Think rolls off the 2008 City

Anthony Fontanelle
December 11, 2007

Think, an electric car company, has recently rolled off its first battery-powered City at Think Global’s factory in Norwegian countryside.

The 2008 Think City is more like the Honda Civic for the age of global warming. It could run to about 112 miles (180 kilometers) on a single charge. It is a two-seater sporty vehicles that comes with baby-seal-eye headlights and glass hatch that runs across the bumper and roof.

The Honda Civic, though ubiquitous now, first arrived in U.S. about three decades ago. At that time, it was a tiny, under-powered hatchback carried by a little-known foreign automaker in the era of the Detroit land yacht. In time, it has morphed into a full range of vehicles.

Think and other electric car companies turned out to be at a similar inflection point. It was boosted by the surging gas prices and global pressure, along with the need to cut greenhouse gases. Toyota Motor Corp.’s Prius gasoline-electric hybrid achieved success, and was then followed by all-electric cars in the market.

In 1999, Ford acquired Think at the time when the automaker faced a California mandate – to begin producing electric cars. The American automaker invested $150 million into Think – to develop an EV for the U.S. market.

Last year, Jan-Olag Willums, a Norwegian renewable energy entrepreneur, along with his investment group, acquired Think and eventually revived plans of producing a next-generation City with a next-generation business model. They plann to have the car sold online and seeded through car-sharing services. Buyers will purchase the car at a lower price, but will have to lease the battery as part of a mobility fee, which includes insurance and WiFi access. Willums has raised almost $80 million from Silicon Valley venture capitalists and European investors to get the project done.

According to Willums, General Electric (GE) is now one of the investors in Think to work on the battery technology. The new car has been scheduled to go on sale by the first half of 2008 in Norway. It will all be powered by a Zebra sodium nickel chloride battery. Supposedly, it should have been sustained with Tesla’s high-powered lithium-ion battery packs, the version that gave the Roadster its zero-to-60 mph-in-four seconds power. However, Tesla focused on getting the Roadster on the road; so, it placed its batteries on hold. Thus, the Think will instead have the lithium-ion batteries from A123 (which works with General Motors on its Volt electric hybrid) and EnerDel. The batteries will be taken for tests in the City in the first half of 2008. By 2009, the sale of the City will begin in other European countries.

Willums said, “In 2009 we plan to have a ‘face lift’ i.e. introduce a number of additional features… The plan is to have a stronger engine and some increased battery capacity at that time.”

Unfortunately, the company might have to take a couple of years before bringing the City to the U.S. market. In preparation, Think is planning to open an office in Silicon Valley in early 2008. They will also have to increase the City’s top speed from 62 mph.

Willums said, “We have recently started discussions with other partners (not in the automotive industry) to explore if one can make a development consortium to make the engine mass producible… That would be a multiyear project, and we would like to be one partner in such a consortium that would look at many applications of the Stirling engine.”

Think is holding on to a long term plan. For now, the 2008 Think City will be just the prototype of a new automotive model, just like the Honda Civic 0f 1972, which now became one of the top-of-the-line vehicles from Honda, the maker of quality Acura CL distributor cap.

Source:  Amazines.com