Small Electric Car May Usher In Big Changes

An anonymous reader sends us to a profile in CNNMoney.com on a Norwegian car company that is building a compact, plug-in electric car, the Think City, that will go on sale in Europe early next year. It could hit US markets in 2009. The CEO is working with Silicon Valley VCs and with Google, Tesla Motors, PG&E, and Dean Kamen, inventor of the Segway. Plans are to sell the car only on the Web. No dealers, cheap manufacturing plants, and a battery pack that you lease, not buy — there's potential here for shaking up the auto industry the way Dell did PCs.

Comments

Big Changes, huh?

[ExploHD]

Are those "big changes" similar to Segway's "Big Changes"?

Re:Big Changes, huh?

[vidarh]

Re-read the article. $34K is the planned retail price for the car in Norway including the battery, not the price of the battery alone. The other price is excluding the battery which you will then lease instead.

And for Europe the price isn't bad, particularly as many countries have lower taxes for electric cars. Most people commute short distances where speed is limited anyway (I'd challenge anyone to try to get anywhere near top speed with this car in London during rush hour - average speed is between 10 and 15 mph), and so the limitations of this car means very little to most people. Since gas is more expensive here too, it can be economical at quite a higher price point than in the US.

Re:Big Changes, huh?

[hey!]

You don't want to own the battery. Why in the world would you?

I suppose you own the gasoline that goes into your car, but your relationship to it is transitory. It is consumable.

Your relationship with your car battery is somewhat more enduring, but it still is a consumable, what's more it is a consumable that presents you with a disposal problem at the end. Leasing the battery saves you this trouble, and makes it much easier and more efficient for the manufacturer to recycle it -- into more batteries.

I think the magic number here isn't $5000, it's more like $20,000. You would not want such a small car with a 112 mile range to be your only car, but most households have two, and increasingly often three or even more cars. If you could buy it at the same price as your next ICE car, it'd be more than viable, and help alleviate the parking problem in many households. There are four people in the house next to me, and there are four SUVs and a motorcycle. One or two of these could easily be a car like this, especially if the Stirling engine was an option that could be bought for, say $5000.

Come to think of it, one of the cool things about the Stirling engine is that you could share it, or you could keep it when you traded in your old car. It'd be much more like a one time investment.

The main obstacle to this car in this country is that Americans have become such friggen stick in the muds. We've been top dog for so many years we've gotten allergic to change. I don't know if many people noticed, but the most significant thing in this article for me was how close this thing was to production, then was dropped by Ford when the CA regulations were dropped. Our big companies, it seems, only innovate when there's a regulatory gun to their head.

If a significant number of second household cars, and most if not all third household cars were like this, we'd take a pretty big bite out of our foreign oil dependency problem for no real practical inconvenience.

Carbon Free?

[JuanCarlosII]

..carbon-free electric driving machine

I appreciate that looking forward a larger proportion of our electricity will come from sustainable and green sources, but given the current situation I can;t see how they can claim an electric car to be 'carbon free'. Admittedly the car itself emits very little carbon, but this just means that the carbon emissions are being diverted to the power generation (unless of course, the electricity is being generated using a perpetual motion machine). Also:

He points to the black steel chassis of a City standing on a nearby pallet; it's shipped preassembled from Thailand. At one station, workers attach the car's aluminum frame -- made in Denmark -- and drop in a French motor. At another station, prefabricated rust-and dent-resistant polymer-plastic body panels produced in Turkey are hung on the frame of a nearly completed car.

I'm not sure how shipping in different parts from all corners of the world necessarily helps the 'carbon-free' thing either. Basically, my thinking is that until electricity supplies are all (or at least mostly) from renewable and sustainable sources then a small electric car is no more or less environmentally friendly than say a small diesel car.

This is car enough

[zeromorph]

I think it's a good idea with a lot of potential here in Europe, maybe not in the US.

For me it's definitely enough car. For most people it would make a great second car.

From their homepage:
Range: 180km
Speed: max. 100km/h

A max. speed of 120km/h would be nicer, but range and speed are sufficient for all of the routes on which I prefer car over train.

Stirling Engine

[RAMMS EIN]

If I were to design a car these days, I would do as these guys did and use an electric motor for propulsion, and a Stirling engine for power generation. For those not in the know, Stirling engines are engines that run on heat. They can be powered by pretty much anything that generates enough heat, including but not limited to fossil fuels. Compared to conventional combustion engines, they Stirling engines are more efficient, but they take a lot of time to increase or decrease speed. That is a problem when using them for driving the wheels, but not when generating elcetricity.

Thanks to AKAImBatman for pointing me at Stirling engines; I first read about them on his blog.

Re:ummm, no.

[evilviper]

It's not like people in the US are jumping to replace their SUVs and trucks with little electric cars.

Almost...

Several years ago, when gasoline prices doubled, I noticed a hell of a lot more old and small cars on the road... Cars that you could barely sell months before, seemed to be at every stop light. Their only possible positive attribute being their 35MPG fuel economy.

Hybrids have been a huge hit over the past couple years. So, given the lack of any fully electric cars, that's about as close an equivalent as you can get. I'd say people are at least clamoring for SOMETHING different. The rich aren't going to toss their leather-clad Hummers, and those that need trucks will continue to buy them, but I expect there's a whole lot of demand in the market for some, ANYTHING that doesn't use up lots of gasoline.

Cheaper one from India

[ScorpFromHell]

did we ever discuss about the Indian electric car company Reva any time in the past? Their latest variant, Reva i, released this month costs around USD 9K (at exchange rate of INR 40 per USD).

Sure, it can only do a top speed of around 50MPH with a range of 60 Miles per charge, but I guess that's enough for city driving? I don't know, but is USD 9K too much for a small electric car that can carry two adults & two children in your place? In India, it is a viable option as a second car, for the growing numbers of nouveau rich at least.

Car dealership is required

[ptbarnett]

Selling via the web may sound cool, but at least one state (Texas) requires that a retail automobile purchase be conducted through a brick-and-mortar dealer.

Nuclear + Wind

[Nicolas MONNET]

Current technologies exist to generate electricity carbon free.

Nuclear (70%+ of all electricity around here)

Wind is already competitive price-wise with coal. Its main problems are that they require massive initial investment, and that it takes A LOT of time to get over all the Nimbys. Wind also happens to be unpredictable, but that's a non issue as far as battery charging is concerned. All that's required is a broadcast flag to tell the charger to stop sucking current when not enough power is available.

Strawman argument.

[nietsch]

these vehicles are not the same as the vehicle that the article is about. It is not about to go on sale this year or the next. There is nothing that you can order yet, so there is nothing you can crash test. The test was with a totally different vehicle. If one SUV did bad in a crash test (like killing some bystanding dummies that were not even in the test), does that make all SUVs bad? (well OK, SUV are still bad, but for other reasons).
Some other poster pointed out your strawman is called g-wiz(made in India), which is a different vehicle ,made in different factory. Or are all electric vehicles the same?

Email from Think

[meador]

I emailed Think with a few questions after they announced their battery pack deal with Tesla.
Here's the text:

Dear xxx,

Thank you for your e-mail and interest in Think!

Think is currently in the process of preparing the new TH!NK city for production in the fall of 2007. The new TH!NK city meets all US and European homologation and safety requirements. It has a range of 110 miles, a top speed of over 60 mph and has comfort and convenience features you would expect of a normal car such as, A/C, electric windows, mirrors, etc.

Due to production capacity limitation and a desire to become very visible in the markets we enter, we will sell exclusively in Norway and the UK in 2007 and the first few months of 2008. Unfortunately, I am unable to confirm the timing of a US launch.

About your questions:

1) How many miles / years will the batter pack last? --> 7 to 10 for Norway
2) Can the top speed governer be altered? (Part of my daily commute is on the highway) --> NO
3) Do you have any plans to bring the Think back to the US? --> YES
4) What is the cost of the car and cost for the replacement battery pack? --> Not yet known for USA, in Norway 200.000 NOK

I have added your name to our list of interested parties and we'll send you information on prices and launch dates as they become available. Please contact me if you have any further questions. For more information please visit our website: www.think.no.

Thanks for your interest and all best.


Kind regards

Alejandra Hagbartsen
Market assistant

THINK GLOBAL AS

Sandakerveien 24
0473 Oslo
www.think.no

Tel: +47 23 40 84 04
Mob: +47 993 88 329

Still the wrong battery model

[frisket]

Lease or buy isn't important. What's important is that batteries become standardized. Recharge at home by all means, but when your car is running out of juice on a trip, you pull into a juice station, slide out the battery, slide in a recharged one, and slide your discharged one into a rack for recharging. You pay for your "refill" like you pay for a tank of gas, and drive out.

OK, so maybe we need small, medium, and large batteries, plus a couple of bigger sizes for trucks, buses, RVs, and those 4x4s needed for all that rugged terrain around the suburban malls :-) but the last thing we need is some dipshit marketing droid inventing new and proprietary batteries that you have to get from the manufacturer. Suppose you bought a Toyota but you had to go to a Toyota garage to get your gas...

Re:Your all MORONS!!!

[Paulrothrock]

I don't drive up mountains with deer in the back. I do, however, drive about six miles each way for work, and short grocery runs during the week. I bought a scooter that gets 80mpg, but I'm definitely interested in something that can get the same or better mileage but keep me out of the elements.

Just because you don't think something is useful doesn't mean other people don't.

praise be, /.ers are back to shooting down ideas

[avi33]

It's funny, every time details about some "cutting edge" idea or business model surface, this forum (which used to be populated with physicists, engineers, and geeks of all stripes) piles on with their own particular angle on why it won't work.

Good thing slashdot isn't a frickin' VC company...I can just imagine the comments:

• Are you kidding, no one will pay half a billion dollars for a site that just has free web-based email. I could knock that out in a weekend with perl...
• No way anyone will pay two billion dollars for a video sharing site...I could knock that out in perl in a week
• What? *Another* search company? Who needs that? We already have Lycos and yahoo, and their results are pretty good...besides, I could knock one out in perl if I really needed to...
• An overpriced mp3 player with 5 buttons and a scroll dial? L4m3.

No, instead, we have the run of the mill peanut gallery, with their particularly ignorant insights. Don't get me wrong, a strong dose of skepticism is a healthy thing to have, but do you really think that Sergey and his band of PhD.s are not quite as clever as you when it comes to spotting and growing ideas? I'm no fan of the Segway, but you have to admit, much of the pesky unwanted energy in our machines shows its face in the form of heat, and if you can find a *relatively* cheap way to convert it to some other form, well, that seems like a pretty handy little model...

But slashdot has all the answers...it's too small, too expensive, the batteries should be $free, it's failed x times before, it's a toy, it's not safe, Joe sixpack wants a hummer, ponzi!, l4m3, FUD, w00t...whereas a couple of commenters actually get it: this could work in x conditions, but not in y, for z reasons...at least there are still a couple people left around here that haven't grown up thinking a forum is a place to pile on, the snarkier, the better.

I'm not saying it will succeed just because some heavy duty investors are behind it; plenty of ideas that fit that bill haven't made it. The point is, it could, and maybe one day something will happen that might cause people to think about energy differently, and this model will be ahead of its time, or at least some lessons will have been learned. Like a HOWTO on overclocking your chip with a stirling engine that charges your iPod...

Instead of analysis, we have negative comments modded as insightful. I suppose it's true what The Onion says, it turns out that a majority of Americans are actually NOT entitled to have their own opinions...