original Ripsaw was very rugged and creature comforts were not put into consideration at all when building it. However, with the civilian version, the Howe Brothers decided to go all out in the comfort category while still maintaining the tough and rugged exterior. What came of this is the EV2, which stands for Extreme Vehicle 2, and the best way to describe it would be that it’s a tank, with the interior of a BMW 7 series. Leather seats and all the gadgets and gizmos that you could ever want like GPS, air conditioning, and a full stereo system. Most importantly, a closed cabin so you can get as dirty as you want on the outside but still comfy and clean on the inside. The cool part about is that you can customize your EV2 with whatever level of luxury you want as long as you whiling to pay for it. We weren’t able to find an exact price for the luxurious EV2 but with the basic Ripsaw costing somewhere around $250,000, it’s pretty safe to say that you are looking at a pretty good chunk of change to own one of these bad boys.

Lets put it into perspective, though. The EV2 comes with a 600-650+ Hp Duramax diesel motor that has close to 900lb-ft of torque, and when you have a vehicle that weighs anywhere from 8,000-10,000 pounds you’re going to need all that torque just to get this beast moving. Don’t let the weight fool you though, this thing is not slow, at all. It has a top speed of over 60mph and thanks to that mountain of torque and some brilliant gearing the EV2 can accelerate much quicker than you would expect from a vehicle this size. What makes the Ripsaw so effective is the track system and the way it distributes the weight to the ground throughout the entire track. This allows it to somewhat “float” over terrain versus the small contact patch of a regular tire that will undoubtedly sink in softer terrain like snow sand and mud, which you’ll see in the videos as they do a side by side comparison with a truck on a sand hill. Apparently, the approximate ground pressure of the Ripsaw is only 2.5 psi whereas your standard passenger car would have roughly 30 psi, even the M1 Abrams tank has 15 psi. Now I’ll be honest, I don’t know exactly how that whole thing works but I snowmobile and understand how the tracks are able to float on top of the snow using the same principle. How many times I’ve stepped off the sled and I’m suddenly up to my waist in snow, but there sits a machine more than double my weight still on top of the snow. The Ripsaw pretty much uses a longer more rugged version of a snowmobile track so it’s able to disperse all that weight with an extremely soft footprint, but with such a massive contact patch the traction you get is unbeatable.

With the flat black paint, the light bars, and the whole tank thing, the EV2 looks like it would be the ultimate apocalypse vehicle. It’s also fixed with a 15,000-pound winch on the front and rear, has 21.5 inches of ground clearance, just over 13 inches of suspension travel, a 40-gallon fuel tank, and a 650hp Duramax diesel that is known for being an extremely reliable and obviously powerful engine.

But now there is some icing on that cake. The EV2 is a damn luxury car on the interior so you get to ride in comfort, with a cool breeze, your favorite tunes playing, and if it still exists you’ll be headed in the right direction thanks to your GPS system. Plus whatever other modifications that you can come up with Howe and Howe Technologies will custom build one for you. Hell yeah, where do I Sign?

Here is the EV2 in action

 

 

All Videos courtesy of the Howe and Howe YouTube page. These guys make some incredible stuff!